Take my freedom fries, please

JD Vance “won” the vice presidential debate, and in so doing showed why it’s en essentially useless format in terms of uncovering truth or providing reliable information for the audience. Debates above all reward bullshit artists who can sound very self-assured while telling you expedient lies. For example:

Vance also alludes to his own experience as a combat veteran of the Iraq War. “Something I know a little bit more personally: I think a lot of European nations were right about our invasion of Iraq. And frankly, if the Europeans had been a little more independent, and a little more willing to stand up, then maybe we could have saved the entire world from the strategic disaster that was the American-led invasion of Iraq.”

I mean, the idea that the Iraq War happened because France and Germany didn’t oppose it hard enough is something that can only come from someone who actively loves insulting your intelligence. It’s just an even sillier way of repackaging Robert Kagan’s theories about how Europe countries spending less on their militaries made them blind to the immediate threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s balsa wood nuclear drones.

Or get a load of him try to justify Trump’s idiotic idea that bilateral trade deficits are a national emergency that require tanking the economy:

The status-quo system as a whole, however, is intolerable from the White House’s point of view. “What the global trading system has led to,” complains Vance, “is large and persistent trade deficits across product categories, with the gross majority of countries really using the United States [home market] to absorb their surplus exports. That’s been bad for us. It’s been bad for American manufacturers. It’s been bad for workers. And God forbid, if America ever fought a future war, it would be bad for America’s troops.”

Wait…is Vance saying that the United States lacks a sufficient armaments manufacturing base? He can’t possibly mean that, but I have no idea what that stuff about the troops means otherwise.

As for the stuff about how the market response is just a surface wound on a “long-term play” — ah yes, Donald Trump, famously a man who operates on a long time horizon — I can only think of this:

truly unprecedented levels of someone continuing to dig themselves deeper and deeper into a hole while loudly proclaiming that the hole is good actually

[image or embed]— Lucy (Winters) (@lucyelise.bsky.social) April 15, 2025 at 2:02 PM

America will get almost as tired of winning as Mavericks fans going forward. [via]