Nearly nine years, one presidential term and three campaigns later, Donald Trump’s rare honest words from early 2016 remain all too true: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
Trump has never literally tested his claim, of course, but he has tried to overthrow an election, been adjudicated as a sexual abuser and financial fraudster, gotten convicted for 34 felonies, lifted top-secret documents and said all manner of outrageous things that would doom any other politician. And still, he retains enough voters to be a decent bet for re-election.
It turns out, however, that Trump’s Teflon superpower isn’t transferable. In the two weeks since he picked as his running mate JD Vance — Trump’s MAGA Mini-Me in just about every respect — Vance has been on the defensive for comments he made before and since becoming Ohio’s junior senator just 19 months ago. By now you know the ones I mean — remarks about the “childless sociopaths” of the ruling class, a.k.a. Democrats, and specifically “childless cat ladies” led by none other than Kamala Harris, now the likely Democratic presidential nominee.
It’s been a disastrous debut, polls confirm: Vance is the least liked vice presidential choice in five decades, and the first with a net-negative approval rating.
Yet here’s what’s interesting: Trump is on the defensive for Vance’s inanities, too. It’s a most unfamiliar stance for him. Had Trump made the cat lady crack, it would probably have been soon forgotten, following all his other insults, idiocies and lies into a memory hole. Trump doesn’t explain his outrages — when you explain, you’re losing, the political truism goes — and he never apologizes.