Vice President J.D. Vance's attempt to make himself the center of attention at the extraordinary blow-up in the Oval Office with Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is part of an effort to get himself out of the shadows as the Trump administration takes shape.That is the opinion of...
Summary
JD Vance is actively working to raise his profile in the Trump administration after being overshadowed by Elon Musk.
During a recent Oval Office meeting, Vance took the lead to criticize Zelensky as “disrespectful,” setting up Trump to criticize Zelensky.
According to New York Times reporter Michael Shear, this confrontational approach is part of Vance's strategy to avoid being "relegated to the B-team" in what has become "one of the most fast-paced and aggressive administrations in modern history."
If we're very, very lucky and Trump gets impeached or randomly dies, Vance becomes President and he promptly superglues his own hands to the podium in the press room. Nobody comes to help him. Even the Secret Service guards decide it's not their problem.
This tool should be happy he is a vice president, holy fuck. He is already a contender for least qualified VP in history. I would keep my head down and aim for a defence consultation contract or lobbyist position in four years.
Sorry to break it to you, guyliner, but under Trump you'll always be the b-team, at max. He'll throw you under the bus in a second if it serves his agenda.
And in this case you're struggling to reach even that segment as you're clearly outranked by a terminally online immigrant numpty who just want friends.
Firstly, "guyliner"?!:) I love it!!! Guyliner Couchthrob (it's immature but it contains no less truth than most of the things that come out of his mouth...).
On the actual context, and as some of the other comments line it out, there appear to be 3 subtle concurrent fault lines here:
Trump who is only for himself (and putin).
Musk
The tech broligarchy whose goal is long-term power consolidation through propping up Guyliner Couchthrob as the successor
I think it's clear that trump will throw musk under the bus when he'll need a sudden boost in popularity. His plans with Guyliner are much less clear, I'm sure he's considering to keep him for medvedev/putin type of setup (from back when russia had term limits, LOL).
I heard "guyliner" on a podcast. Don't remember which, so I won't take credit for that one. WTYP, probably.
Also, I'm not against guys wearing eyeliner in a reasonable manner (which Vance objectively does), it was just that it is the only visual and noteworthy trait about him.
I am hopeful that this means a bit more. Vance was catapulted into politics with money from Peter Thiel. If he is at risk of being relegated to the B-team maybe that means that Thiel and Trump are on the outs. Maybe Trump thinks he doesn't need Thiel's money anymore now that he has Musk's money.
The best hope for Democracy in America right now is if our new Oligarchs get too distracted fighting each other that they do a bit less damage, and accidentally let an actual election through in 2026.
I'm eagerly waiting. For now, it's at best a circular firing squad with the world in the middle. They have terrible aim but statistically we're still all gonna die.
Don’t kid yourself, Thiel and Musk founded PayPal together and despite prior friction they’ve always been on the same team. In fact Musk becoming a full blown fascist has been Musk’s “return to Jesus” moment as far as Thiel is concerned.
Note that Musk was not a PayPal founder, he helped found "X", a PayPal competitor that wasn't really doing that well, but managed to merge with PayPal after PayPal was winning the market.
Musk was also the one who about ran PayPal into the ground with incompetence and he was forced out of decision making to save the company.
Don't know if this changes anything relative to Thiel, but just wanted to highlight that Musk gets credited with PayPal but his history is first losing to them as a competitor and nearly ruining them as a leader, and finally getting a big sum off money for eBay for his failures...
No, the best hope for democracy in America right now is for the populace to protest. Hard. You can't sit there and hope the problem away. You have to get up and make it happen. Fascism doesn't just go away. You have to cut it out of the system.
I know it's hard to come to terms with, but the sooner you realize the better it'll be. Everyone seems to be sitting there waiting for someone else to swoop down and save things, and that's exactly the kind of thinking that led you where you are. The founding fathers put the power with the people because they realized that's where the actual power was. You've all forgotten that and have become complacent.
Thiel likes to work from the shadows, moreso than the first term, where he was personally interacting with trump, I'm guessing the anti-lgbqt+ sentiment is the reason why he's not so public anymore( indirectly which led to his boy toy models death)
Bruh. You're the vice president. Your fucking job is to be the head of the b-team. Amazing how the fragile old man shit baby managed to find a fragile middle aged shit baby to be his running mate
Yeah most vice presidents don’t sit next to the president when he has Oval Office meetings with foreign leaders. He should be out kissing babies and visiting donut shops and shit.
Now we’ve got Trump, musk and Vance all trying to be the biggest dickheads in the room
most vice presidents don’t sit next to the president
For rather important security reasons
Now we’ve got Trump, musk and Vance all trying to be the biggest dickheads in the room
Once Boeing finishes the new Air Force One, they should all have their dickwaving contests on board, it'd be grand. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with the plane.
Maybe, but there are a lot of analysts who say this was planned beforehand. And Vance I think is waiting patiently for his moment, I don't think he's competing with Musk they are more likely in cahoots.
Cool. Let's abandon an entire nation to an agressor, costing additional lives, and blow up the biggest military alliance, just so Vance gets to look cool (he failed). Very cool.
You don't want too many cooks in the kitchen, as they say. These jokers aren't making soup though and there's no such idiom about crooks in the kitchen.
It’s commonly known in the insurance industry that when you have two many crooks in the kitchen, the establishment tends to go up in flames right before it is unable to pay the next insurance premium.
And then the crooks stupid enough to burn it down tend to go to prison.