In case it hasn't been mentioned in the past 15 seconds, a reminder: Sen. JD Vance went to Yale Law School. The Ohio Republican was selected as Donald Trump's running mate in no small part because of his overrated intellectual chops. In the 207-word announcement adding Vance to the ticket, Trump used the word "Yale" four times and even made sure to note that Vance graduated "Summa Cum Laude" from Ohio State University. Vance fashions himself a public intellectual, spending endless hours giving chin-scratching interviews on right-wing podcasts and to Ross Douthat of the New York Times. He name-drops far-right and even Nazi academics like Carl Schmitt and flings around plenty of five-dollar words. As Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei bluntly stated at Axios, "Vance can put an intellectual wrapper around Trump's red meat."
Watching interviews with Vance suggests his main job is to "translate" Trump's babble into coherent-sounding talking points. Vance lies just as much as Trump, but with a syntax that resembles normal human speech. On NBC News Sunday, Vance was asked about Trump's bizarre assertion he had "concepts of a plan" when he was asked during Tuesday's debate about healthcare. Vance claimed Trump didn't end the Affordable Care Act because his philosophy is "to fix problems even if he disagreed with the original legislation." This is false. Trump tried to kill the ACA in 2017 and failed only because a few Republican senators voted to keep it. Still, by using normal spoken English, Vance was able to set off fewer alarm bells.
