October 25, 2021: What J.D. Vance Really Thought - And Trump's Felon Friends

10/25/21: It’s often fun to watch Republicans eat their own babies. This is especially true since Trump upset the apple cart, ran amok like an orange-tinted bull in a conservative china shop, and started whining about RINOs who won’t agree the last election was stolen. You know. Because it wasn’t. 

This weekend, here in Ohio, it was fun to watch a commercial run by one Republican hoping to win a seat in the U.S. Senate against another hoping to win at the same game of musical chairs and grab the spot in Washington. In this case it was Josh Mandel, throwing shade on J. D. Vance. Vance is famous for growing up poor, going to Yale, and authoring the book Hillbilly Elegies.

Josh Mandel wants to be your U.S. senator!

 

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“Noxious.” “Reprehensible.” “Idiot.”

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By contrast, Mandel is famous for staking out bizarre right-wing positions. That would include suggesting we close the public schools and let religious schools take up the burden. Kind of an “American Taliban” idea. 

And you had to understand. If Mandel thought he could win by getting a tattoo on his forehead that said, “I WILL KISS DONALD TRUMP’S BARE BOTTOM IF YOU ELECT ME,” Mandel would be down at the tattoo artist this morning. 

What Mr. Blogger loves about these kinds of dustups is what they reveal about the true feelings many Republicans harbored (and no doubt still do) regarding Rejected-President Trump. 

In this case, Mr. Mandel is trying to toast Mr. Vance for what he really thought about Mr. Trump back in 2015-2016. “I’m a never Trump guy. I don’t like him,” Vance can be heard saying in Mandel’s commercial. “As somebody who doesn’t like Trump, I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.”

 

In various tweets, Vance says of then-Candidate Trump: “I think that he is noxious.” And: “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.” 

“I didn’t vote for Trump because I can’t stomach Trump,” he admits. 

In a final tweet, included in the commercial, he says of the candidate, “My God what an idiot.” 

Exactly what Mr. Blogger has been saying for the last five years.

 

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ONE CAN ALSO ENJOY watching then-future White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnaney dish dirt on then-Candidate Trump in 2015. Mr. Blogger especially likes her comments about him being a “showman,” not a “serious candidate.” She mentions his previous support for Democratic and progressive positions. In summary, she assures Don Lemon on CNN, “the fact that the Republican Party is now having to claim him is both unfortunate and to me inauthentic.” McEnaney says she doubts Trump will even finish in the top five during the GOP primaries, insisting that conservatism is “about love.” 

Asked about his famous comment on Mexican immigrants, as “rapists” and “killers,” she responds exactly as this blogger did – and Sen. Lindsey Graham did – and so many other good-hearted human beings. “To me, a racist statement is a racist statement,” she says. “I don’t like what Donald Trump said. She called his remarks “derogatory” and “hateful,” which was patently true. 

Graham, of course, famously called Candidate Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot” at the time. 

Eventually, of course he, and McEnaney, and now even Vance and Mandel have embraced the race-baiting, hateful, xenophobic showman.

 

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WE SHOULD point out that Lev Parnas, bosom pal of Rudy Giuliani, who worked diligently by his side to ferret out corruption in Ukraine, decided to take his chances in court recently. Faced with a variety of felony charges, Parnas did what Rudy’s other bosom pal in the ferreting operation didn’t. Whereas Igor Fruman took a plea deal and started cooperating with authorities, Parnas dished out good money for a lawyer. Luckily for him, the jury decided fighting corruption in Ukraine was a noble goal, and Rudy, and President Trump always cared deeply about…. 

Okay. Ha, ha. No. 

The jury decided Lev was guilty and he got convicted on all of the charges. If you don’t follow these kinds of stories, Lev and Igor got arrested at Dulles International Airport in Washington in 2019. At the time, they were holding one-way tickets to Frankfurt. One might imagine they were on their way to Russia, where they could avoid extradition. Leaving that matter aside, they were charged with funneling money from a Russian tycoon into American political campaigns, an absolutely forbidden operation, for obvious reasons. 

Parnas’s partner, Andrey Kukushkin, was also found guilty.

 

As The New York Times notes, 

The verdict came after only about five hours of deliberations, following testimony from, among others, a onetime finance director of a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump; an ex-chief of staff to a former Republican congressman from Texas; and the 2018 Republican candidate for governor of Nevada.

 

The lawyer for Mr. Parnas had defended his client, saying Parnas didn’t understand the campaign finance laws. So, he never questioned why a Russian oligarch would donate $325,000 to a Trump campaign PAC. The lawyer for Kukushkin, however, didn’t help that defense. He painted his client as “unsophisticated and inexperienced – a rube,” who had been taken in by Parnas and Fruman. He referred to the pair as “swindlers.” 

Parnas now joins the ever-lengthening list of people with close ties to Rejected-President Trump who have racked up felonies. And here we are not counting persons still under indictment. Thomas Barrack and Allen Weisselberg come to mind.

 

If you’ve ever spent time around a working farm, you know that manure piles attract clouds of disgusting flies. In similar fashion, Donald attracted disreputable characters. To wit: Paul Manafort (felon; pardoned), Roger Stone (felon, pardoned), Steve Bannon (indicted, preemptively pardoned), Rick Gates (felon), Stephen Calk (felon), Alexander van der Zwaan (felon), Gen. Michael T. Flynn (plead guilty, pardoned), Parnas, Fruman, Imaad Zuberi (felon), W. Samuel Patten (felon), Elliott Broidy (felon, pardoned), Michael Cohen (felon), Felix Sater (already a felon when he went to work for Trump), George Papadopoulos (felon), George Nader (felon), Maria Butina (felon), Konstantin Kilimnik (indicted, fled to Russia), Natalia Veselnitskaya (indicted, fled to Russia) and Michael Caputo (avoided a felony charge by amending his testimony to Congress). We’re not even counting Stephen Miller, who, if placed on trial, might face felony charges for being a terrible human being.