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Sen. J.D. Vance (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Of all the horrible shit Amy Chua unleashed on the world, JD Vance is perhaps the most insidious.
The infamous Yale Law professor spotted marketing gold in the billy hills of Vance’s bio and persuaded him to write his elegy to an imaginary America where you make your own luck, good or bad. Like recognizes like. If only those dirty poors would make their kids practice piano seven hours a day, we could abolish welfare once and for all!
Vance’s paean to libertarian claptrap won him the affection of billionaire Peter Thiel, who first hired him to run money, and then bought him a seat in the US Senate. Which is how this supposed teller of hard truths wound up spewing so many baldfaced lies on air this weekend that host George Stephanopoulos cut his mic and ended the interview.
It started with Stephanopoulos asking how Vance could support a man whom a jury had found liable for rape. The Ohio Senator mumbled some nonsense about it being “actually very unfair to the victims of sexual assault, to say that somehow their lives are being worse by electing Donald Trump for president, when what he’s trying to do, I think is restore prosperity.”
He then went on to claim that jury verdicts from the “extremely left-wing jurisdictions” where Trump happened to commit his crimes and torts are illegitimate. Because if you don’t have a jury of twelve white guys from Middle America with cowshit under their fingernails, then it doesn’t even count!
But the anti-elitist Eli was just getting started.
“So, you’re not troubled by the sexual assault and defamation. Let me ask you about January 6th,” Stephanopoulos pushed. “You’ve been mentioned as a possible vice president for Donald Trump. Had you been vice president on January 6th, would you have certified the election results?”
Vance gamely admitted that he “would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.” The same wildly illegal course of conduct was advocated by Trump’s infamous coup lawyer John Eastman, and even he admitted that the Supreme Court would have rejected it unanimously.
But when Stephanopoulos pressed Vance on his recommendation to ignore the laws protecting civil servants and destroy the dastardly “bureaucrats,” things went really off the rails.
Vance, who again, attended Yale Law School, suggested that it would entirely appropriate for the president of the United states to ignore a Supreme Court order he thought was illegitimate.
The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court — and, look, I hope that they would not do this, but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.
This is just basic constitutional legitimacy. You’re talking about a hypothetical where the Supreme Court tries to run the military. I don’t think that’s going to happen, George. But of course, if it did, the president would have to respond to it. There are multiple examples throughout American history of the president doing just that.
This man’s wife clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, and he’s invoking Andrew Jackson.
In the event, it was too much for the host.
“You didn’t say ‘military’ in your answer, and you’ve made it very clear you believe the president can defy the Supreme Court,” Stephanopoulos cut in as Vance’s audio cut out. “Senator, thanks for your time this morning.”
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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