J.D. Vance Proves It: Trump Hires the Very Worst People

Trump�s new running mate will haunt him just like all of the fools and
weasels from his first administration.
Dr. Frankenstein and his latest creation

Just about the best news J.D. Vance got since joining Donald Trump on the
Republican presidential ticket may have been the Associated Press running a
fact-check with the headline, �No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch.�
That the news wire subsequently pulled the story�not, alas, because they
found evidence their top-line conclusion was incorrect but because it
�didn�t go through our standard editing process��hardly diminishes the
exculpation.

Vance has had a rough go since joining the Trump ticket, as the media and
Democratic opposition pore through his record, surfacing peculiar policy
ideas like higher taxes for childless Americans and more voting power for
those with offspring�the two key planks in his agenda to eliminate the
national scourge of �childless cat ladies.� (He later clarified that he�s
�got nothing against cats� but remains contemptuous of women without
children.) Not since Dan Quayle picked a fight with television character
Murphy Brown has a number two engaged in such a self-defeatingly quixotic
escapade. And none of that even gets at the increasing scrutiny of his
shape-shifting sycophancy, which my colleague Alex Shephard epically and
exhaustively detailed on this site, concluding that Trump�s running mate
may be �the worst vice presidential pick ever.�

The early polling on Vance certainly suggests he�s on course to join Sarah
Palin on the short list of genuine albatross selections. CNN�s Harry Enten
crunched the numbers and found that Vance is the only vice presidential
nominee since at least 1980 to emerge from the nominating convention with
net-negative approval ratings. It�s gotten so bad for Vance that
Republicans, and even Vance�s new boss, are openly second-guessing his
selection. But in doing so, they�re only making things worse for
themselves. After all, as I wrote last week, a running mate�s main
electoral function is to shape voters� perceptions of the presidential
nominee by opening a window into their judgment. In that regard, then,
Vance has become an inescapable reminder that Trump�who built his reality
TV profile as the �You�re fired!� guy�has terrible judgment in hiring.

Trump�s seditious denouement on January 6 had the effect of memory-holing
much of his administration�s more mundane scandals. But we can dredge up a
few names just to remind ourselves of how incompetent and corrupt the Trump
administration was: Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who
resigned after squandering hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on
private travel; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt,
who resigned �after being embroiled in one ethics controversy after the
next,� as CNN put it; Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who �resigned under
the weight of more than a dozen federal investigations into his actions,�
according to The Washington Post (Zinke is back in Congress, of course,
where he is speculating that the recent attempt on Trump�s life was part of
a government �plot�); Mike Flynn, the national security adviser who lied to
the FBI in the Russia probe and went to jail (Trump pardoned him); swamp
thing and Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, who went up the river for tax
and bank fraud (Trump pardoned him too); alt-right guru Steve Bannon and
trade troll Peter Navarro, who were convicted of contempt of Congress;
would-be Batman villain Roger Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress
(Trump commuted his sentence before, ultimately, pardoning him too).

The list goes on and on. But don�t take my word for it�take Trump�s. Vice
President Mike Pence was �delusional� and �not a very good person,�
according to Trump (maybe that�s why he pointed an angry lynch mob in
Pence�s direction); James Mattis, Trump�s first defense secretary, was �the
world�s most overrated general�; Mark Milley, whom Trump appointed chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was so traitorous as to possibly deserve
�DEATH� (Trump�s caps, not mine); John Kelly, one of Trump�s many chiefs of
staff, was �by far the dumbest of my Military people�; Trump was �never a
big fan� of White House counsel Don McGahn but hired him anyway; as for
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, �he went through the nominating process and
he did very poorly,� Trump recalled. �I mean, he was mixed up and
confused.� Poor Trump, forced to witness his own appointees� incompetence
but apparently powerless to do anything about them.

Then there were the former women of the Trump administration. Stephanie
Grisham �didn�t have what it takes and that was obvious from the
beginning,� according to Trump. Grisham started with the Trump campaign in
2015 and served as his communications director and press secretary in the
White House before becoming Melania Trump�s chief of staff�all despite
clear incompetence �from the beginning!� Truly Trump is a personnel softy.
Alyssa Farah Griffin was a �Backbencher in the Trump Administration,� who
�had only glowing reviews of the Trump Administration until long after she
left��long, in this case, being roughly a month, when she publicly
condemned Trump after the January 6 assault on the Capitol. �When you give
a crazed, crying lowlife a break, and give her a job at the White House, I
guess it just didn�t work out,� Trump said of reality TV villainess Omarosa
Manigault Newman, raising the question of why even a softie like Trump
would give that kind of break. It seems like the only former staffer Trump
didn�t later insult and disown was Rob Porter, who resigned in the face of
spousal abuse allegations. (�We wish him well.� He did a good job.�)

Observers might be confused how the man who swore he hired only the �very
best people� would surround himself with such a cavalcade of feckless
dolts. When Fox News host Bret Baier asked him that question last year,
Trump blamed his own Washington na�vet� for the bad apples in his otherwise
spectacular, gilded administration. �I now know Washington probably better
than anybody,� he said. �I know the good ones and the bad ones, and we will
have really great, strong people.�

Having run the administration with the highest turnover rate in history
presumably gave Trump plenty of experience to avoid making the same
mistakes, but it�s not like later-term personnel were much better than
their predecessors in his own estimation. John Bolton, Trump�s third
national security adviser, was a �dope� who �Never had a clue, was
ostracized & happily dumped.� Mark Esper, Trump�s last confirmed defense
secretary, was �weak and totally ineffective�; Attorney General Bill Barr,
who parted ways with Trump only after belying his claims of widespread 2020
voter fraud and later said that Trump �shouldn�t be anywhere near the Oval
Office,� was �Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy� (though once
Barr endorsed him this year anyway, the magnanimous ex-president retracted
the �Lethargic� label).

This time, however, Trump has a secret weapon! His older son, Fredo Don
Jr., has �fashioned himself as a MAGA enforcer who would seek a �veto� over
any administration appointments that he views as being at odds with his
father�s agenda,� The New York Times reported earlier this month. It�s just
possible, however, that making his unqualified son an unappointed personnel
czar won�t solve the problem of Trump�s chronic staffing disasters. The
fundamental problem may be that Trump the (very) elder prizes neither
competence nor integrity in his team. Instead the prime qualifications for
entr�e into his inner circle are bottomless obsequiousness and, most
importantly, slavish, unquestioning loyalty.

Pence checked the first box but not the second. Vance has promised to do
both, which is why one of Don Jr.�s first acts as chief personnel enforcer
was to push hard for Vance as number two. The Vance experience has gone so
swimmingly that Anthony Scaramucci (a �highly unstable �nut job��), whose
short stint in Trump�s revolving gallery of communications directors is
best remembered for the coinage it inspired regarding brief stints in
office, recently wondered �how many Scaramuccis J.D. is going to last.�
(The Mooch subsequently �personally thank[ed]� Vance �for knocking me out
of the position of the worst Donald Trump hire. I didn�t think it would
happen but here we are and I am grateful�; he�s not right about
himself�zero indictments keeps him out of the top tier�but he may be about
Vance.)

Hitting a P.R. rough patch is not in itself fatal in Trump world. It can be
a veritable badge of honor. But drawing attention for views odd even in the
culture-war right is bad; that Vance is pulling the spotlight from Trump is
worse. So if the Harris campaign continues its initial hot streak and Trump
gets panicky, would it surprise anyone if he hits the eject button? That�s
too many steps down the road in this crazy election year to usefully
speculate on, but we can say one thing for certain: If Trump does dump
Vance, he will make clear that his latest bad hire has one thing in common
with all the others�it wasn�t Trump�s fault.

https://newrepublic.com/article/184328/jd-vance-trump-hires-terrible-
judgment