Opinion | JD Vance, Purr-fectly Dreadful
By: Maureen Dowd (nytimes)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington
Suddenly, Donald Trump looks enlightened about women.
Sure, he’s in a 1959 time warp, like some spray-tanned, comb-over swinger in a Vegas lounge, talking about skirts and broads.
Sure, he filled the Supreme Court with religious zealots ending women’s rights.
Sure, he has been held liable for sexual abuse, accused of groping and caught talking about his right to grab women by their lady parts. He cheated on his first wife with the woman who became his second wife and then had flings when he was married to his third wife. He betrayed Melania with a porn star while she was home nursing their son and humiliated her again when the Stormy Daniels case went to trial. (See: Why Melania did not give a convention speech.)
Sure, his convention beatification was a dated homage to machismo, with Hulk Hogan tearing his shirt off and the U.F.C.’s Dana White introducing Trump as a fighter.
And yet, somehow, Trump managed to choose a vice-presidential pick whose views on women are even more draconian and meanspirited than his own.
JD Vance, he of many names , is off to a thudding start. He went on Megyn Kelly’s podcast Friday for cleanup on Aisle Feline. She sympathetically asked him about his 2021 rant to Tucker Carlson that top Democrats — Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and A.O.C. — were “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Vance explained to Kelly: “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats.”
Ha. Ha. Ha. He’s the Republican Party’s biggest wit since that laugh riot Sarah Palin.
He doubled down on the substance of his earlier argument, that only women who are in a traditional marriage, using their uteruses in a way JD Vance deems proper, can have “a direct stake” in America.
I grew up in a family brimming with military uniforms, police uniforms, altar boy outfits, Girl Scout uniforms, Catholic school uniforms and presidential medals for bravery. We were religious and patriotic and unbelievably proud to be Americans.
And now comes this ridiculous faux-billy, tailoring his beliefs to match his ambition, telling me I have no stake in America?
Unless women are fulfilling their duties as breeders and helpmates, they’re not fully Americans? It’s an un-American stance that’s beneath contempt.
Phony. Vance has a lovely wife, Usha, the daughter of Indian immigrants, a star of Yale Law School and a litigator at a top law firm. She clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts at the Supreme Court and Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Their marriage is clearly a modern one. He donned an Indian robe for one of their wedding ceremonies, which irked white supremacists supportive of Trump.
Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, said, “Do you really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”
(The Vivek news surprised some MAGA delegates in Milwaukee.)
Vance replied Friday simply that he loves his wife. But on the campaign trail, he projects an archaic image nurtured by Heritage Foundation-Project 2025 fanatics and Vance’s fellow superconservative Catholics. You get the impression that they would love nothing more than to dispatch women back to the kitchen and bedroom, turning them into what Hilary Mantel called “breeding stock, collections of organs.”
Vance also said in a speech three years ago that parents should “absolutely” get a bigger say in how a democracy functions and more voting power; in different remarks, he said that childless Americans should pay higher taxes. Turns out, JD is as undemocratic as his running mate.
In 2022, Vance said he wanted abortion to be illegal nationally, though now he has amended his position to be more in line with Trump’s, giving states the power to decide. (Until they’re in the Oval Office, cave to the Christian right and get a national ban.)
Vance was so adamant on the issue when he was running for Senate that he said there should be a federal “response” to block women from traveling to other states to get abortions. He was worried that George Soros would send a jumbo jet to pick up “disproportionately Black women” and take them to California to “go have abortions.”
Vance wrote the foreword for the upcoming book by Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 wants to put on a full-court press to ban abortion and products like mifepristone and wants to restrict access to Plan B. This is the same wing of the party, cultural reactionaries, that targeted I.V.F. treatments.
And last month, Vance voted against a Democratic bill to protect I.V.F.
Trump chose Vance to stir up cultural resentment in rural areas and small towns against elites and cosmopolitan types. Down with Carrie Bradshaw!
As a cat-loving, cosmopolitan type myself, I do not want Trump and Vance making intimate decisions for American women or judging us or disparaging us for our lives — all nine of them.
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Roberts is the honcho over Project 2025.
The Flintstones revisited
you know these exact same Articles would be written about whoever the nominee was. The tone would be the exact same with different words used to personalize it.
At some point, it’s gets too repetitive to care about. Cut and paste and post again for the next nominee in four years.
Why, is the next nominee in four years going to say parents should get extra votes in our elections and that childless women have no stake in America ?
I'm pretty sure Maureen Dowd doesnt have any kids. But she has been a political pundit columnist at America's greatest newspaper for over 30 years. She has as much "stake" in the country as JD Vance ever will.
You will find something, anything, some comment from years ago to get equally outraged about.
Obsession with "woke" has destroyed a lot of conservative minds.
You are obviously not too familiar with who Maureen Dowd is.
Hmmmmm....
In 1987, after being tipped off by Jeffrey Lord , she broke the story that Delaware Senator Joe Biden had plagiarized several speeches from other politicians. The revelation was the first in a cascading series of damaging stories that ultimately ended Biden's first presidential campaign
A 2014 analysis by the advocacy group Media Matters of 21 years of Dowd's columns about Hillary Clinton found that of the 195 columns by Dowd since November 1993 containing significant mentions of Clinton, 72 percent (141 columns) were negative towards Clinton. [45]
Say it wasn’t so, a politician with the gift of gab, had to plagiarize from an Englishman.
Yeah, the one who called Cheney a dictator, attacked Palin for her mothering skills, used anti-semitic stereotypes to attack Ryan the puppett of neo-cons etc...
But sure, you can be surprised all over when the media does the same routine to whoever the next Republican nominee in 28 is. Pattern recognition can be difficult.
Apparently he has changed his name 4 times.... Seems weird.
He's definitely a very weird person, in many ways . . .
Which also says a lot about the man who picked him to be his vice-president. (Of all the Republican congress members, Senators, state governors, politicians in state government, etc there is no shortage of republicans to choose from-- strange that he picked one of the weirdest)
Chill, frosty, sex sells.
Sex with sofas?
Using inside out Latex gloves?
A sort of interesting story perhaps-- but some people hearing that might-- possibly-- think he a tad weird.
(What's probably weirder than doing that is actually making a point of telling people about it...a tactic in hopes of getting elected, perhaps? Maybe he thinks it will somehow help get his boss elected to be president?)
Oh-- did I forget to mention that he's...weird!
Then there's his offending "childless cat ladies". Weird for several reasons-- but there's one famous "cat lady" who probably not amused.
Not smart to offend certain "cat ladies" who are..."influencers".
Safe sex is good.
you know that claim was made up, right?
Is it as weird as how many lefties are obsessed with posting their made up sexual fantasies of a young JD Vance on the internet?
Hey, he's the one that put it in his book.
Is that what you believe? Do you believe Jussie Smollett was the victim of a modern day lynching too?
Cushions beware
Cushions can handle the pushions.
Maybe he was thinking he could get the pillows pregnant-- and they would produce many children-- multitudes of cute little baby pillows! (No childless pillows-- we must not let that happen!)
What is it with Republicans-- and their pillow obsession?
Anyone remember Mike Lindell (the "My Pillow Guy"?)
A humorous pillow video for people who don't watch videos:
Maybe he was thinking he could get the pillows pregnant-- and they would produce many children-- multitudes of cute little baby pillows!
Where do you think Trump’s ear bandage came from?
Shillbilly.
Maureen Dowd?
Couldn't they find anyone further to the left to write this article like Xi?
President Xi? He's to the left? Really? LMAO!!!!!