Theories abound as to why JD Vance, once a promising Yale Law graduate with a best-selling memoir, went MAGA. Some argue that it was always a mistake to confuse the vice president’s cosmopolitanism for intellectual sophistication, pointing out that “Hillbilly Elegy” is a bad book that panders to ugly right-wing stereotypes about his working class family of origin. Others suggest he is an empty shell who will become whatever it takes to gain money and power, as evidenced by his constantly shifting attitudes about race and religion. The truth likely falls in the “why not both?” arena. After all, empty and insecure people have often been drawn to far-right ideologies. 

But there is one under-appreciated possibility for the MAGA turn of a man who once called Donald Trump “America’s Hitler”: that he finally found an audience willing to laugh at his unfunny jokes.

Vance is clearly embroiled in a lifelong struggle with a common ailment of self-serious men who consider themselves profound geniuses. He longs to be the funniest guy in the room, but he is unable to understand how humor works. But the vice president has discovered what second-rate talents that end up as the “comic” relief on Fox News learned long ago: The right-wing crowd doesn’t care if you’re not funny just as long as you’re cruel. 

Vance is taking full advantage of MAGA’s lack of discernment in the last weeks of the midterm campaign. During a stop in Texas supporting the Republican Senate candidate, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, Vance responded to a fan by saying, “I love you, too, sir. And in a totally platonic way, to be clear. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.” The audience roared with laughter, apparently unable to realize that calling Paxton’s Democratic opponent “gay” is less witty than if Vance had made fart noises with his armpit. 

The vice president can’t stop with tedious jokes about Talarico, who is leading in statewide polls. On his way to Texas, Vance falsely accused Talarico of having “a weird focus on transgender kids and drag queens,” topics that he and Trump bring up every chance they get. Vance added, “typically people who say stuff like that tend to have some pretty unusual search histories.” 

But Vance isn’t content to simply dabble in homophobia and transphobia. Racism is also his forte. During a North Carolina rally on Monday, he called non-white congresswomen “crazies” and mispronounced the name of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. When a protester jumped up to demand that the Trump administration release the Epstein files, Vance suggested, apparently taking note of the young man’s darker skin, that the protester was in the U.S. because of “illegal border crossings.” 

At another event, Vance called Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic candidate for Senate, a “little weasel” who should “shut his mouth and show a little gratitude.” This was not out of character; the vice president often demands that people of color bow and scrape before white people for graciously allowing them to exist. But this time he got rebuked by the far funnier El-Sayed, who responded that Vance “had a cute little rally” with the “five people who like him.”

But the vice president’s lack of wit was perhaps best illustrated at an Ohio rally in support of GOP gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, when he suggested that Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee, has a substance abuse problem. “I did promise Amy that I would meet her at a bar later. I understand she’s into that sort of thing,” Vance said, pausing for laughter that even the MAGA audience could barely muster. 

Vance’s implication can be traced to a Republican ad that paints Acton as an alcoholic after a 2019 incident in which the police were called during a loud fight with her husband. The call was reported not violent by officers, and her campaign claims the situation is being blown out of proportion. (Acton has also been hit with ads featuring insults from her mother, Donna Arthur, with whom she has been estranged since 1978 after Arthur refused to support her when she accused her stepfather of molesting and raping her between the ages of nine and 12. According to the New York Times, Acton’s stepfather entered a not-guilty plea and was indicted by a grand jury, then went on the run from Ohio before standing trial.) 

Vance’s stream of insults ring particularly noxious when considering that he spent the summer portraying himself as a heartfelt Catholic convert whose salvation has imbued him with a newfound sense of Christian grace. In an obvious effort to soft-launch a 2028 presidential campaign, the vice president published “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith” in June, and strived mightily to convince interviewers they were beholding a humble servant of Jesus Christ. 

Vance told USA Today that “my faith tells me to fight against” the blind pursuit of ambition and instead “focus on the good” and “make wise decisions and moral decisions.” In an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal, he wrote that he’s learned “to love all parts of our Christian communion,” including those “who voted for me and those who didn’t.” He went on “The View” with this gentle Christian message, claiming regret over “boneheaded” insults in the past, such as when he described childless women as being “miserable,” “sociopathic” and “cat ladies. The hosts weren’t having it, though, pointing out that there is nothing of Christian communion in the administration’s attacks on Black people and immigrants, and leaving a visibly uncomfortable vice president to pretend not to know what they were talking about. 

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Vance may be able to wriggle around his very un-Christian insults and falsehoods about Democratic politicians by calling politics a “dirty business,” as he did in the Wall Street Journal. But it’s impossible to square his claims of grace and salvation with the utter nastiness he unleashes on immigrants, most of whom are Christians themselves. He has yet to apologize for falsely accusing Haitian immigrants — most of whom are Catholic, like himself — of stealing people’s dogs and cats to eat them. Shortly after publishing “Communion,” Vance accused immigrants of making America “dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous.” (This is also flat-out false, as immigration has been proven to boost the economy, and the country is objectively cleaner than it was decades ago, when a thick cloud of smog hung over many American cities.)

Through it all, Vance seems to be hoping that the crowd that sees his “Christian charity” face isn’t the same one showing up to hoot at his lame “no homo” jokes about the devout Talarico. This behavior was on display during his recent CBS town hall event, where he tucked away the bad insult comedy and put on his choir boy mask. The dishonesty and hypocrisy reached stratospheric levels when audience members, including a Catholic nun, challenged Vance on his support for mass deportations and his racist lies about immigrants. 

“To the extent that my rhetoric has been imperfect here,” Vance said, “that’s on me.” Then he framed the administration’s widespread abuses as reasonable, even compassionate, restrictions on immigration. 

His comments came mere hours after he falsely blamed the riots in France on immigrants, posing on X that “liberals imported the third world into France and other countries” while “ignor[ing] fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility.” No doubt Vance would deflect and deny if he were confronted on it, but there’s no way to interpret his words except as a claim that people of different backgrounds cannot live together without violence — a frequent insinuation of his that is never slowed by the fact that his own wife and children are Indian-American. 

This is ultimately why — despite the undeniable ugliness of Vance’s insults of Democrats, immigrants, queer people and single women — his humor rarely generates the outrage he’s clearly trolling for. Vance tends to come across as more of a pathetic striver than an effective bully. Verbal jabs work a lot better if the would-be roaster has a sense of self- confidence, or at least the ability to fake it. Whether he’s speaking of love or hate, Vance never really seems to be talking with any conviction at all, beyond the hope that whatever he’s saying will win him more power. 

The post JD Vance is America’s worst insult comedian appeared first on Salon.com.

This article is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

Donald Trump’s ability to jail millions of people without even a bond hearing depends on what the Supreme Court thinks about one man’s case. 

Russ Vought Wants to Veto NIH Funding

The White House’s attempts to clamp down on government funding — in direct defiance of Congress, which has largely rolled over — have become sort of cyclical.

First, there was DOGE. Then, there were a series of efforts by Russ Vought to continue DOGE’s work — if not literally, than in spirit. One particular target of his has been the National Institutes of Health, and for a period of months in 2025 Vought blocked the agency’s research grants until a mostly quiet lobbying campaign by Republican senators forced him to relent. But Vought, the White House Office of Management and Budget director, has reared his head periodically over the last year and a half, each time with a new gambit to slash government grant-making and not spend money Congress had directed the White House to spend.

Another such episode unfolded this weekend, documented in three reports from the Washington Post, which broke the news, then Politico and finally the New York Times.

This story involves Vought attempting to again assert control over NIH grantmaking — the Post reported that he was concerned that despite rounds of cuts to research into LGBTQ issues, women’s health, and other supposedly “DEI”-tainted initiatives, the NIH’s work was still overly “woke.” Politico and the Times reported another motivation for meddling in NIH grantmaking: to screw with Harvard, after repeated, failed Trump administration efforts to do so.

Vought and Trump reportedly summoned Jay Bhattacharya, the NIH director, who, while a fellow ideological traveler with Trump and Vought in some respects, is reportedly a defender of research into racial disparities in health outcomes and a friend of Harvard’s president. A big argument ensued, according to the three reports, and Bhattacharya refused to let Vought get more deeply involved with his agency’s work.

But Trump apparently thought Vought made some good points. And, so, now we are on track for a new executive order to put Vought or someone similar in charge of this research funding — to move NIH grantmaking, or at least the power to veto individual line items, from the hands of career scientists to political appointees. The Post reported on Saturday afternoon that the White House was looking into an order establishing a “commission to review the NIH’s grants”; Politico then reported on Saturday evening that Trump had directed Vought to draft such an order, and the Times reported on Sunday that work of drafting the order had already begun — it will, the Times said, “create a new external committee with the power to veto awards in the National Institutes of Health’s vast research portfolio that do not conform to Mr. Trump’s political agenda.”

This sounds a lot like another, broader plan from earlier this year to put political appointees in charge of all grantmaking that was roundly denounced by scientists and politicians of both parties, and then, in August, blocked in the Senate (and later in the House). But, typically for this Congress, not forever. Just until after the midterms.

This new attempt at an executive order would be another direct challenge to Congress, one to which Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Republican chair of the appropriations committee, should have to respond. We will see if she considers legislation to block it permanently, and not simply until after her reelection.

German Far-Right Continues to Rise

A new round of German elections Sunday again showed the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland gaining ground, winning a plurality in one state for the second time this month.

• In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, north of Berlin, the party came in first, with 38.3% of the vote. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD) came in second at 35.4%.
• Earlier this month, in another German state, Saxony-Anhalt, AfD almost won an outright majority, with 44% of the vote.
• In Berlin, which also held elections Sunday, AfD’s strength grew to 16.3% — significant in the capital. A left-wing party, Linke, came in first place with 25.3% of the vote.
• Chroniclers of the far-right see the party’s rise as a particularly dark sign, given that it is the first time since the 1940s when the far-right in Germany has shown such strength.
• Terrible numbers for Chancellor’s Friedrich Merz’s party in recent elections also raise the possibility that AfD’s rise could challenge the national government.
• AfD is extreme even by the standards of European far-right parties, stridently opposing immigration and LGBTQ rights while also seeking to revise how German history is remembered. The party shares many connection with Trump world.