Professional Liar JD Vance Has Lost His Right to be Treated Like an Adult
Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images
It has long been obvious that the right-wing media ecosystem is one giant bullshit factory where grievance is the only social currency (possibly funded in part by Russian intelligence, according to the Department of Justice), but they were able to maintain a patina of truthfulness by at least pretending to participate in civil society with the rest of us while a credulous press only interested in bothsides self-branding accepted this pathetically low standard, but big dumb manbaby JD Vance has yet again found a way to fall short of this bar sitting six feet underground.
On CNN this weekend, JD Vance completely gave up the game by admitting he just makes stuff up when talking about the blood libel he has launched against Haitian immigrants that led to bomb threats in Springfield, Ohio.
Vance claims he and Trump have to “create stories” about migrants eating cats and dogs “so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.”
There is then some awkward dead air as Bash tries to highlight the absurdity of what he just said pic.twitter.com/IN26ZGYsvE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 15, 2024
“If I have to create stories so the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Any journalist who treats JD Vance differently from a six-year-old child letting their imagination run wild is failing at their profession. Every single allegation Vance makes from here on out should be met with the response of “are you creating this story too?” It is irresponsible to let this empty suit from the Thiel factory talk without getting that response on the record first. Vance is an admitted enthusiastic liar, and he should be treated as such for the rest of his miserable life as America’s saddest, sweatiest George Wallace impersonator.
A big reason why these moral panics created by the Republican Party have some legitimacy in the public eye, like the border narrative that conveniently surfaces every election year, is because the media treats the GOP like their assignment editor. Conservatives have put mainstream media on the defense with the “liberal media” charge, and the press clearly feels they need to try to prove this assertion wrong. One of the most obvious ways it manifests is with oversized coverage of things like the “border crisis.” Much of my disdain for the mainstream media’s product over my career as a media critic stems from them either being as stupid as Republican politicians or pretending to be in order to provide legitimacy to some bullshit racist panic that doesn’t exist so they can tell everyone they treated both sides equally.
But the media isn’t dumb or cynical enough to accept someone admitting that they are lying to them, and they generally don’t like it when people flaunt that in their faces. Look at how they were geared up to back Trump as a changed man after the (first) assassination attempt, and how quickly they turned on him after his RNC speech and subsequent campaign speeches mocking them for doing so. JD Vance is now likely to be treated differently than any VP candidate we have ever seen, and if he is not, then the mainstream media will have set a new low for themselves.