Shady J.D.’s Greatest Hits

Going into tonight’s debate, it seems appropriate to consider the J.D. Vance mindset that Tim Walz will have to contend with.

J.D. Vance is a handful. He’ll be a much stronger traditional debater than the orange guy who he wants to be his boss. But his views are more focused and, in many ways, even more extreme than those of the MAGA figurehead.

Trump — ever the slick salesman — says whatever he thinks the person he’s talking to wants to hear. It’s not like he has any kind of core values. Vance, on the other hand, truly believes the positions that he espouses; he was spewing many of these views long before he had a career in politics. (Those “firmly held beliefs” are not so firm, however, so as to withstand the lure of climbing higher on the political ladder. More about that in a moment.)

CBS has announced that there will not be any real-time fact checking at the debate, although CBS also made a fuss about being able to scan a QR code during the debate that will lead to…