Does anybody know where JD Vance can go to get a personality transplant? He is a boring Trumpzi cult cheer leader

Echo essay published in the Washington Monthly by Bill Scher

Qute from Huffington Post: #SIASD "JD Vance’s latest defense of Donald Trump was met with mockery on social media, with critics calling it 'absolutely LUDICROUS', and an example of Vance 'creatingfake  reality'. ance wrote on the Elon Musk-owned platform X/, formerly Twitter: 'So much of American diplomacy has become pure performance―an obsession with *saying* this or that. The reason the failed establishment hates President Donald J. Trump is because he chooses his words carefully..." 😁😳😧😧😛❗

J.D. Vance Is the Most Disliked New Vice President in History
The public isn’t taking to his obnoxious style, which bodes well for politics in the post-Trump era.

Kamala Harris’s likability, competence, and political acumen were publicly questioned throughout her vice presidency. 

Viewed through the lens of poll numbers, that was understandable. According to Real Clear Politics, her average favorability seldom cracked 50 percent. It was higher than her average unfavorability for only her first five months (save for a brief post-presidential debate spike last September).

Maybe it’s time for J.D. Vance to face some questions.

Vance’s favorability is worse than Harris’s at the same two-month mark and perhaps worse than any new vice president in the history of polling. 

In fact, his Real Clear Politics favorable-unfavorable rating is 41.7 percent-44.8 percent, a slightly worse net favorable rating (-3.1 percentage points) than Donald Trump’s (-0.9). When looking only at March polling—sampled after his infamous Oval Office hectoring of Ukraine’s president—he’s even more underwater: 42.4 percent-48.0 percent.

Vice presidents, while rarely public opinion rockstars, typically begin with a bit more goodwill from the public.

In Gallup polling, Dick Cheney’s favorability was over 60 percent for his first two-and-a-half years before his role in influencing intelligence assessments was uncovered. In his first year as Barack Obama’s number two, Joe Biden started with a 53 percent favorable and a 29 percent unfavorable though, as the Great Recession ground on, drifted down to a 42-40 split by the end of October 2009. (Biden’s first-year numbers from Pew were better, starting at 63-20 in January 2009 and declining to 50-29 in November 2009.) Mike Pence’s favorables and unfavorables were unimpressively split in the low 40s during his first year, though that was a better performance than that of his superior, Donald Trump.

Polling from CBS/The New York Times in the first vice presidential years of Dan Quayle and Al Gore—in the pre-Internet era—showed high numbers of voters who were “undecided” or “didn’t know enough.” 

Nevertheless, Gore started fairly strongly with a 36 percent-7 percent favorable-unfavorable rating. Quayle, who was tagged as an intellectual lightweight when he joined the 1988 Republican ticket, started underwater at 19 percent-23 percent and didn’t improve.

Quayle is a rare example of a vice president in the modern presidential primary era who couldn’t secure his party’s presidential nomination, with the other being Pence. Vance could easily be the third.
Quayle and Pence were not only poll-challenged. They each ran in a presidential primary against either his former ticket mate or his former ticket mate’s son, complicating the usual play by veeps to be perceived as next-in-line. Trump has indicated he may wish to prop up a family member in 2028. In December, Time asked if “there will be a Trump dynasty,” and Trump said, “I think there could be,” and never uttered Vance’s name. Last month, Fox News asked during the pre-Super Bowl interview, “Do you view Vice President J.D. Vance as your successor, the Republican nominee in 2028?” Trump replied, “No, but is he very capable. I mean, I don’t think that, you know, I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he is doing a fantastic job. It’s too early. We are just starting.” (Trump did not take the opportunity to claim he could run for a third term.)

Vance shrugged off the comment gamely, but he must realize he is being diminished. If he can’t count on Trump’s endorsement, explicit or tacit, then the only way to survive a presidential primary is with poll numbers so stellar that the electability argument could not be denied. Yet he starts from a very weak place. Put me down as skeptical that Vance’s petty, pedantic, and petulant approach to politics will wear well over time.

In 2021, I was pretty bullish on Harris’s long-term prospects despite her early difficulties and argued she was being judged by unrealistic standards. Her spike in favorability partly validated that view after becoming the 2024 presidential nominee and filleting Trump in their lone debate. But she couldn’t fully shake the negative narratives that Trump and his allies had pushed over the previous few years. More importantly, in my view, she was damaged by Biden’s compromised communication skills and inability to manage perceptions of inflation.

I’m not inclined to view Vance’s early weakness as charitably as I did for Harris for several reasons. His initial poll numbers are worse than Harris’s. While he has shown a modicum of capacity to calibrate his rhetoric for broad audiences (most effectively in his lone vice-presidential debate), he expends far more energy trying to emulate Trump’s nastiness, which I don’t consider a sustainable model for political success at the presidential level.

Yes, Trump won narrowly twice, but both times, he was not in power. His approach can work when he can blame everything on those in office and sell himself—trading on his fraudulent reputation as a celebrity businessman—as an omnipotent fixer. But his demagogic skills have proven far less potent once he holds power and has to deliver on his promises, which is why he lost in 2020 and has already frittered away his honeymoon poll numbers.

A Vance ‘28 campaign, I suspect, will be bogged down with immense baggage from his current stint in the public sector, without the ability to lean on any record of success in the private sector—save for a profitable book with a message that has no resemblance to anything Vance peddles today.

If Trump taps a namesake to carry on his legacy, Vance will lose out on the party’s MAGA base. If Trump’s presidency is deeply unpopular by 2028, maybe a growing faction of Republican voters will want to turn the page on Trump, but Vance would be in no position to win their favor.

More important than what this all means for Vance’s career prospects is what this all means for the fabric of American politics. Many understandably fear that Trump has so permanently warped our politics that even once he is off the stage, extreme dishonesty and disparagement will continue to be the coin of the realm. But if that were so, Vance’s attempt to replicate the Trump style would resonate more with the public. Instead, Vance is slightly more unpopular than the president, who is getting more unpopular by the day❗

Donald Trump's campaign donors should just write their checks out to E. Jean Carroll

This stunning 🌞 jury verdict had been "ho-hummed" by the fake News Fox Network".  Finally, there was this, reported by Seth Meyers, reported by Lee Moran, in Huffington Post.

Seth Meyers highlighted an interview on Fox News that went against the conservative network’s usual Donald Trump-boosting grain.

Commenting on Trump being ordered to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defamation, George W. Bush-era Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo said: "The whole point of this, this enormous damages, unprecedented damages now, is to tell Donald Trump to shut up. Stop attacking people who are no longer public citizens, stop attacking people when you’ve already lost and the court has already said what you’ve done is liable. By continuing to defy the court by saying these things he’s showing a fundamental disrespect for the justice system and for the views of his fellow citizens, the jurors. I mean, it’s not a judge who is punishing him. This is a randomly selected jury of his peers.”  Meyers commented, “You know it’s bad when even Fox News, the network that gives Trump unfiltered airtime, is telling him to shut up.”

But, $83.3 million in damages could bankrupt Donald Trump because not enough of his rich allies are taking calls to put up the bond for this large fine. Therefore, Trump is essentially unable to appeal this verdict. Only Donald Trump is stupid enough to think he could overturn a measly $5 million fine, originally awarded to E.J. Carroll in the first trial, and then go in the hole by $83.3 million.

In The New Yorker, Eric Lach reported how nine regular people told  Donald Trump to shut up and pay up. A New York jury ordered the ex-President to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million. Will the verdict bust the myth that he’s immune to consequences?

This trial is about getting Trump to stop, once and for all,” the lawyer Roberta Kaplan said, during closing arguments in the case styled Carroll v. Trump. 

Five years ago, Kaplan’s client, the writer E. Jean Carroll, wrote an article in New York magazine describing how Donald Trump once forced himself on her in a Manhattan department-store dressing room. Since then, Trump has regularly attacked Carroll publicly, not only denying that the assault happened but calling her a “whack job” who should “pay dearly” for entering “dangerous territory.” 

Online, his legions of fans have subjected her to further threats and abuse, for daring to speak out against their supreme leader. Eventually, a jury of nine New Yorkers sided with E. Jean Carroll, saying that the former President had defamed her, and ordering him to pay dearly: $83.3 million in damages.

It’s a huge 💲number.  

Last spring, after hearing a related case that Carroll brought against Trump, an earlier jury had also sided with Carroll, concluding that Trump had sexually abused her and then defamed her—but the award in that case was five million 💲💵dollars. 

During the second trial, which began in mid-January, 2024, Carroll’s lawyers emphasized that Trump’s attacks on their client continued, even after the first jury found against him. “This is a fake story, made-up story,” Trump said at a CNN town hall last spring. “What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings them up and within minutes you’re playing hanky-panky in a dressing room?” 

If anything, the attacks escalated after the last trial. “For more than four years, he has not stopped,” Shawn Crowley, another of Carroll’s lawyers, said. “How much money will it take to make him stop?” Kaplan, during her closing arguments, reminded the jurors that Trump claims to be a billionaire. “It will take an unusually high punitive-damages award to stop Donald Trump,” she said. She suggested at least twenty-four million dollars. The jurors came to 💲83.3 million all on their own😁👀❗

Shortly after the verdict was read, Trump posted on Truth Social, his proprietary fan site. “I fully disagree with both verdicts, and will be appealing this whole Biden Directed Witch Hunt, focused on me and the Republican Party,” he wrote. 

(Never mind that Carroll first sued Trump in 2019, long before Biden was elected.) “They have taken away all First Amendment Rights,” he added. The post was absurd. But Trump didn’t say anything about Carroll in his rant, which must have felt like part of the victory to her.

Trump skipped the trial during Carroll’s earlier case against him, but was in the courtroom several times for this one, which began the day after he won the Iowa caucuses. At first, I thought he was attending for the drama so that he could fly to New Hampshire afterward and tell a crowd that he’d come straight from a Manhattan courtroom—and, boy, were his aides tired. But, after the verdict was announced, I wondered if Trump perhaps realized earlier than most that he was in bigger trouble this time around.

Throughout the two-week trial, Trump deliberately made himself a nuisance in the courtroom. During jury selection, when Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation to Roberta Kaplan) asked several dozen potential jurors if any of them believed the 2020, election was stolen, Trump cheekily raised his hand. “Witch hunt,” he muttered loudly to his lawyers on the trial’s second day. “Con job.” When Judge Kaplan threatened to eject him from the courtroom, Trump replied, “I would love it.” On Thursday, as the judge and one of Trump’s lawyers argued about what he would be allowed to say after he took the stand, Trump piped up from the defense table. “I don’t know who this woman is,” he said, looking in the direction of Carroll, who was seated two tables away, “never met this woman.” As he said this, he made a gesture spreading his hands, something that I for some reason thought he only did on TV. 

Unbelievably, Trump stormed out of the courtroom during Roberta Kaplan’s closing argument, only to slink back in a while later, when one of his lawyers was talking.

It’s almost impossible to keep track of the number of lawyers Trump has gone through since becoming President, but his primary lawyer during this trial was Alina Habba, previously known for representing Siggy Flicker, a former “Real Housewives of New Jersey” cast member who accused Facebook of disabling her account after she wished the former First Lady Melania Trump a happy birthday. Habba seemed unable to distinguish between her client’s interests and his opinion, raising her voice and sparring constantly with Judge Kaplan, who at one point suggested to Habba, “You should refresh your memory about how it is you get a document into evidence.”

It’s a credit to the jurors that they didn’t go for any of these distractions. In addition to asking prospective jurors whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen during jury selection, Judge Kaplan asked them for information about their political histories and news-consumption habits. Most of the prospective jurors weren’t much involved in politics, and didn’t read or watch or hear much news. The majority of the people in the room said they hadn’t heard about the case before arriving in the courtroom, even though it involved an ex-President being confirmed as a sexual predator. And yet, after taking a close look at the facts, nine people picked at random determined that Trump was responsible for what he did, and needed to be punished for it. In this, the jury has gone further than the United States Congress was able to go. It gives you some kind of hope.

On Tuesday, the networks called the New Hampshire Republican Party Presidential primary for Trump the minute the polls closed. The political reality is that Trump has a grip on the G.O.P.’s voting base—but the legal reality is that Trump is in increasingly deep shit. When will these two realities collide, and what will happen when they do? Does Trump even have $83.3 million? (Letitia James, New York State’s attorney general, is currently seeking three hundred and seventy million dollars from Trump in a separate civil case, related to the Trump Organization’s shady business practices.) In the meantime, there’s Carroll. She may wind up being a hero in American history. Most people don’t know who she is, but she was once a pretty big deal. 

In fact, E. Jean Carroll got the idea to sue Trump from George Conway—the conservative lawyer who was married to the Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway—whom she spoke with at a party in the summer of 2019, a few months after her article ran in New York magazine. A few months later, Elle ended her long-running advice column, “Ask E. Jean.” She was in her mid-seventies at the time, and the President of the United States was publicly hoping that something horrible would happen to her. She now sleeps with a loaded gun next to her bed. ♦

Maine Writer advice to Donald Trump: You are now a convicted sex offender, just so you know. 

"How do you measure, Measure a year?" ....since January 6th

Huffington Post by Lee Moran: ‘The Late Show’ Slams ‘Traitorous Scum’ Donald Trump With Spoof ‘Rent’ Number: "Abhor-Rent" is “a surprisingly light look back at one of America’s darkest days," said Stephen Colbert's team.

The parody called out the former guy Donald Trump, who incited the violence, as a “bum,” “traitorous scum” and “like Mussolini but dumb.” His allies and enablers aren’t let off easy, either.

'The Late Show' marks a year since the Capitol riot with darkly hilarious 'Rent' parody-Aptly titled "Abhor-Rent".

JANUARY- Thursday, January 6, 2022, marked one year since rioters stormed Capitol Hill, a haunting moment in recent American history. Members of Congress have shared their harrowing experiences from the day, a prayer vigil was held on Capitol steps, and late night shows commemorated it the best ways they knew how.

The Late Show marks one year since the January 6, 2021 insurrectionist attacks on the U.S. Capitol. 

Watch the video at this site here.

Echo report by Meera Navlakha:  Stephen Colbert and his writers, delivered a parody of the musical "Rent's" most famous song "Seasons of Love" — aptly titled "Abhor-Rent".

The two minute song not only summarized the events of last year, but also offered some lines like: "727 insurrectionists arrested / Who else should be jailed / For this unsuccessful coup? / How about this unsuccessful bum?" Cue a picture of Donald Trump.

This is a relatively light-hearted take on one of America's darkest days. Yet, The Late Show didn't shy away from humor, but still accurately reflected the horror of January 6, visually and lyrically.

"Abhor-Rent", is simply using a Rent track. One YouTube commenter said, "This is heartbreaking and hilarious all at the same time", while another wrote, "Thank you making me laugh, easing (for now) the anger, frustration and anxiety that built up while watching today’s coverage."

Colbert gave a few memorable monologues following the riots last year, furiously calling out the rioters as "terrorists" and decrying the state of democracy in the country.

QAnon shaman Jacob Chansley sentenced to 41 months in prison for January 6, Capitol riot case.  

Arizona Man Sentenced to 41 Months in Prison On Felony Charge in Jan. 6 Capitol Breach. 

Jacob Chansley occupied the Vice President’s Seat in Senate chamber and he used a bullhorn to lead rioters.

WASHINGTON- Jacob Anthony Chansley, a.k.a. Jake Angeli, 34, of Phoenix, Arizona, was sentenced today to 41 months in prison for his criminal conduct during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress that was in the process of ascertaining and counting the electoral votes related to the presidential election. The defendant – wearing a Viking hat and carrying a six-foot spear – was among the first 30 rioters in the building.

According to court documents, Chansley was among the crowd that passed the police line at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. He was shirtless, wearing a Viking hat with fur and horns, covered in red, white, and blue face paint, and carrying an American flag tied to a pole with a sharp object at the tip and a bullhorn. He and others in the crowd passed police lines and entered the scaffolding erected in advance of the Inauguration on top of the staircase heading up to the Lower West Terrace of the building. They then entered the Upper West Terrace at approximately 2:10 p.m., as the certification proceedings were still under way. Chansley continued into the building through a broken door at approximately 2:14 p.m. He kept moving, reaching the Gallery of the Senate and then the Senate floor. He then scaled the Senate dais, taking the seat that Vice President Mike Pence had occupied an hour earlier. Chansley proceeded to take pictures of himself on the dais and refused to vacate the seat when asked to do so by law enforcement. Instead, he stated that “Mike Pence is a f----ing traitor” and wrote a note on available paper on the dais, stating “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!” He further called other rioters up to the dais and led them in an incantation over his bullhorn. He was cleared from the Chamber at approximately 3:09 p.m.

Chansley was arrested Jan. 9, 2021 and has been in custody ever since. He pleaded guilty in the District of Columbia on Sept. 3, 2021, to obstruction of an official proceeding. In addition to the prison term, Judge Royce C. Lamberth ordered him to pay $2,000 in restitution. He also must serve a period of three years of supervised release following completion of his prison term.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the Justice Department’s National Security Division prosecuted the case, with valuable assistance provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona. The FBI’s Washington Field Office investigated the case, with valuable assistance from the U.S. Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), and the FBI’s Phoenix Field Office.

In the ten months since Jan. 6, more than 675, individuals have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including over 210 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The investigation remains ongoing.