I thought of the perfect title for a book of profiles about Donald Trump’s most prominent lapdogs and liars — Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Unfortunately, that title was used in the 1990s by David Foster Wallace, so I’ll have to go back to the drawing board if I decide to pursue the idea.
“You ain’t gonna write no such book,” my neighbor Swamp Rabbit said. “You couldn’t get within a mile of Trump’s lapdogs, and if you did their handlers would sniff you out and send you packing.”
He’s right, of course, but if I could write the book I’d start by interviewing Vice President JD Vance, who pretends he’d make a less heinous president than Trump but succeeds only in convincing most observers that he’s just as vile as his boss, although he tries to seem more civil.
I reminded Swamp Rabbit that Vance became a Catholic years ago, but his conversion apparently didn’t make him any less dishonest and heartless.
I’m thinking of two well-publicized incidents. The first, Vance’s reaction to being criticized when he helped spread the rumor that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating the dogs and cats of law-abiding (white) Americans. After being caught in the lie, Vance said, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
More recently, he endorsed the conduct of the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s running a TV ad in which the Democratic candidate, Amy Acton, is falsely accused of lying by her estranged mother, who lost custody of Acton decades ago after her husband — Acton’s stepfather — was indicted for raping Acton. Vance praised Ramaswamy for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.”
I referred Swamp Rabbit to a Washington Post story for more sordid details about Acton’s family history. He said, “I get your drift, but what did you expect? Vance is sticking up for ‘Swami because they’re both loyal Trumpers.”
I told him it’s worse than that. Vance is saying the end justifies the means no matter how many innocent people you hurt or principles you betray. He’s the guy who called Trump “America’s Hitler” but sucked up to him a few years later — after his conversion to Catholicism — in his successful bid to become the vice-presidential candidate.
Swamp Rabbit remained unconvinced. “Vance ain’t no worse than them other lapdogs. How can you say he’s more hideous than Stephen Miller?”
I had to think about that one. “I guess because Vance looks like a big teddy bear when he’s really a vicious, small-minded fraud. With Miller, what you see is what you get — ugly inside and out.”
“Feel free to choose your own Most Hideous Trump guy,” I added.
Footnote: Trump has hired hideous women, too — Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi and so on — but he’s too much of a misogynist to keep them around for long.
