Donald Trump “is unfit for our nation’s highest office,” JD Vance famously said.
He’s “reprehensible,” the now-vice president said before Trump’s first election, and “an idiot.”
Trump, he said way back then, may even become “America’s Hitler.”
Vance was prescient when it came to Trump.
Because the 47th U.S. president has repeatedly shown he’s unfit, most germanely for our purposes: He’s sent a paramilitary force of 3,000 masked, heavily armed agents to terrorize us. Agents have accosted Minnesotans based only on skin color, invaded people’s homes without warrants, beaten — and in two cases shot — people without giving justification for adequate cause.
The Vance who understood Trump so well a decade ago is apparently a weak man whose lust for power overrode whatever principles he had, if they were ever sincere.
He disgraced his office by calling Renee Nicole Good — who was killed this month by a federal officer — a “deranged leftist” and her actions “classic terrorism.” But in the same press conference, he admitted: “I don’t know what was in her heart or what was in her head.”
He’s ever the political chameleon.
That said, Vance is coming to Minnesota on Thursday for a “roundtable” with local leadership. We’re a welcoming people, so I hope he enjoys the brisk air.
No doubt his propaganda minister will set him up with someone who will tell him ICE is great and immigrants are terrible, but he should talk to some others.
Like ChongLy “Scott” Thao, an American who told the Associated Press masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents forced their way into his house and pointed guns at the family, yelling at them. They then pushed him at gunpoint out into the street wearing only his undergarments in subfreezing temperatures.
“I was shaking,” he said. “They didn’t show any warrant; they just broke down the door.”
Minnesota is home to many Hmong families who we welcomed here after the Vietnam War, when they fought for the Americans at great personal risk.
Or how about this Columbia Heights resident, Ramon Menera, another U.S. citizen who said he was detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents Jan. 14 because of his accent.
His hilarious retort, captured on video: “You have an accent, too!”
Maybe Vance should talk to Nasra Ahmed, 23, also a U.S. citizen, born and raised in St. Paul. She was arrested by ICE last week and detained for two days, enduring a racial slur and a stress-induced seizure, according to U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum. Oddly, Ahmed faces no charges.
He should also talk to Ryan Ecklund, a Woodbury realtor who was lawfully observing ICE when he was arrested and detained for 10 hours.
Finally, no doubt Vance backs the blue — except when people assault police officers as they storm the U.S. Capitol to try to keep Trump in office, in which case, pardons all around — so he should talk to Mark Bruley, the Brooklyn Park police chief.
Bruley said his own off-duty officers have been racially profiled while encountering ICE. “Every person who has had this happen to them is a person of color.”
Here’s what went down, according to Bruley:
“When (the officer) became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated, she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident, the phone was knocked out of her hands, preventing her from recording it.
“The [agents] had their guns drawn during the incident and the officer became so concerned she was forced to identify herself as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of slowing and de-escalating the incident.”
Second Lady Usha Vance is having a baby. Great! Vance should visit the Mischief Toy Store in St. Paul, where ICE agents — angry at the store’s public anti-ICE posture — showed up with a “notice of inspection,” forcing the store to prove its staff are permitted to work in the U.S., the Pioneer Press reported.
Vance should listen to Minnesotans who can tell him about widespread racial profiling and the routine violation of our constitutional rights, and then he should leave — and take his 3,000 masked hooligans with him.
- J. Patrick Coolican is Editor-in-Chief of Minnesota Reformer. Previously, he was a Capitol reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for five years, after a Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan and time at the Las Vegas Sun, Seattle Times and a few other stops along the way. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and two young children. Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
