If you ever wondered what makes a snake slippery, it’s not spray tan.
That goo comes from a thin coat of fatty lubricant in a network of scales.
We saw the slime at work the other night on TV. No, it wasn’t a Jack Hanna segment.
If viewers stayed till the end of the vice presidential debate (or watched one particular moment on social media, as bunches of new Gen Z voters did), they saw how a snake slithers.
So, JD Vance. Did your guy lose the 2020 election? Simple question.
Pause. Calculate. Scan for a hole into which to disappear.
Uh, uh. “First of all, we are focused on the future,” Vance said, and tried to change the subject.
“A damning non-answer,” Tim Walz called it.
Slap that sucker into history’s pages.
Thanks for participating, Mr. Vance. You’ll receive the 2024 Presidential Election home edition on your way out.
As MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell would say later, Vance becomes the first vice presidential candidate ever to be unaware of who won the previous election.
Or as conservative commentator Charlie Sykes said, what we’d seen in the debate were the rhetorical stylings of a “bullshit artist.”
Donald Trump tried to save Obamacare?
Stronger doors to end school shootings?
Donald Trump peacefully handed over power?
Vance never supported a nationwide ban on abortion?
Every word a lie. JD, you’re no Jack Kennedy. You’re a 4-year-old with muddy hands behind your back.
But let’s stop here in the name of civility to agree on something that JD Vance said. That thing about focusing on the future. He speaks for many Americans on one key consideration: They look forward to a future when Donald Trump is held accountable for his actions.
One such American is Liz Cheney. Kamala Harris by her side at a Wisconsin rally when she joined the Democrat’s campaign, the one-time chairwoman of the House Republican Conference said:
“Anyone who recklessly tramples on our democratic values as Donald Trump has must never again stand behind the seal of the president of the United States.”
Profile in courage and all –- courage she has by the tanker truck — do Americans need Liz Cheney to tell them what their eyes have already confirmed?
Trump incited a mob that ransacked the Capitol. Officers died. He sat back scrolling Twitter and watching the chaos on TV.
As a new filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith asserts, when informed by a frantic aide that Vice President Pence was being relocated away from the mob that sought to kill him, Trump said, “So what?”
That filing, understand, is not just some memo of theories Smith drew up in his study. It’s the result of sworn testimony — the fifth grand jury to have indicted Trump on criminal charges.
For weeks Trump mercilessly badgered Pence to get him to do what the law didn’t allow: refuse to certify the election.
This is something Vance said he would be proud to do.
This is and would be the bottom line for anyone added to Trump’s team should he regain power. Will you lie for me? Will you nod in assent when I break the law?
A corrupt, party-poisoned Supreme Court would seem to have set up the pins for a newly elected President Trump to break more laws.
Immunity for official acts!
But Jack Smith’s new filing asserts that most of the crimes that will be proved in court weren’t official acts but actions by a defeated politician trying anything he could to disrupt and contaminate the certification.
“The throughlines of these efforts were deceit,” it reads.
As Team Trump was pleading with state lawmakers to parrot claims of a “steal.” Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona House, pressed Rudy Giuliani for something solid to back up his claims.
“We’ve got a lot of theories,” said Giuliani. “We just don’t have the evidence.”
Come on, Rudy. Weren’t you listening to your boss?
“The details don’t matter,” said the spray-tanned prevaricator. If voters make it possible for Trump to be tried, Jack Smith will show it was a lie contrived long before votes were counted. Indeed, Rudy laid it out in four words: “Just say we won.”
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.