Donald Trump has chosen his running mate, and the announcement came on the first day of the RNC. Traditionally – not that any of this is traditional – the running mate announcement would have happened long before the RNC, because it would have gifted the Trump campaign with at least 72 hours of media coverage. It’s hilarious because Trump is too much of a narcissist to let anyone pull focus AND he was also too lazy to give this any kind of real consideration. Well, it was never going to be Nikki Haley or Tim Scott, but I thought there was a decent chance Trump would pick my state’s governor, Glenn Youngkin. The reason why Trump passed on Youngkin is probably because Youngkin is an idiot who can’t get anything done – his MAGA agenda is dying on the vine because Virginians made sure that Democrats took back control of the state house and senate last year. Still, I was worried, because Virginia really is a purple state now and it would have been a huge mess.

So who did Trump choose? J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy and Ohio’s junior senator. Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 – he’s barely been in DC for a year and a half. I barely paid attention to the Hillbilly Elegy mess, but I know that a lot of genuine Appalachians were mad about how Vance (an outsider from the Ohio suburbs) lied and tried to claim their stories as his own and twist their stories to a reductive and racist narrative. Vance is currently known as one of the most craven political operators in the modern Republican era. Circa 2016, Vance was loudly anti-Trump, criticizing Trump in multiple interviews and even referring to Trump as “America’s Hitler.” Then Vance quickly figured out the scam, and he changed his tune when he realized that the only way to run as a Republican is to supplicate oneself to America’s Hitler.

Something I find sort of exciting is the fact that Vance has a lengthy history of saying wildly misogynistic things and taking deeply anti-woman, anti-choice stances. This is true of Donald Trump as well, but the media shows no interest in focusing on an adjudicated rapist, serial predator and good friend of Jeffrey Epstein. But Vance’s entrance on the national stage will hopefully be the jolt this election cycle needed, because this election is (imo) fundamentally about women and women’s rights. I need women to take a good hard look at Vance and his history. I can tell the Biden campaign is excited about this too – I’ve already gotten a dozen campaign emails where they’re amplifying the sh-t out Vance’s own words.

Also, just a reminder: Donald Trump encouraged (incited) his unhinged cult members to hunt down and hang his last vice president.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.