Politics
At the debate, JD Vance’s many troubles went from bad to worse
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance was already struggling as a candidate for national office, but the past week or so has been especially brutal.
It was six days ago, for example, when the Ohio senator sat down with a prominent conservative pundit, who asked what can be done to address the cost of child care. Vance’s answer was, by any fair measure, ridiculous. A day later, the GOP candidate lamented that deadly mass shootings in schools are a “fact of life” — a comment that sparked fierce and immediate pushback.
On Monday, Vance threw his support behind a ridiculous and racist conspiracy theory about immigrants abducting and eating pets, and on Tuesday, he endorsed a brazenly illegal response to Trump’s 2020 election defeat
Hours later, the Ohioan’s week managed to get even worse during the presidential debate, as his running mate distanced himself from Vance’s recent rhetoric.
The trouble began when ABC News’ Linsey Davis asked Donald Trump whether he would veto a national abortion ban if it got to his desk during a possible second term. The former president largely dodged the question, saying he wouldn’t have to veto such a measure.
So, Davis tried again, reminding the GOP nominee that his running mate, just last month, told NBC News that Trump would, in fact, veto a federal abortion ban. At that point, the former president replied:
Well, I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness. And I don’t mind if he has a certain view, but I think he was speaking for me but I really didn’t.
He quickly added, “We don’t have to discuss it,” dodging the underlying question again.
The exchange suggested that, as far as Trump is concerned, Vance isn’t an entirely reliable source for information about the former president’s position and plans.If this sounded at all familiar, it wasn’t your imagination. As longtime readers might recall, something similar happened eight years ago.
During the second presidential debate in 2016, ABC News’ Martha Raddatz reminded Trump that his own running mate had said, in the context of a discussion about U.S. policy in Syria, that “provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength.” In an unusual display, Trump denounced the position.
In fact, the then-Republican candidate said of Pence, “He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree. I disagree.”
In other words, in 2016, Trump became the first presidential candidate to ever distance himself from his own running mate during a general-election debate. Eight years later, he did it again.
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.
Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?
If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.
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