For The Sake Of My Sanity

I have been avoiding most American news these days, given how the media are fixated both on the  attempt against Trump's life and his coronation via the Republican National Convention. 

However, Trump's VP running mate, J.D. Vance, merits closer scrutiny. The Independent offers the perspective of one of his former roommates at Yale law school, and it is hardly complimentary.

Ohio junior senator and vice-presidential nominee JD Vance is a “hypocrite” who “sold his soul” and will unquestioningly help advance twice-impeached former president Donald Trump’s hard-right agenda if the pair manage to take the White House in November.

That’s according to attorney Josh McLaurin, who spoke to The Independent about his former Yale Law School roommate, now vying for the number two spot in American politics.

It only took a few years for the 39-year-old Vance to go from a so-called Never Trumper to be “not just a cheerleader for Trump, but to be arguably the nation’s biggest cheerleader for Trump,” McLaurin said on Wednesday. “There aren’t even really words.”

“I believe that he has adopted the MAGA mindset wholesale,” McLaurin said. “I think that he personally wants to see a lot more destruction of institutions and norms than your average elected Republican does. And I think that he’s allowing his deep-seated anger—and who cares where that anger is from—to motivate him to make this complete ideological conversion.”

As a student, McLaurin initially found  Vance to be a companionable roommate, but that quickly changed as

he found Vance becoming more and more contemptuous of their privileged peers. Still, Vance knew “it didn’t pay, professionally, to unleash” those feelings openly, McLaurin continued.

“Trump has changed that,” said McLaurin. “He’s created a permission structure for politicians, and for everyday Americans… to be bullies. To try out contempt [and] see how it works. And I think it has really worked for JD.”

That Vance could go from holding deep contempt for Trump, at one time comparing him to Hitler, to fawning admiration for the demagogue suggests a man with no moral centre.

 As McLaurin “progressively watched [Vance] get Trumpier over the years,” he found himself feeling “dismayed,” then “utterly disappointed” upon Trump’s endorsement of Vance for U.S. Senate in 2022. He had saved the text conversation he’d had with Vance about Trump’s similarities to Hitler, and struggled with the notion of exposing the exchange.

Ultimately, McLaurin explained, Vance’s glowing acceptance of the endorsement from Trump was what prompted him to release the texts. 

By accepting a key role “in the Trump moment,” according to McLaurin, Vance “has chosen a very destructive path.”

“Just because he’s capable of insight and thoughtfulness doesn’t mean that he can be trusted to exercise it,” McLaurin said. “... What good are your thoughtfulness and your principles if you’ve created enough of a monster through your rhetoric that those principles don’t matter anymore?”

The issues raised by McLaurin are ones the American public would do well to consider before casting their vote in November. Given the appalling history of that country, however, I expect his warning to have very little impact on the electorate.