Former Ohio senator just can’t stop trolling, gaslighting and flip-flopping

Why does he do it? Why does Ohio’s former U.S. senator, hopeful heir to the MAGA throne, keep damning himself with snarky provocations and self-evident lies? How difficult is it for JD Vance to be respectful, instead of derogatory, honest instead of glibly deceitful?

Every time the vice-president is before an open mic he seems to revert to cutting diatribes about people MAGA loves to hate or alternative facts that bely reality. That’s not leadership from someone a heartbeat away from the presidency. That’s venom masquerading as virtue and promoting Orwellian “War is Peace” propaganda.

Vance has mastered the dark art of manipulating thought through ignore-the-evidence Trumpian rhetoric. He excels at stoking unfounded fear or fanning unquestioned loyalty whenever the boss requires subterfuge as a means to an end.

Hours after Trump unilaterally (and arguably unconstitutionally) chose to launch an unprovoked attack against Iran early Sunday (without the authorization of Congress) Vance was spouting the doublespeak of Team Trump on Sunday morning talk shows to portray America’s abrupt entry into foreign combat with Israel as a proud accomplishment.

To be clear, the U.S. inserted itself into a hot war by impulsively bombing a sovereign nation on the pretext of an imminent nuclear weapons threat — contradicted by Trump’s own U.S. intelligence community.

Iranian leaders called America’s act of aggression against their country “unprecedently dangerous” and a “betrayal of diplomacy.” But Vance peered into network cameras and pretended the unforced decision by the U.S. to drop more than a dozen 30,000-pound bombs on three Iranian nuclear facilities was not what it looked like to the rest of the world.

“We’re not at war with Iran,” said Vance with a straight face. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program” — the same one U.S spy agencies and U.S. National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard determined was dormant before Trump sent B-2 stealth bombers into Iranian airspace.

“We do not want war with Iran,” prattled the Ohio poser in the wake of the largest operational strike ever by those bombers to take out Iranian nuclear sites. “We actually want peace.”

Despite preemptive attacks certain to inflame greater conflict in an already volatile region.

In an awkward tap dance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Vance tried to pivot from his longtime opposition to proactive military intervention in the Middle East.

As an Ohio senatorial candidate Vance was adamant about not supporting military action against Iran on its own soil — even as proxy militia groups escalated attacks on U.S. and coalition forces.

But the staunch isolationist did a 180 on Trump’s recklessness in dragging the U.S. into another sketchy war without an end game.

Trump was smarter than his predecessors when it came to targeting Tehran with American military muscle, Vance argued unconvincingly, so the risk of the U.S. succumbing to another endless war was slim.

“I certainly empathize with Americans who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East,” said the ex-Marine who served in the Iraq entanglement. “I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then, we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives.”

Trump directly threatened those objectives by alienating nearly every international partner and ally of the U.S., aligning with autocratic Russia against democratic Ukraine, destroying the federal national security workforce, and eliminating irreplaceable expertise, decimating global foreign assistance investments, nuclear safety protections, cyber security, and more.

But when Trump plunged the U.S. into a Middle East conflict with his bombardment of Iran, he knew exactly who to deploy to disingenuously frame America’s military pounding of that country as preventative medicine to reset fruitful diplomacy and spur peace.

Vance shelved his skepticism about starting foreign wars without clear objectives or exit strategies and gamely pushed a narrative that Iran essentially had it coming but rest assured the U.S. has “no interest in boots on the ground” or Iranian regime change. Maybe.

Yet the veep deals in dishonesty like a chameleon changes color. A day before Trump announced his bombing strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, Vance was in Los Angeles lying through his teeth about the Democratic mayor of the city and governor of the state encouraging violent immigration protests.

Then he disparaged a former Senate colleague from California who was slammed to the ground and handcuffed at a press conference when he tried to ask the Homeland Security director a question. Vance referred to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla as “Jose Padilla” (a convicted domestic terrorist) and suggested his ordeal was “political theater.”

Why did Vance spew “lies and utter nonsense in an attempt to provoke division and conflict in our city?” asked LA Mayor Karen Bass. Why did Vance mock the first Latino elected to the U.S. Senate by intentionally misnaming him?

Same reason he put an Ohio city and its Haitian community in danger with savage lies about pet-eating immigrants: To snag attention, stoke ugly, and distort truth beyond recognition.

A slick Vance played his fellow citizens for chumps with Trumped-up bull that American troops belong on American streets and a wanton act of war by the U.S. isn’t. That’s not leadership. That’s a glib gaslighting from a cringe-making toady.

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