This Trump stooge proved he'll kick any dog to earn his MAGA badge of meanness

There’s a fable about how Bear Bryant, the legendary coach of the University of Alabama, found the toughest players. He would, supposedly, drive through dusty Alabama towns with a dead dog tied behind his car. He’d then stop his car where the high school boys hung out and wait. The kid who came over and kicked that dead dog would get a scholarship.

JD Vance aspires to be the captain of the MAGA team when Donald Trump moves on. The way to get there, he seems to believe, is to kick the dog, whichever one is most helpless (and not being eaten by Haitians), and show that he’s even meaner than Trump. His rhetorical style is all about the strong beating up on the weak, something Vance seems to relish. There are just too many examples of Vance’s delight in kicking to ignore.

Dog eaters

The one that made these attacks Vance’s signature concerned the unsubstantiated story that his Haitian constituents in Ohio were eating their pets, which Trump and then Vance not only said, but then repeated despite denial from local authorities that it was happening. But Vance didn’t care. He went even further by admitting it was a false story, but one that he still proudly put forth:

“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.”

The hell with the Haitians he supposedly represented in the Senate. And to hell with the truth.

Zelensky mugging

When Volodymryr Zelensky visited the Oval Office on March 25, 2025, to secure American support against the Russians invaders, Vance took the lead role in a carefully orchestrated effort to humiliate the Ukrainian leader. Vance accused Zelensky of campaigning for the Democrats and for not thanking Trump profusely for all of the US support.

Vance said to Zelensky, “I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.”

The vibe of this made-for-TV reality show reminded me of how bullies operate: Trump pinning back Zelensky’s arms, while Vance landed the body blows.

Denmark trashing

Vance wants to be a point person in taking Greenland from the Greenlanders and Denmark. In a visit to the Pituffik Space base last March, he belittled the sacrifice made by Danes who lost more soldiers per capital than any other ally in Afghanistan. But, as he put it, that was…

“… years ago, just as, for example, the French honor the sacrifice of Americans in Normandy 80 years ago…. Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland…”

It must be such a rush for a leader of a country with 340 million people to threaten a county of 6 million. They can’t touch you. You’re invincible.

Killing 'domestic terrorists'

Without waiting for an investigation of any sort, Vance jumped to defend the ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, who killed Renee Nicole Goode in Minneapolis by firing three shots through her car window at close range:

“The reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self-defense.”

No, the reality is that Vance wants to demonstrate to the MAGA world that he is a badass who owns the libs, over and over, and supports killing them, if necessary.

And stomping on reporters who dare question his unsubstantiated finding is blood sport:

“Everybody who’s been repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis when a law enforcement officer shot at her: you should be ashamed of yourselves, every single one of you.”

Kicking a five-year old

You’ve got to have a heart made of stone not to show sympathy and kindness for a five-year-old who had his father taken away during an ICE raid. But if you want to be a MAGA leader, you have to look past any maudlin sentimentality even when the facts are lined up against you. According to the family’s asylum lawyer:

“The family was not eluding ICE in any way. They were following all established protocols, pursuing their claim for asylum, showing up for their court hearings, and posed no safety, not flight risk and should never have been detailed.”

Vance could care less about the facts:

“When they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran. So, the story is that ICE detained a 5-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?”

Although the boy’s school and relatives offered to take care of the child, he was shipped with his father to a detention center in Texas.

So what? Why should Vance care any more about this child and his father than about dog-eating Haitians? Even though asylum seekers in the judicial process are legally here, Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, ignores the facts because the only facts that matter are proving that he will back ICE no matter what; that he will support the deportation of immigrants, legal or otherwise; that he will be seen as tough enough and mean enough to become the MAGA crown prince.

Cruella de Vance

As the world learned that Alex Pretti was brutally murdered by federal agents, Cruella did not immediately stomp on his dead body. Instead, he issued a wilting word salad about “the engineered chaos” that is “the direct consequence of far left agitators, working with local authorities.”

You offer that kind of gibberish when you’re worried that a real investigation might make you look like a fool.

• Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It." (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.