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Sigh. So Yale Law School’s own J.D. Vance was selected as Donald Trump’s running mate yesterday. It’s a victory for ass-kissers everywhere, and those who haven’t spent the last few years writing about the very junior senator from Ohio are trying to figure out what the maybe vice president is all about.
Josh McLaurin, a Georgia state senator, was actually Vance’s roommate in law school, and they famously remained in contact after graduation. He posted on social media saying that Vance is “angry and vindictive” and a “perfect for for Trump’s revenge.”
In case you were unclear how McLaurin *really* feels about Vance, he concludes by saying “JD’s rise is a triumph for angry jerks everywhere.”
And as eluded to in the post, McLaurin is the same guy who shared messages he had with Vance back in 2016 trash talking Trump. He wrote then:
“I think most people are not very ideological, and Trump, while I find him loathsome, touches a legitimate nerve. You should read David Frum’s piece in the Atlantic on the Republican revolt. But I’m not surprised by Trump’s rise, and I think the entire party has only itself to blame,” Vance messaged McLaurin. “We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people, and I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer those people SOMETHING (and hell, maybe even expand our appeal to working-class black people in the process) or a demagogue would. We are now at that point. Trump is the fruit of the party’s collective neglect.”
And concluded with the line that has inspired a million headlines.
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?”
But the best part is, McLaurin isn’t the only Yale Law classmate out there making Vance look petty AF. In 2022, fellow Yalie and and self-described Vance BFF Jamil Javani (who is a piece of work in his own right) said that the critical panning of the movie adaptation of Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, was the “last straw” that turned Vance to the far right. This gives some of the best insight into what turned Vance’s thinking on Trump from “America’s Hitler” to his running mate.
Perhaps unintentionally, but this draws a clear picture of a thin-skinned man who’d rather change his entire personality than actually listen to criticism.
It’s not a particularly flattering portrait of a leader. But what do you expect from a liar who has backward ideas about domestic violence, who listens to pharma companies about the opioid crisis, who invokes Andrew Jackson without irony, and mashes together right-wing buzzwords like he’s playing MadLibs?
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].
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