Censorship, Trump, and 2024 Election
A contentious interview between George Stephanopoulos and Senator JD Vance (R-OH) ended in Vance’s microphone getting abruptly cut off, but not without Vance getting several uncontested shots in regarding the media’s obsessions with January 6th, the ongoing lawfare against former President Donald Trump, and the ongoing censorship collusion between Big Tech and the intelligence communities.
The interview ended with an exchange on Schedule F (former President Trump’s proposal to depoliticize the entrenched bureaucracy that works under the Executive Branch) ,and with Stephanopoulos’ nasty habit of framing an uncomfortable response to a question with his own dishonest debate point before fleeing to the next question (or the interview itself, in this instance), in a manner not unlike a silent flatulator fleeing an elevator.
In the instance above, Stephanopoulos dishonestly bifurcates “the military” from mid-level Department of Defense bureaucrats that, per Vance, stymied Trump’s efforts to get the military out of the Middle East, especially after the droning of Iran’s General Soleimani, and which resulted in their being exposed to deadly attacks such as this week’s droning of Tower 22. Vance’s refusal to back down leads to his mic being cut off, and to the smug shot of Stephanopoulos looking at papers while Vance is presumably shouting into the void.
This was the tone throughout as Stephanopoulos tried to get a number of cheap shots in- ranging from the E.J. Carroll trial, where he tried to get Vance to respond to an Lincoln Project ad, to the 2020 election and a belabored hypothetical made moot by revisions to the Electoral Count Act, to Vance’s reversal as to Trump’s fitness for office- which is what the interview opened with.
Stephanopoulos’ tone while interviewing Vance was something more than the usual contempt for conservatives to be expected from the media, or even from a Clintonista lifer masquerading as media. From my experience covering Jorge Ramos’ interviews of Hispanic conservatives such as Ted Cruz, Mayra Flores, etc., I immediately identified this to be the inquisition of a class traitor- in this case, the acclaimed author of Hillbilly Elegy who in 2015 and 2016 professed to be a Never Trumper, only to later change course.
The purpose of this interview wasn’t really to have an exchange of ideas with Vance but to heckle and chastise him on a number of issues and hopefully box him into a gotcha moment. Vance, to his credit, spotted the play- running circles around Stephanopoulos in the process, and getting his mic cut for his troubles.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned interview as aired on ABC This Week on Sunday, February 4th, 2024:
JD VANCE: I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and it’s leading the white working class to a very dark place.
He’s leading our political discourse to a very negative place.
If Trump is elected president, he has to be a much different president than he was a candidate. As a candidate, he was fundamentally divisive, arrogant.
I’m a Never Trump guy. I never liked him.
GEORGE STEPAHNPOULOS: That was JD Vance back in 2016. Now he’s a Republican senator from Ohio supporting Donald Trump and he joins us this morning. Senator, thank you for joining this morning. Back in 2016, you also wrote that Trump is unfit for office. Why have you reversed yourself?
U.S. SEN. JD VANCE (R-OH): Well, I think in office actually, George, he did a great job and he proved me wrong. He also proved a lot of other people wrong which is why I think he’s doing so well in the polls these days. We have to remember, George, that Biden promised to return to normalcy and yet we have a world on fire, we have war in the Red Sea, war in Eastern Europe, war on the southern border, a terrible drug crisis and of course, a lot of young Americans who can’t afford to buy a home because interest rates are so high. So compare that to the track record of four years of Donald Trump where we had a secure border, we had rising wages for the middle class, and we had the American Dream that seemed more attainable and more achievable for more people. It’s hard not to conclude that I was wrong and so many were wrong about Donald Trump back in 2015. He delivered, George. He did a good job and I think that’s why we ought to give him another run at it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Of course, wages are rising now and we just saw that economic report coming this week showing the economy continues to grow- new job growth as well. But since then, Donald Trump not only lost the 2020 election and tried to overturn the results, he also faced a series of legal judgments and indictments. Most recently this E. Jean Carroll case where juries have found him liable for sexual assault leading to ads like this:
LINCOLN PROJECT AD VOICE-OVER: Supporting Donald Trump sends a message to every abuser. Every rapist. And every man who’s ever used his power to hurt a woman. Because if he can do it, why shouldn’t they?
STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you respond to that? That your support of trump is sanctioning that kind of behavior, sexual assault and defamation?
VANCE: Well, I think it’s actually very unfair to the victims of sexual assault to say that somehow their lives are being worse by electing Donald Trump for president when what he’s trying to do I think is restore prosperity. So, I think it’s insulting to victims of sexual assault. If you actually look at so many of the court cases against Donald Trump, George, this is not about prosecuting Trump for something that he did. It’s about throwing him off the ballot because Democrats feel that they can’t beat him at the ballot box, and so they’re trying to defeat him in court. This case, like so many of the legal cases against Donald Trump, they’re trumped up. They’re in extremely left wing jurisdictions or it’s actually the Biden administration prosecuting his chief political rival. I think most Americans recognize that this is not what we want to fight the 2024 election over. Let’s fight it over issues. Let’s fight it over how to redeliver prosperity to the American worker and peace to the world at large, not over these ridiculous court cases that frankly they have been throwing at Trump for well before he became a political candidate, and they’re going to be going after him for a long time because his agenda is actually a threat to the people who have been calling the shots in this country for far too long.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You call it a ridiculous case. These were juries that found him liable for sexual assault and defamation. That’s ridiculous?
VANCE: These are juries, George, in extremely left wing jurisdictions. These are cases that are very often funded by left wing donors, and they’re cases that are funded explicitly to harm him politically, not to seek justice for any particular group of individuals, George. If you look at all of these cases, the through line- twofold: Number one, they’re funded by Donald Trump’s political opponents, and the goal here is not to help us actually have a real conversation about how to advance the country forward. Their goal is to defeat Trump at the core. It’s because these people know they can’t defeat him at the ballot box. It’s really shameful actually, George. If you think about so many of these people who say, “we’re living in a world where there’s a threat to democracy, Donald Trump or his supporters are threats to democracy”, and yet they’re using the courts to deny the American people from even having a choice. If you don’t like Donald Trump, of course, you can vote against him, but you should at least have that choice, and it’s telling that the people who talk about threats to democracy are trying to destroy the democratic process in this country. We’ve got to talk about the issues, George. There are so many crises happening all across the world. There are so many problems right here at home. I think Donald Trump is the best guy to fix those problems, and I think that we have a very, very good chance of persuading the American people. What they don’t want to talk about is weird juries in New York City. They want to talk about how to make their lives better and how to bring the world to a more peaceful place.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So juries in New York City are not legitimate when they- when they find someone liable for sexual defamation and assault?
VANCE: Well, when the cases are funded by left wing donors and when the case has absolute left wing bias all over it, George, absolutely I think that we should call into question that- that particular conclusion. We have to remember, of course, that these cases exist not because they were trying to seek justice. Reed Hoffman, a far left donor, did not fund this case because he cares about what happens to sexual assault victims. He funded this case to harm his political opponent, Donald Trump. It’s pretty weird. It’s a weird thing to do…
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