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Borowitz Report's Traitor of the Week: Is This the Worst Traitor Yet?
Link: https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/traitor-of-the-week-one-of-the-hugest (for paid subscribers only)
Excerpted from Borowitz's Sunday Read column, which is his longer, non-satirical essay once per week. If anyone has an archived (no paywall) link please post it below.
In 2016, JD Vance called Donald J. Trump “America’s Hitler.” Eight years later, Trump named Vance his running mate. This proves that, when it comes to Trump, flattery will get you everywhere.
But Vance’s awareness of Trump’s resemblance to the Führer will be a problem for JD when he faces his eventual trial for treason. As I’ve established, a true quisling knows better—but collaborates with the occupying force regardless, for personal gain. Vance may be a lot of things—grasping, toxic, and utterly devoid of political talent or appeal—but he’s not ignorant. And that will make him an essy specimen for his prosecutors to vivisect.
It’s no mystery why Vance has become one of Trump’s most strenuous enablers. Without the Malignancy of Mar-a-Lago, Vance’s political career would have been a nonstarter, since his superpower as a human repellent is unmatched even by Ted Cruz.
In 2022, Vance’s GOP primary campaign in Ohio’s US Senate race appeared dead in the water, as he faced a crowded field of other drunk karaoke Trump simulators. (One of these estimable rivals, Josh Mandel, used this catchy if deranged slogan in his TV ads: "Pro-God. Pro-Gun. Pro-Trump.”) A $15 million cash infusion from tech supervillain Peter Thiel was a helpful defibrillator, but the game-changer was an endorsement from Donald Trump himself, procured via JD’s relentless oiling-up of fellow bearded goon Don Jr. The anointment from the GOP doomsday cult’s supreme leader reanimated the putrid corpse of Vance’s campaign—and earned Trump the Hillbilly Effigy’s eternal genuflection.
There’s a rich American tradition of vice presidents debasing themselves at the behest of their bosses. Dan Quayle famously picked a fight with a sitcom character, Murphy Brown—a battle which, despite having the advantage of actually existing, he managed to lose. But no veep has hurled himself into the task of abject self-humiliation with JD’s sweaty zeal.
Embarking on his “Persuade Everyone in the World to Hate America Tour,” JD parachuted into the Munich Security Conference on February 14. Defiantly ignoring the date, he presented our European allies not with flowers and candy hearts but with a noxious scolding.
He claimed, improbably, that the primary threat to Europe came not from Vladimir Putin and nuclear-armed Russia but from the democracies’ own hyper-woke squelching of free speech—a pretty rich assertion from an administration bent on punishing media outlets, nonprofits, and college students who emit even a peep of dissent.
One month later, he was off to Greenland, a landmass that, despite its iciness, Trump has found as irresistible as Laura Loomer. Since no actual Greenlanders were willing to go within fifty feet of Vance and his wife, Usha, the Second Family’s visit was limited to three hours at a US military installation in the Arctic Circle. But that was more than enough time for JD to lambaste America’s longstanding archenemy on the world stage: the Danish.
“Our message to Denmark is very simple,” he declared. “You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.”
Denmark’s message back to JD was also very simple: “We don’t give a shit, fuckwad.” (The Danish put it slightly more obliquely, but that was the gist.)
Refusing to confine his distaste for Europe to public statements, JD also insulted the continent in private—or, at least, what he thought was in private, but turned out to be in the Signal Chat Heard ‘Round The World.
As The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg lurked unnoticed by 18 high-ranking members of the Trump clown car, the veep expressed misgivings about bombing the Houthis in Lebanon, whining, “I just hate bailing Europe out again." Yeah, because when was the last time the European military did anything for us (besides in Iraq and Afghanistan)?
It should be obvious, by now, that JD is a tremendously shitty ally. But does that make him a traitor? Yes, in the sense that, by undermining our alliances, he is undermining our national security. But if his prosecutors feel they need more damning evidence to present at his tribunal, let me direct them to a comment he made on the neo-Nazi website X on February 9: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
You don’t have to be a graduate of Yale Law School (like Vance) to know that the judiciary’s constitutional role is to check and balance the other two branches of government—you just had to catch an episode of “Schoolhouse Rock.” Vance’s attack on the judiciary is a blatant violation of his oath of office, which requires him to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” (He clearly qualifies as the latter.)
- more at link - (for paid subscribers only) -
But Vance’s awareness of Trump’s resemblance to the Führer will be a problem for JD when he faces his eventual trial for treason. As I’ve established, a true quisling knows better—but collaborates with the occupying force regardless, for personal gain. Vance may be a lot of things—grasping, toxic, and utterly devoid of political talent or appeal—but he’s not ignorant. And that will make him an essy specimen for his prosecutors to vivisect.
It’s no mystery why Vance has become one of Trump’s most strenuous enablers. Without the Malignancy of Mar-a-Lago, Vance’s political career would have been a nonstarter, since his superpower as a human repellent is unmatched even by Ted Cruz.
In 2022, Vance’s GOP primary campaign in Ohio’s US Senate race appeared dead in the water, as he faced a crowded field of other drunk karaoke Trump simulators. (One of these estimable rivals, Josh Mandel, used this catchy if deranged slogan in his TV ads: "Pro-God. Pro-Gun. Pro-Trump.”) A $15 million cash infusion from tech supervillain Peter Thiel was a helpful defibrillator, but the game-changer was an endorsement from Donald Trump himself, procured via JD’s relentless oiling-up of fellow bearded goon Don Jr. The anointment from the GOP doomsday cult’s supreme leader reanimated the putrid corpse of Vance’s campaign—and earned Trump the Hillbilly Effigy’s eternal genuflection.
There’s a rich American tradition of vice presidents debasing themselves at the behest of their bosses. Dan Quayle famously picked a fight with a sitcom character, Murphy Brown—a battle which, despite having the advantage of actually existing, he managed to lose. But no veep has hurled himself into the task of abject self-humiliation with JD’s sweaty zeal.
Embarking on his “Persuade Everyone in the World to Hate America Tour,” JD parachuted into the Munich Security Conference on February 14. Defiantly ignoring the date, he presented our European allies not with flowers and candy hearts but with a noxious scolding.
He claimed, improbably, that the primary threat to Europe came not from Vladimir Putin and nuclear-armed Russia but from the democracies’ own hyper-woke squelching of free speech—a pretty rich assertion from an administration bent on punishing media outlets, nonprofits, and college students who emit even a peep of dissent.
One month later, he was off to Greenland, a landmass that, despite its iciness, Trump has found as irresistible as Laura Loomer. Since no actual Greenlanders were willing to go within fifty feet of Vance and his wife, Usha, the Second Family’s visit was limited to three hours at a US military installation in the Arctic Circle. But that was more than enough time for JD to lambaste America’s longstanding archenemy on the world stage: the Danish.
“Our message to Denmark is very simple,” he declared. “You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.”
Denmark’s message back to JD was also very simple: “We don’t give a shit, fuckwad.” (The Danish put it slightly more obliquely, but that was the gist.)
Refusing to confine his distaste for Europe to public statements, JD also insulted the continent in private—or, at least, what he thought was in private, but turned out to be in the Signal Chat Heard ‘Round The World.
As The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg lurked unnoticed by 18 high-ranking members of the Trump clown car, the veep expressed misgivings about bombing the Houthis in Lebanon, whining, “I just hate bailing Europe out again." Yeah, because when was the last time the European military did anything for us (besides in Iraq and Afghanistan)?
It should be obvious, by now, that JD is a tremendously shitty ally. But does that make him a traitor? Yes, in the sense that, by undermining our alliances, he is undermining our national security. But if his prosecutors feel they need more damning evidence to present at his tribunal, let me direct them to a comment he made on the neo-Nazi website X on February 9: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
You don’t have to be a graduate of Yale Law School (like Vance) to know that the judiciary’s constitutional role is to check and balance the other two branches of government—you just had to catch an episode of “Schoolhouse Rock.” Vance’s attack on the judiciary is a blatant violation of his oath of office, which requires him to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” (He clearly qualifies as the latter.)
I know this exceeds DU's 4-paragraph quote limit, but I truly believe this essay is important and it deserves expanded allowance. After all, I AM a paid subscriber to The Borowitz Report as well as Democratic Underground.
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
It almost compares to the Crime Minister's Georgia mugshot as a definition of evil.
Andy B. nails it once again. 
... he was truly an asshole first.
