After Republican vice presidential pick J.D. Vance went viral last week for being extraordinarily awkward at a donut shop in Georgia, Democrat Tim Walz had to poke fun at him during a snack stop in Pennsylvania.
Pursuing sweets like whoopie pies and donuts at Cherry Hill Orchards in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Walz slid in a joke while speaking to voters.
“Look at me, I have no problem picking out donuts.”
Wait, so you don’t order donuts by first stating your name, then asking every employee in the store who makes eye contact “How long have you worked here”?
Thanks to you I finally decided to watch the video of him donut shopping and it didn’t seem that bad. Just some out of touch rich guy struggling to make small talk.
But nowhere near the level of couch-fucking weird everyone’s been claiming.
So yeah I guess it would be better if he were a total sociopath and could more convincingly fake excitement during small talk?
The part that made the video bad wasn’t his behavior, it was how clearly the staff knew it was a meaningless publicity stunt. The staff has enough braincells to know that this guy’s policies, if elected, would do nothing to make their lives better, and that they are just pawns to make him look like he appeals to common folk. This is not something specific to this candidate, but his entire party.
They should’ve just declined him as a customer, or insisted that no recording at all could be done on their property. That would have sent a clearer message to him, unless you think the existence of this video helps the Kamala campaign because they will overreact to it and add it to the “he’s weird” pile. I agree he’s probably that bad kind of weird (I believe all Republicans are either so rich and selfish it is indistinguishable from being straight up evil, are racist, or being blackmailed) , but I don’t see that being demonstrated in the video.
They should’ve just declined him as a customer, or insisted that no recording at all could be done on their property.
The employees at the donut shop did not make that call. The owner (who likely wasn’t on site) made that call. I do believe the one employee had her face blurred because she did not agree to being recorded.
The Vance campaign should not have released the video, because even if it’s not as bad as people are saying, it’s not good and does not help his campaign in the slightest.
I do believe the one employee had her face blurred because she did not agree to being recorded.
Nope, Vance’s team released the footage without blurring her. It was third-party news sites that blurred her when they reposted it, because she clearly didn’t want to be filmed. But Vance’s team 100% posted it without any kind of blur at all.
I think Democrats are trying to take lessons learned from the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, applying them to properly defeat Trump. Those campaigns they felt too civilized and proper to stoop into Trump’s tactics, and that barely got them anywhere.
To defeat Trump, we ended with an organic version of the “birther conspiracy” which is the couch-fucker thing. Getting the media all riled up with silly things so that Trump’s distractions become meaningless is part of the strategy, the “but her emails” of 2024 is the “weird” thing. In both cases the Democrats don’t have to be delusional, it’s kind of tongue-in-cheek while the Trump campaign is having meltdown after meltdown over it.
A visit to a donut shop should be a layup for any campaign to look like they understand the common voter, it’s not that Vance looked like a perv doing it, it’s just telling that the Trump campaign can’t even succeed in that.
It is just an out of touch rich guy struggling to make small talk, but a particularly bad example. It’s made worse because of his self-mythologizing of growing up ‘normal’ and poor and incessant talk of how if all “these people” behaved as they should they’d be where he is.
It’s really weird for a national politician going out to shake hands to not have the charisma to have no more than a single question and single response and seem to have negative interest in the visit.
Good point. “Thanks for coming, we’d be happy to serve you, but we do not allow recording video in our store.”
That said he is pretty awkward ordering the donuts. He asked for whatever makes sense instead of asking for a recommendation.
My take on JD Vance is that he’s a talented guy who figured out that if he can transform into this right wing guy then he can have a career. Being a conservative catholic is part of that mask. The biggest tell to me is the timing of his conversion and the fact that his wife is Hindu. If he takes his Christianity as seriously as he claims, then his top priority should be to convert his wife, not respect her choice to do her own thing.
If he takes his Christianity as seriously as he claims, his wife wouldn’t have any choice: she would be required to submit to the authority of her husband.
