'Don’t tell the mad old king': Columnist says Vance showed his hand on plans for Trump

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) revealed Tuesday night a secret best kept from his running mate, former President Donald Trump, a political analyst argued Wednesday.

Vance's performance at the CBS News debate against Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) subtly exposed the Ohio senator's limits in loyalty to the Republican presidential nominee, according to the Atlantic columnist Helen Lewis.

"It became clear that the outwardly subservient Vance is already plotting his post-Trump future," Lewis wrote. "Don’t tell the mad old king, but his most loyal baron is looking at the crown and wondering how well it would fit his head."

As proof, Lewis pointed to Vance's propensity to name drop like an "out-of-work actor" and his response to Walz's demand that he admit Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

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For Lewis, Vance's response wasn't surprising because he didn't answer honestly, it was surprising because he didn't immediately back his boss.

"I’m beyond being surprised that Vance wouldn’t tell the truth," Lewis wrote. "But I am intrigued that, when given the biggest platform of his career to date, he couldn’t bring himself to lie, either."

Lewis suggested Vance had made a tough decision after a series of "humiliating concessions" to a former president he once described as someone who could be "America's Hitler."

That decision she explained by quoting the poem "i sing of Olaf glad and big" by E. E. Cummings: "There is some s--- I will not eat."

Vance's reasoning behind this decision is one Lewis suggests would not please Trump.

"Once the former president is out of the picture, what will be the point of harping on his personal bitterness about being rejected by the American people?" Lewis wrote. "You might as well keep doing Trump’s crazy material about sharks and Hannibal Lecter."