Vance the Deceitful

I have a short piece up at the Hill on the fundamental absurdity of believing that JD Vance can be trusted farther than he can be thrown:

To ask “What does JD Vance believe” is to make a category error. The better question is, “What beliefs will JD Vance espouse in order to draw closer to power?” 

Since Vance abandoned his “Never Trump” posture after 2017, he has taken every opportunity to endear himself to Trump and even to offer a kind of intellectual scaffolding for MAGA foreign policy. But there is little reason to believe that Vance would provide a meaningful voice for restraint (on any issue other than Ukraine) in a Trump White House, or that he is interested in a long-term revision of U.S. foreign policy priorities. 

I will confess to a degree of “theater critic” curiosity regarding how a Trump-Vance White House might function. Trump is the Great American Grifter, but Vance is a gifted shapeshifter. It’s almost always wrong to bet against Trump in a competition with one of his lackeys; his most significant virtue is, of course, his ability to humiliate and torture those who have abased themselves on his behalf. But Trump is very old and Young Master Vance is no slouch in his ability to make people see what they want to believe.

Let’s hope we don’t find out.