It was James David Vance\u2019s pitch to his boss: don\u2019t forget me!<\/p>\n
The vice-president was nowhere to be seen<\/a> last weekend when US special forces swept into Venezuela and snatched its leader, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. Instead Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and a potential rival to Vance in the 2028 presidential election, grabbed all the Maga glory.<\/p>\n On Thursday, JD Vance<\/a> decided to strike back. Marco might have Delta Force, a giant armada and 150 bombers, fighter jets and reconnaissance planes but the VP had a verbal machinegun and he was aiming it directly at the media.<\/p>\n Speaking to reporters at the White House, the bearded Vance made himself the face of the administration\u2019s response to Wednesday\u2019s fatal shooting of Renee Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) officer in Minneapolis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Vance insisted that Good had tried ram the ICE officer with her car and picked on a CNN headline that said \u201cOutrage after ICE officer kills US citizen in Minneapolis\u201d as typical of misleading coverage in the \u201ccorporate media\u201d (a sinister phrase to contrast with the nation\u2019s noble bloggers and influencers).<\/p>\n Wearing a Trumpy uniform of blue suit, white shirt and red tie, Vance fulminated: \u201cThis was an attack on law and order. This was an attack on the American people. The way that the media by and large has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace and it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n No matter that videos of the incident suggest that Good was driving away. No matter that there is zero evidence she was a \u201cdomestic terrorist\u201d. No matter that, in times past, officials would have sought to cool the temperature and declined to comment or on prejudge an active investigation.<\/p>\n Vance was just warming up for the most ferocious media-bashing invective since press secretary Sean Spicer \u2013 equally eager to impress the boss \u2013 went ballistic at anyone who failed to report that Trump\u2019s first inauguration drew the biggest crowd of all time.<\/p>\n Vance had a captive audience of masochistic reporters crammed into the briefing room taking punches in the mouth then begging for his attention anyway. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt <\/a>watched approvingly from the sidelines, admiring the similarly youthful Vance\u2019s knack for slick, audacious propaganda that matches her own.<\/p>\n The 41-year-old claimed without evidence, for example, that Good was part of a \u201cbroader leftwing network\u201d that has been working tirelessly and using \u201cdomestic terror techniques\u201d to stop Trump enforcing immigration laws.<\/p>\n Gazing around the room, Vance snarled: \u201cEverybody who\u2019s been repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis when a law enforcement officer shot at her: you should be ashamed of yourselves, every single one of you.\u201d<\/p>\n A reporter asked who Vance believes is behind this broader leftwing network. \u201cWell, it\u2019s one of the things we\u2019re going to have to figure out,\u201d he admitted before asserting: \u201cThere\u2019s an entire network \u2013 and, frankly, some of the media are participating in it – that is trying to incite violence against our law enforcement officers. It\u2019s ridiculous. It\u2019s preposterous. And part of our investigatory work is getting to the bottom of it.\u201d<\/p>\n One reporter wanted to know how being part of this supposed leftwing network justified being shot? Vance said it did not then picked another fight: \u201cI\u2019m sorry guys, what\u2019s going on here? You guys are meant to report the truth. How have you let yourself become agents of propaganda of a radical fringe that\u2019s making it harder for us to enforce our laws?<\/p>\n \u201cYou just asked me a question that presumed that the reason why this woman died is because she was engaged in legitimate protest. She tried to run somebody over with her car! And the guy defended himself when that happened.\u201d<\/p>\n The reporter\u2019s cry of \u201cthe investigation is still ongoing!\u201d went unheeded.<\/p>\n A few minutes later, Vance growled: \u201cThe reporting over this has been one of the biggest scandals I\u2019ve ever seen in media. I\u2019ve never seen a case so misrepresented and misreported when you have a guy who is defending himself and is now being treated as some sort of federal assassin by so many of the people in this room.\u201d<\/p>\n Vance also faced questions about the War Powers Act, Venezuela \u2013 reports that he was kept out of the planning were \u201cfalse\u201d \u2013 and the security of Greenland<\/a>, which he urged European friends to take more seriously.<\/p>\n But as he took his leave, he couldn\u2019t resist one more swipe at the fake news fiends: \u201cIt\u2019s really irresponsible for you guys to go out there and imply or tell the American people that a guy who defended himself from being rammed by an automobile is guilty of murder. Be a little bit more careful. We\u2019re going to talk about toning down the temperature, which I know the president wants to do and I certainly want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n This would be the same president who responded to Good\u2019s death within hours by posting on social media that she was \u201cvery disorderly\u201d and accusing her of \u201cviolently, willfully, and viciously\u201d running over the ICE officer. And when George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis five years ago, Trump responded to protests outside the White House with rubber bullets and teargas<\/a>.<\/p>\n But if Thursday\u2019s briefing was Vance\u2019s first audition to succeed the president, his allies will be pleased and millions of Americans will be terrified. The VP offered a younger, darker version of Trump with fewer rough edges and even more menace towards the media and the left. Rubio might have to kidnap a few more foreign leaders if he wants to catch up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was James David Vance\u2019s pitch to his boss: don\u2019t forget me! The vice-president was nowhere to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-684097","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115864260038551078","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}