All posts tagged "jd vance"

'Vile, craven, disgusting': MAGA fans rage over Dems' 'sick' shutdown response

MAGA fury raged Thursday over Democrats' response to the current government shutdown, with Republicans calling a congressional leader's response as "sick" and "vile, craven, disgusting."

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer had MAGA fired up following his interview with Punchbowl News, The Daily Beast reports.

“We knew that this would be a hard fight. It is still a hard fight,” Schumer said. “But every day we’re getting better and better as the message sinks in more and more deeply.”

Schumer said that Democrats have gained momentum in the fight to achieve an Obamacare deal, and as the shutdown continues, it reflects poorly on Republicans.

“Every time they try something, it doesn’t quite work,” Schumer said. “Even the threat of shutting things—‘We’re gonna close this, we’re gonna close that.’ It’s [reflecting] at least as negative on them as it is on us. I think more so on them.”

MAGA Republicans criticized his comments, irritated by the Democratic leader's statements.

"Chuck Schumer is admitting the Democrat Shutdown—where they are hurting everyday Americans— is a positive thing.
Every Democrat should be asked if they agree with Schumer. Vile. Craven. Disgusting," Steven Cheung, Assistant to the President & White House Director of Communications, wrote on X.

“Better for Schumer. Worse for Americans. What a vile sentiment from an alleged leader in our country," Vice President JD Vance wrote on X.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt referred to his comment as "disgusting and revealing."

"Chuck Schumer is celebrating this shutdown while Americans struggle. Sick," GOP wrote on X.

“‘Every day gets better’ for Chuck Schumer as military families are about to go hungry over lost Schumer Shutdown paychecks. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Nobody wins in a shutdown," Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) wrote on X.

Polls indicate that Schumer isn't wrong. A survey conducted by YouGov between Saturday and Monday found that 41% of Americans put the shutdown blame on President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, that's compared to 30% for Democrats, The Beast reports.

Trump is clearly mentally diminished — Dems must target these people pulling his strings

On Friday, the president changed his mind. He decided that he is not going to break the law by withholding $187 million in federal funding for an intelligence and counterterrorism initiative in New York City.

And you should be grateful.

“I am pleased to advise that I reversed the cuts made to Homeland Security and Counterterrorism for New York City …” he said. “It was my Honor to do so. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

But Donald Trump didn’t change his mind. Not really. He just wants us to think so. Fact is, he wasn’t part of the decision to (illegally) cut off the money. Someone in the regime decided for him. Here’s the Times:

The cuts, which represented the largest federal defunding of police operations in New York in decades, were made by the Department of Homeland Security, without explanation and without the approval of President Trump, White House officials said.

Indeed, President Trump was blindsided by the decision to defund the police, not learning of the cuts until Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York called him on Sunday to protest the change after the fact, according to three people with knowledge of the call.

If the cuts had gone through, Trump would have defunded the police more than anyone, ever. That would not have been a good look for a president who bills himself as the great champion of law enforcement, and here’s the thing about that: someone in the White House knew it.

They knew it would hurt Trump to be seen as the president who kneecapped New York cops, seemingly making it harder for them to stop the next 9/11. Yet this someone went ahead and did it anyway, in the knowledge that Big Daddy is preoccupied with other matters.

I don’t want to belabor the obvious, but this sometimes happens when the father of the family, as it were, is old and doddering, and can no longer be trusted to tell the difference between reality and television. This sometimes happens when a “family member” really hates Big Daddy and wants to expose him. That way, everyone sees the truth!

I kid, but only slightly. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s someone in the White House who really hates Trump, despite working for the hate regimes, and actively seeks ways to humiliate him. (Consider the unknown aide responsible for putting makeup on his hand to cover up whatever ailment he has. The makeup’s color and his skin color are so mismatched that you can’t help thinking it was done on purpose!)

More important is that it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s someone – or a group of someones – that recognizes the chance to seize the reins of power for themselves and if it goes sideways, Trump can take the fall.

The president very often doesn’t seem to know what’s going until an outsider tells him. It could be a congressional Democrat. For instance, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump didn’t understand the coming spike in insurance premiums, the result of him and the Republicans failing to renew federal subsidies.

“We laid out to the president some of the consequences happening in healthcare, and by his face and the way he looked, I think he heard about them for the first time,” Schumer said.

It could be a Democratic governor. After watching a Fox segment that made Portland look like a hellscape, Trump planned to send National Guard troops there. Then he talked to Oregon Governor Tina Kotek, who, like New York’s Kathy Hochul, set him straight.

Trump told Kotek: “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’”

But mostly, Trump learns about what his regime is doing when the press corps asks about what it’s doing. This is an ongoing pattern but most recently, Trump did not know that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had convened a meeting of the top military officials until questioned. The AP: “The president's participation was not part of the original plan for the meeting but that he decided that he wanted to go.”

His speech there was word salad. As I wrote, he twaddled on about Biden’s autopen; about the unfair media; about tariffs; about the border; about “the time he went to a restaurant in Washington to eat dinner”; and even the “Nobel Peace Prize he felt he had earned.”

Then, amid the outpouring of words, there was a moment of clarity, and Trump seemed to remember what his people had been telling him.

“It’s a war from within,” he said. “It’s really a very important mission. We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military ... because we’re going into Chicago very soon.”

(Subsequently, the regime ordered Texas National Guard troops to Illinois against the wishes of JB Pritzker. The Illinois governor has filed suit to stop it.)

Retired Army General Barry McCaffrey told MSNBC the speech was “one of the most bizarre, unsettling events I’ve ever encountered.” And: “The president sounded incoherent, exhausted, rabidly partisan, at times stupid, meandering [and] couldn’t hold a thought together.”

(In fairness, Trump isn’t too far gone yet. As Jen Psaki noted, he is still aware enough to put the kibosh on any plan to defund the police.)

This pattern is so frequent and so public that the Washington press corps really should be asking, as Dan Froomkin recently suggested:

“Is he a confused old man?
“Is he being manipulated by his staff?
“Is he delusional? Is he gaslighting us?
“Who’s in charge?”

On Friday, I argued that the growing awareness of the president’s dementia (so far primarily due to Pritzker’s use of the d-word) could present an opportunity for coalition-building – between anti-Trump partisans who always believed him to be a threat to democracy and non-partisan swing voters who supported him in the mistaken belief that he’d solve pressing problems, like inflation and the cost of living.

The main obstacle to building a coalition is changing minds, namely, that indie voters are not going to admit they were wrong to choose a fascist. It hits different, however, when the same fascist appears to have dementia and, as a result, is doing weird stuff, like trying to defund the police while ordering troops to do the work of the police. At that point, the lift is less heavy. Liberals are not asking swing voters to stand up for democracy, just to stand against demented chaos.

It also hits different when, in the context of dementia, it seems that someone – or a group of someones – is pulling the strings and that Donald Trump is more puppet than president.

That framing could also have a powerful effect on swing voters in joining an anti-authoritarian and pro-democracy coalition. They would not have to blame the president, thus blaming themselves by implication. Instead, they could blame the unelected liars and cheats – Russ Vought and Stephen Miller spring to mind – who are conspiring behind his back. Indies might even be encouraged to take the moral high ground. At least some of the power-grab involves humiliating a demented old man in public.

In this light, I think Project 2025 becomes something bigger than the authoritarian playbook that liberals go on and on about, and that indie voters tend to tune out. It becomes a stand-in for the schemers pulling Trump’s strings. They know their policies are so unpopular that they would never become reality if Vought and Miller couldn’t whisper in the ear of a doddering old man who can no longer be trusted to tell the difference between reality and television.

For independent voters who may be looking for an off ramp, it’s not Project 2025. It’s Puppet 2025.

To be sure, I don’t trust the press corps to do the work that democracy needs. Reporters are happy to show a live feed of Trump seemingly not knowing what’s going on, but that’s the extent of it. They are not going to ask for the names of the puppet masters. They are not going to hold Trump to the same ageist standards that they held Joe Biden to. (They are certainly not going to flirt with the same conspiracy theories.) The hypocrisy is so baked in that, for now, I have no hope of it changing.

(And to be sure, all my talk of Trump’s dementia might give the impression I don’t think he’s an evil man who’s capable of committing his own atrocities. Let me be the first to disabuse you of that notion.)

But the news media isn’t the only thing that swing voters experience. They also experience the pain and the chaos of unpopular policies pursued by this regime: tariffs, inflation, healthcare cuts, not to mention masked thugs ripping families apart. The more pain and chaos they feel, the more they might be open to the argument that the pain itself is proof that the democratically elected president isn’t in charge.

'Never seen him this scared': Trump's behavior analyzed amid turmoil and health concerns

A journalist who has closely covered President Donald Trump over the last decade says he's "never seen him this scared" before.

Salon's Brian Karem details how the government shutdown, ICE agents beating and detaining citizens (and children), combined with pressure over the Jeffrey Epstein files fallout and his calls to use American cities as "training grounds" for military aggression are all creating a perfect storm. But that's not all.

"Trump’s actions are those of a despot trying to seize total power," Karem writes. "But there’s a deeper reason why recently he’s sounding even more maniacal. He is the proverbial New York sewer rat, cornered and lashing out in a desperate attempt to survive. He also knows he is becoming more vulnerable. But it’s not just his own mortality, shrinking mental acuity and the Jeffrey Epstein case that is scaring him."

The real worries Trump has behind closed doors are actually tied to his fears over looming litigation — in other words — it's not over yet, Karem explains.

Karem has filed a FOIA request through attorney Mark Zaid for materials seized during the FBI Mar-a-Lago search, which were later returned to Trump. Karem reports that his request was met with the president's response that he should "pay $50,000 in a bond just to be able to ask for the service. If the petition were denied, I would still have to forfeit the $50,000."

"I believe the information is of such vital public importance that we filed suit and petitioned for expedited service," Karem writes. "This still means it could take anywhere from two to four years before the case is even heard."

The criminal case he beat in court, following the historic June 8, 2023, indictment on 37 felony counts, is "still causing him to howl like a wild animal with its leg caught in a trap." That was the first time a former U.S. president faced federal charges after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022 and "uncovered dozens of boxes of highly classified documents stored in insecure settings," including a bathroom.

The case was ultimately dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in July 2024, but until then it was considered the strongest criminal case against him.

"He’s apparently still so worried about the case that he’s trying to put up costly roadblocks against someone who has only a chance of getting the information released," Karem writes.

Trump is also not in great physical shape, goes to bed early and shows up to work late — which Karem described as signs of him slowing down.

"As Trump grows older and increasingly more mentally incontinent, he sits in a stew of his own political flatulence while he mumbles incoherent random phrases 'like nothing ever seen before,' while blaming 'the violent radical left' and 'fake media,' along with a dozen other imagined enemies," Karem writes. "Like a good bill collector, he always closes with 'Thank you for your attention to this matter.'”

Karem also points to what happened Wednesday as the government shutdown, when Vice President JD Vance took the podium and addressed the American people — and not Trump.

"Trump’s fear and his declining health show us, at the very least, that Vance is capable of pinch hitting for the sultan of political swat," he writes.

And that is concerning, especially as Trump reportedly told Congress that America is in an "armed conflict" with drug cartels, following the recent attacks on boats in the Caribbean.

"If Vance can step up and, in the words of his own staff after Wednesday’s press briefing, 'look very presidential,' then the administration’s despotic nature will continue to amp up even as Donald Trump continues to wind down," Karem warns.

And his fears over invoking the 25th Amendment are very real, he adds.

"At some point in the not-to-distant future, I was told by a source close to Trump, there is a growing fear that someone in his own inner-circle may whisper the words '25th Amendment,' end the Trump presidency and usher in 'The Age of Ultron' — I mean Vance," Karem writes.

It's not the Dems who must feel real pain if this shutdown is ever to end

One of the main assumptions in the story about the government shutdown, which began at midnight, is that the Democrats see a “rare opportunity to use their leverage to achieve policy goals.”

That quote is from the Associated Press. Here’s some more: “Senate Democrats say they won’t vote for [the Republican funding resolution] unless Republicans include an extension of expiring health care benefits, among other demands. President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans say they won’t negotiate, arguing that it’s a stripped-down, ‘clean’ bill that should be noncontroversial.”

I wonder about that, though.

I mean, I know the Democrats have to demand something concrete in exchange for their vote, but the opportunity seems bigger than just getting the GOP to renew Obamacare subsidies that were expanded during the covid pandemic. The opportunity seems bigger than policy.

It seems like a chance to expose the Republicans’ lies.

Then ask why. Why do they lie so much?

Then answer: because Republican voters can’t know the truth.

The truth is that Trump and his party do not care one way or another if, in the coming months, health insurance premiums for those who are enrolled in Obamacare exchanges double, triple or quadruple.

They do not care if everyone else enrolled through their employers sees their insurance premiums spike, or sees the cost of their health care spike, as a result of healthy people leaving Obamacare exchanges.

What they do care about is stealing from Medicaid — to the tune of $1 trillion over a decade — to cut the taxes of very obscenely rich people who will never notice that their taxes have been cut. Oh, and they care about seeing their social inferiors suffer. That’s a whole lot of fun.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with not caring. It is part of the makeup of a native-born authoritarian cartel that’s invested above all else in maintaining a social hierarchy with rich white men on top.

Though rule-by-the-rich is very popular among the rich, it’s not so popular among workaday folks, even conservative Americans who otherwise see advantage in being aligned with their social betters.

Though the Trump cartel is working hard to change it, America is still a democracy. The GOP still needs its base until it has completed its consolidation of power. For now, it can’t afford to alienate its supporters with the truth – that the Republicans are scamming them.

Who will suffer most from cuts to Medicaid? Republican voters in GOP-controlled states. Who will suffer most from Obamacare spikes? Ditto. Because, in both programs, there are more Republican voters than anyone else combined, the Republicans must pretend to care.

But mostly, they lie.

At first, the lies were of the “waste, fraud and abuse” variety.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said he might think about renewing the Obamacare subsidies, but “there is a lot of, whatever you want to call it, fraud,” he told Axios. “And I think everybody acknowledges that, so how do you reform it and still get bipartisan support?"

Also per Axios, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said they’re thinking about requiring “ACA enrollees to have ‘skin in the game’ by making them pay a minimum premium and barring zero-premium plans that are ACA-compliant but that critics contend fuel fraud.”

Yes, they contend it’s fraud. It isn’t, though. Those are just the rules. If you don’t like the rules, get enough support to change them. But that’s the thing. Americans like the rules, as they are. So Republicans lie.

“Waste, fraud and abuse” was always a code for “Obamacare is for Black people,” so no Republican feared opposing it. But apparently the dogwhistle wasn’t getting through to the base. So the Republicans dropped the coded language to say outright that the Democrats want one and a half trillion dollars to give “illegal aliens” free health care.

Here’s Vice President JD Vance:

Democrats are “saying to the American people that [they] wanna give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care, while Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills. That was their initial foray into this negotiation. We thought it was absurd. We told them it was. Now they come in here saying that if you don’t give us everything that we want, we’re gonna shut down the government.”

Every word Vance said, including “and” and “the,” is a lie.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) went straight at him for that lie:

“The federal government by law … does not fund health insurance for undocumented immigrants in Medicaid, period. Nor the ACA, nor Medicare. Undocumented immigrants do not get federal health insurance premiums. Period. Period. They’re lying.”

Let’s be real. There is no reality in which Republican voters suddenly wake up to the truth of Schumer’s words and as a result, admit to themselves that the Trump cartel has been lying to them all along. That’s because lying, no matter how disgusting, is not the worst part of the predicament America finds itself in. The desire to believe lies is.

So the goal wouldn’t be convincing Republican voters they’ve been lied to. The goal would be convincing they’ve been scammed. To do that, however, requires much more than merely calling Republicans out as liars. It requires pain — pain felt by Republican voters themselves.

That’s what Republican voters will feel if Trump and the Republicans get what they want from the Democrats: a “clean CR” that includes nothing to stop the shock that’s coming, when health insurance premiums skyrocket while the safety net unravels. Pain is the only teacher in politics. That’s the Democrats’ real opportunity.

Not policy.

Pain.

Conservative Rick Wilson singles out JD Vance's latest 'tryout for the 2028 Hunger Games'

JD Vance’s address to the country from the James Brady Briefing Room at the White House was scorched by former GOP campaign adviser Rick Wilson on Thursday morning.

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” the co-hosts shared a clip of the vice president not only assigning blame for the government shutdown on Democrats, but also repeating a GOP talking point that Democrats are holding the country hostage because they want to hand Affordable Care Act benefits to undocumented immigrants.

According to Vance, “The Chuck Schumer-AOC wing of the Democratic party shut down the government because they said to us, we will open the government only if you give billions of dollars of funding to healthcare for illegal aliens. That’s a ridiculous proposition.”

On Wednesday, just as Vance made that claim, MSNBC host Chris Jansing had the audio cut and told viewers, “ So that is not true,” and then fact-checked him before coverage resumed.

Thursday morning, Wilson, long a critic of the Donald Trump administration, joined the pile-on with a literary reference.

“I think what you saw yesterday with JD Vance was his sort of his tryout for the 2028 Hunger Games: ‘Can I be as big a liar as Donald Trump?’” he began. “And he really was displaying that that line was pumped out of a focus group by [GOP strategist] Tony Fabrizio and Trump's polling people. Because they recognize they're not trying to appeal to the middle of America or to the majority of America. They're trying to produce content for the Fox News conveyor belt.”

“And so they're going to lie about these things,” he added before pointing out, “But I want to start out with a top-line that we have just this morning out of the Washington Post poll, where 47 percent of the people say that the Republicans are responsible for the shutdown and 30 percent say, the Democrats.”

“And why is that? Because Donald Trump chose this shutdown. The Republican Party chose this shutdown,” he added.

- YouTube youtu.be

Gavin Newsom trolls JD Vance with new AI couch and makeup videos

California Governor Gavin Newsom mocked JD Vance with an AI video showing the vice president praising couches and an old photograph of him wearing a blonde wig and makeup when he was a student.

Newsom's office's X account has recently leaned into pushing AI content mocking President Donald Trump and other MAGA figures.

Another AI-generated image from the account on Tuesday ridiculed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's speech criticising "fat" generals, with the fake picture showing Trump eating burgers delivered by drones in McDonald's bags.

The Vance videos reference an unfounded rumor that went viral during the 2024 election that he had written about getting intimate with a couch. The pictures of Vance in a wig are believed to have been taken at a party in Yale in 2012.

“Yes, there’s a photo of me in drag from a college party, and that’s normal. Everyone experiments in college, costumes, makeup, whatever, totally normal,” Vance says in one of the fake videos. “But what I don’t understand is why people are so obsessed with this other thing, couch intimacy.”

“Look, couches are comfortable, they’re dependable. They support you when you’re down. If you can’t appreciate that kind of bond, maybe you’re the one with issues.”

Another AI video from Newsom's office on Tuesday showed Vance praising couches and delivering a history of them.

The videos resemble in style those Trump and his allies have pushed mocking Democrats, with a slew from the president this week referencing the QAnon "medbeds" conspiracy theory, and containing racist images of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

‘Assault on the entire West’: Vance outdone as fellow Republicans ramp up terror talk

CONCORD, N.C. — Vice President JD Vance’s visit to a sweltering hangar at an airport outside Charlotte on Wednesday provided a campaign-style platform for familiar attacks on Democrats as being “soft on crime,” even as news broke of a deadly shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas.

With a militarized backdrop including SWAT and emergency response vehicles flanked by local law enforcement officers, Vance sought to highlight both the killing of Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte light-rail last month and the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah two weeks ago.

But such efforts were somewhat overshadowed by news of the ICE shooting in Dallas, which left one immigrant detainee dead and two critically injured.

Authorities including President Donald Trump were quick to ascribe political motives to the shooter, who FBI Director Kash Patel said appeared to have inscribed anti-ICE messages on ammunition.

In North Carolina, Vance called the Dallas perpetrator a “violent left-wing extremist,” while insisting Democrats refrain from criticizing ICE agents for heavy-handed tactics as they implement Trump’s hardline immigration and deportation agenda.

‘Violent radicals’

Though Vance described Zarutska’s death as the result of “soft-on-crime policies” and a “political leadership that failed,” he did not threaten to impose National Guard troops and federal law enforcement resources on Charlotte, as the Trump administration has in Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, claiming to be tackling runaway crime.

Instead, Vance said that if Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles and North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein — both Democrats — “ask for our help, we would absolutely send it, because we believe in helping people, regardless of whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.

“We want to go where we can have a real partnership between local law enforcement and the federal officials so that we can root out the crime.”

Without specifying the target of his criticism, Vance charged: “We’ve got a crew of violent radicals in the United States of America who think we ought to make it harder for police to keep us safe than easier for police to keep us safe.”

Vance also repeated an unfounded claim by administration officials that a far-left network was behind the killing of Kirk.

“Over the next couple of years, the Trump administration is going to do everything that we can to dismantle the networks, to destroy the funding and to make it harder for people to kill one another just because they disagree with what somebody says,” Vance said.

Whatley v. Cooper

Republicans have blamed Roy Cooper, the former Democratic governor turned candidate in a contest that could decide control of the U.S. Senate next year, for Zarutska’s shocking death.

“The blood of this innocent woman can literally be seen dripping from the killer’s knife, and now her blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail, including Former Disgraced Governor and ‘Wannabe Senator’ Roy Cooper,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial this month.

DeCarlos Brown Jr., charged in Zarutska’s murder, received a misdemeanor charge of misusing 911 in January but was released by a magistrate judge on a written promise to appear.

Asked by Raw Story on Wednesday if the Republican-controlled state General Assembly should bear some responsibility for Zarutska’s death, given its role in establishing the law governing pre-trial release, Vance said, “I think every politician who didn’t work hard to keep violent criminals behind bars deserves to have some of the blame, but at the very top of that list is Governor Cooper, because at the time that we were pushing these soft-on-crime policies, Governor Cooper was the man in charge.”

Trump has urged supporters to vote in the forthcoming Senate election for Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman.

On Wednesday, speaking before Vance, Whatley attempted to link Zarutska’s death to his opponent by pointing to a 2020 executive order, issued by Cooper as governor, to create a racial equity task force, following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Whatley claimed the order pledged to “reimagine law enforcement in North Carolina.”

The report released by the task force, an advisory body of which Cooper was not a member, included a section headed, “Reimagining Public Safety,” but those words do not appear in Cooper’s order.

"I don't think we need to reimagine law enforcement," Whatley said. "What we need to do is enforce the law, and back the blue."

A Cooper campaign spokesperson responded: "Roy Cooper is the only candidate who spent his entire career prosecuting violent crimnals and keeping thousands of them behind bars as attorney general, and signing tough on crime laws and stricter bail policy as governor. DC insider and Big Oil lobbyist Michael Whatley is desperate to distract from his support for cuts to law enforcement that make North Carolinians less safe."

Whatley faulted Cooper for briefly marching with Black Lives Matter activists in June 2020, outside the Executive Mansion in Raleigh, a couple days after a protest turned violent and a police station was pelted with projectiles, store windows were smashed and fires started.

“We cannot focus so much on the property damage that we forget why people are in the streets,” Cooper said at the time.

“We have to constructively channel our anger, frustration and sadness to force accountability and action. If we don’t, then we haven’t learned anything. We have to have these conversations, and then move beyond them to do the work of ending racism and building safe, thriving communities for everyone.”

‘Under attack’

During Vance’s visit on Wednesday, the most incendiary comments came from two Republican U.S. House members.

“Western civilization is under attack,” said Rep. Mark Harris, who represents North Carolina’s Eighth District, citing the deaths of Zarutska and Kirk.

“These tragedies are not isolated incidents, but signs of a national epidemic of lawlessness and division that threatens the very fabric of our society. Iryna and Charlie have opened many eyes to the battle being waged against our nation. But this war isn’t just against America — it’s an assault on the entire West.”

Formerly senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Charlotte, Harris declared that “Christ has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of sound mind.”

Rep. Addison McDowell, of the Sixth District, charged that cities across the U.S. were “run by left-wing lunatics who don’t have a spine and would rather coddle the criminals than enforce the law.

“They would rather see the likes of Iryna Zarutska murdered on a light rail on the way to work” than “lock up a dangerous criminal who had been in and out of our system,” McDowell claimed.

“Far-left activists that call themselves judges […] let an unhinged and unstable man out into the community leading to the horrific murder of Iryna that should have never happened,” he said.

This story was updated on Sept. 25, 2025 at 5:09 p.m. ET to include a statement from the Cooper campaign.

'Irresponsible and sick': JD Vance ripped for trying to 'score' points using deaths at ICE

Vice President JD Vance’s knee-jerk response to a report that multiple detainees at an ICE facility in Dallas were gunned down by a white sniper set off an avalanche of criticism on social media.

Linking to an X post on tragedy unfolding in Dallas from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, where she wrote in part, “The shooter is deceased by a self-inflicted gun shot wound. While we don’t know motive yet, we know that our ICE law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them. It must stop," Vance jumped into the fray and seemingly had no idea who was killed.

Vance commented, “The obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop. I'm praying for everyone hurt in this attack and for their families.”

Former RNC spokesperson Tim Miller fired back, “The obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop. I'm praying for everyone hurt in this attack and for their families.”

He then added, “Vance is essentially doing here what the right has been having a conniption fit over Kimmel for. Recklessly, callously, and mistakenly trying to blame the other political tribe for a tragedy. And he's the f------ VP not a late-night host. Log off and do your job sir.”

“Hey @JDVance, did you say anything about the law enforcement shooting in PA last week where officers were killed? Did that just not fit your narrative? Maybe I missed it but I don't think so,” accused Fred Guttenberg whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was murdered in the Parkland high school shooting.

X commenter Von Solo, pointed out, “Turns out the people hurt (and targeted) were the detainees. Now who could have possibly put a target on their back??”

Meidas Touch Network responded, “Based on what we know now, the people who were killed were detainees—not ICE. Maybe wait a beat before trying to capitalize on every tragedy? You’re the Vice President of the United States. Not a random s--- poster.”

“Catching up on this shooting in Dallas. So two detained immigrants were shot by some deranged person, and Vance, Noem, and all of MAGA are framing it as an attack on ICE agents?” podcaster Mike Nellis wrote on Bluesky.

"Pretty sick that it was the immigrants who were killed here and you would have no idea at all by Noem and Vance’s posts," The CATO Institute's David Bier wrote.

'No unity with terrorist sympathizers!' Vance urges MAGA base to target left-wing groups

Vice President JD Vance and top White House officials appeared on slain MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk's podcast Monday, using the platform to call on right-wing supporters to threaten left-wing organizations.

Vance, the guest host, made several unsubstantiated claims about political opponents and broad allegations that liberal organizations were responsible for Kirk's death, although investigators have said they believe that suspect Tyler Robinson acted alone, The New York Times reports.

No official motive has yet to be announced by the FBI, The Times. Spencer Cox, the Republican governor of Utah, has said that the suspect has "leftist ideology."

Vance and other MAGA lawmakers have suggested a crackdown on people who speak out against Kirk's rhetoric.

"When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out — and, hell, call their employer," Vance said.

The vice president called Kirk a "true friend" and said he was "desperate" for unity following his assassination — but then said it wasn't possible.

"There's no unity with people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers...Soros' OSF and the Ford Foundation...benefit from generous tax treatment...How do they reward us? By setting fire to the house built by the American family."

It's still unclear what the shooter's motives are. Vance alleges a statistical fact, which is unverified.

"While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far-Left."

'Ruh roh!' Vance roasted as old post denying existence of Trump-Epstein doodle surfaces

Vice President JD Vance was roasted online Monday afternoon as House Democrats released a bawdy drawing and letter between President Donald Trump and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein — something Vance demanded in July.

A slew of responses revived the vice president's claims and request, which he initially posted on X back in July, in an attack on the Wall Street Journal report indicating that Trump had created a potential letter found in a 50th birthday book for Epstein.

"Forgive my language but this story is complete and utter bulls---," Vance wrote via X. "The WSJ should be ashamed for publishing it. Where is this letter? Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it? Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?"

He complained that The Journal's reporting was unethical.

"Doesn’t it violate some rule of journalistic ethics to publish a letter like this without showing it to the victim of this hit piece? Will the people who have bought into every hoax against President Trump show an ounce of skepticism before buying into this bizarre story?" Vance wrote.

On Monday, things changed after the sketch was released by lawyers from Epstein's estate.

Users had a lot to say, with many calling him out.

Atlantic writer Tom Nichols wrote "ruh roh" on X.

"Of course, maybe you'll claim this drawing, with good wishes and Trump's signature, is not from the birthday book James Comer and his Oversight Committee received in response to their subpoena to Epstein's estate lawyer but, if so, good luck with that," Ira 'Greybeard Homer' Goldman posted on X.

"JD's personal quest to be wrong about as many things as humanly possible is truly something to behold, but that's your brain on MAGA I guess," Jessiah, Host of Pondering Politics YouTube channel, wrote via X.

"Hey VP @JDVance, turns out the story isn’t bulls---, and your boss lied about the birthday note. You going to apologize now amirite?" Congressman and former mayor of Long Beach, Robert Garcia, wrote on X.

"Many politicians lie. Many politicians are condescendingly smug. Few politicians are as condescendingly smug about their lies as @JDVance. It's actually quite impressive!" Former President Barack Obama speech writer and founder of Crooked Media Jon Favreau posted on X.

".@JDVance, you should be ashamed that you’re covering up your boss Donald Trump’s close and personal friendship with a pedophile," Ken Martin, chair of the Democrats, posted on X.

"Funny how this letter turned up after all @JDVance. It’s a shame your dignity never did," Senate Majority PAC posted on X.

"Now that the letter you said didn’t exist has been published what do you have to say @JDVance?" asked Michael Kasdan, IP/Tech Lawyer and NYU Law professor, via X.