Vice President JD Vance got a brutal tongue-lashing by James Ball of the British media outlet The i Paper in a new column released Monday.
"As his boss was trying and failing to hold a spectacular 250th birthday celebration for America," wrote Ball, highlighting the string of disasters that ruined Trump's Great American State Fair, "Vice President JD Vance was trying to make nice with Britain." The vice president proclaimed to the Sunday Times, “I have a special affection for Britain," which "feels more culturally familiar to me than any country on Earth, aside from my own.”
That would be news to Britain, wrote Ball, since not only does Vance have "almost no connection whatsoever with the UK until he met his wife, who went to university here," he has routinely attacked the country on the world stage.
Not only has he constantly pushed the Trump administration not to give assistance to Ukraine and abandon Europe's defense against Russian aggression on the continent, wrote Ball, but he has publicly slammed the U.K. and Europe "whenever they fail to share Trump’s views on immigration, multiculturalism or any other issue," siding with British far-right rioters against the government, and exploiting a high-profile murder case to attack immigrants.
"If Vance loves the UK, he doesn’t love the country it actually is — diverse, liberal, European, and forward-facing, the nation whose national dish is chicken tikka masala," he wrote. Rather, Vance puts it on a pedestal as "some imagined English ethnostate" with "vistas upon which his boss can build golf courses and demolish windfarms."
"Your 'special affection' is noted, Vice President. But you can stick it," Ball concluded. "We’re happier being independent, too."