The Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes a “charlatan” as “a person who pretends to know or be something in order to deceive people.” Should the editors of the esteemed lexicon choose, in their next edition, to include an illustration that might give a deeper sense of what charlatans look and sound like, they would do well to include a photograph of Vice President JD Vance.
Or, better yet, a YouTube video of the embarrassingly dishonest vice president from last week when he appeared at the Mid-City Steel plant in the La Crosse area.
Vance established himself as a charlatan long ago. A native of Middletown, Ohio, which had a population of over 50,000, Vance tried to repurpose himself as a tribune of rural America with his deeply cynical 2016 book, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.”
Then Vance, a millionaire corporate lawyer and Silicon Valley venture capitalist, entered politics as a Trump-backed “populist” who was suddenly “concerned” about the circumstances of the very people he had been ripping off.
Vance finally ended up as the 2024 running-mate for Donald Trump — the reckless Republican authoritarian whom Vance had just a few years earlier described as an “idiot,” a “moral disaster,” and, perhaps, “America’s Hitler.”
So it came as no surprise that Trump’s vice president, whose facility with lying is by now well established, was dispatched to La Crosse. Vance’s visit came as part of a craven attempt to defend Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s vote for the administration’s wildly unpopular— and even more wildly dangerous — One Big Beautiful Bill.
Van Orden, the scandal-plagued and politically vulnerable representative from western Wisconsin, is in electoral trouble because he backed legislation that is uniquely damaging to Wisconsin farmers, workers and economically hard-pressed families.
Trump’s big ugly bill slashes funding for Medicaid and anti-hunger programs in order to fund massive tax-cuts for Republican billionaires — such as Vance’s longtime benefactor, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.
Vance tried during his La Crosse visit to foster the fantasy that voters in Van Orden’s district should be happy that rich people — like, um, Vance, Thiel and Trump — will enjoy a windfall. And he peddled the trickle-down lie that there might be some minimal benefit to non-millionaires.
But remember, Vance is a charlatan, and the spin he spewed in La Crosse was a slurry of misinformation and outright lies.
The truth is that the Trump-Vance administration’s big ugly plan will result in pain for hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites. Indeed, a new analysis of the bill, which was produced by the administration of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, confirms that it will do real harm to people across Wisconsin — including Van Orden’s constituents.
Last week, Evers released fresh estimates showing that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, “which was supported and passed by Republicans in Congress, including every Republican member of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, will increase costs to Wisconsin taxpayers by over $284 million in future budgets — $142 million annually — while forcing over 270,000 Wisconsinites to lose their health insurance and tens of thousands of Wisconsinites to lose access to basic food necessities.”
The governor’s office explained that the Trump-Vance One Big Beautiful Bill shifts “significant new costs from the federal government to states, including forcing states to implement new burdensome requirements for Medicaid and a program that provides basic food assistance to seniors, kids, and families.”
The Evers administration estimates that “the new changes and red-tape requirements Republicans passed under the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ will require the Republican-led Wisconsin State Legislature to approve nearly $70 million in new funding for immediate implementation costs for the remainder of this biennium alone.”
That’s the part that JD Vance failed to mention when he peddled his pack of lies to Wisconsinites in La Crosse.
Wisconsinites have no reason to trust the word of the venture-capitalist charlatan from the “hillbilly hollow” of Silicon Valley.
They have every reason to trust Tony Evers, the son of rural Wisconsin whom this state’s voters have twice elected as their governor, and who now says:
“I’ve been clear from the get-go that Republicans’ so-called ‘big beautiful bill’ is bad for Wisconsin — for the 270,000 people kicked off their healthcare coverage, and the tens of thousands of kids, seniors, and families who won’t be able to afford basic food necessities. And now, it’s also clear this bill is just as bad for Wisconsin taxpayers, who will be forced to help foot the bill for Republicans’ red-tape requirements just to make it harder for folks to get the care they need and food to eat. Folks, there’s nothing ‘beautiful’ about it. Wisconsinites shouldn’t have to pay the price for a reckless Republican bill that’s going to add trillions of dollars to our federal deficit and shift hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to hard-working taxpayers, all so Republicans could pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations. Wisconsinites aren’t getting a fair shake from Republicans in Washington — that’s plain as day.”