Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

The lights are all blinking red.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Motown is Joe-Town!

ha ha ha! Nice try weird people.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

It’s a doggy dog world.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Let’s finish the job.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Late Night Open Thread: JD Vance & the Rage Furby, Texting Buddies

Late Night Open Thread: JD Vance & the Rage Furby, Texting Buddies

by | 72 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Some of you vintage blog readers may remember Chuck ‘Floorsh*tter’ Johnson, a/k/a ‘Not the Little Green Footballs Charles Johnson’, going back to the days when he was a favorite chewtoy at Tbogg’s joint. He bobs up like a turd in the right-wing septic tank every so often, but until I did a cursory search on earlier posts here, I’d completely forgotten he was another one of Peter Thiel’s ‘intellectual’ beneficiaries.

So *of course* when the Rage Furby reached out to a newbie Repub senator, he would not be shunted off for an intern to deal with… Per the Washington Post, “JD Vance in texts with far-right figure: Profane and off-the-cuff” [gift link]:

The day after JD Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, he received a congratulatory text from Charles Johnson, a blogger and entrepreneur who has zealously promoted right-wing conspiracy theories.

Johnson assumed the posture of a wise mentor, cautioning the first-time officeholder to choose his staff carefully and repeatedly pressing him on his committee assignments. “Got to keep you out of trouble,” wrote Johnson, who now describes himself as a government informant seeking to protect the United States from foreign influence.

Their correspondence over the next 20 months — extending into the weeks before former president Donald Trump picked Vance as his running mate — offers a glimpse of the Republican vice-presidential nominee’s off-the-cuff musings, often matching his public expressions but voiced with much less polish and more profanity. Vance was just as casual in discussing America’s foreign alliances as he was in evaluating his own private alliances with the GOP’s moneyed class. With Johnson, he pondered responsibility for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and crudely described his aversion to the Ukrainian government and refusal to consider its pleas for U.S. assistance.

“Dude I won’t even take calls from Ukraine,” he told Johnson in October, about three weeks after House Republicans blocked additional aid to help Kyiv repel the Russian invasion. “Two very senior guys reached out to me. The head of their intel. The head of the Air Force. Bitching about F16s.”

In response to questions about his correspondence with Johnson, Vance spokesman William Martin said the two were never close and don’t share the same politics. “Chuck Johnson spam texted JD Vance,” Martin said. “JD usually ignored him, but occasionally responded to push back against things he said.”…

The mostly friendly conversation with Johnson reflects how Vance gravitates to people on the political fringe — a cohort emboldened by Trump’s insurgent campaign in 2016 and highly active online in the years since. After Trump picked Vance as his running mate on July 15, Johnson has been criticizing his onetime interlocutor and threatening to release their communications. He said he has grown disillusioned with Vance, especially over the senator’s favorable view of the Israeli prime minister, and now supports President Biden and Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Johnson, 35, has spread fantastical claims about a wide range of politicians and journalists and has made comments casting doubt on the Holocaust. He was banned from Twitter in 2015 for soliciting donations aimed at “taking out” Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson. He argued at the time that he was referring to journalistic sleuthing, and his account was restored under the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk…

Vance is perhaps the most high-profile emblem of a new breed of conservative politician willing to entertain and endorse provocative or offensive figures. Trump has displayed similar impulses, including in 2022 when he dined at his Mar-a-Lago Club with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken Holocaust denier.

Vance has bragged about being “plugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures.” He wrote a positive blurb for a book by Jack Posobiec, the far-right activist who advanced the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. And he has defended Alex Jones, the right-wing radio host who spread lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting…

In the texts, Vance often seemed skeptical of Johnson — not because of his associations with far-right causes but rather because of his self-presentation as a spook. “If you are who you say you are then don’t you have my phone tapped?” Vance wrote last fall, adding an emoji signaling that he was laughing so hard he was crying.

Still, the messages suggest Vance valued Johnson’s opinions. The two were introduced over email in 2019 by a Republican fundraiser, according to correspondence shared with The Post, but Johnson, who helped start the facial recognition company Clearview AI, said they had spoken previously…

It’s turtles traitors all the way down!… Boosted from a 2023 post here:

Late Night Open Thread: JD Vance & the Rage Furby, Texting Buddies

Amy Chua, incidentally, is Vance’s former Yale professor / professional mentor, and probably Thiel’s best-known judas goat:

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  4. 4.

    Ksmiami

    No, that’s an 80s band. We can’t be the cure, only the movement to eradicate the virus.

  7. 7.

    Rusty

    Amy Chua, groomer of female law students as eye candy for federal judges, of course she would eventually show up in any story about a right wing Yale law school grad.  Like the floating turd that won’t ever flush.

  8. 8.

    Ishiyama

    When I read about the easy lies and character assassination that passes for main stream journalism, I am reminded of a short story, Forewarned,  by Saki, the gist of which is a sheltered young person is exposed to political journalism:

    Listlessly she picked up one of the papers, the Sentinel, and glanced at its contents.  Suddenly she started, and began to read with breathless attention a prominently printed article, headed “A Little Limelight on Sir John Chobham.”  The colour ebbed away from her face, a look of frightened despair crept into her eyes.  Never, in any novel that she had read, had a defenceless young woman been confronted with a situation like this.  Sir John, the Hugo of her imagination, was, if anything, rather more depraved and despicable than Robert Bludward.  He was mean, evasive, callously indifferent to his country’s interests, a cheat, a man who habitually broke his word, and who was responsible, with his associates, for most of the poverty, misery, crime, and national degradation with which the country was afflicted.  He was also a candidate for Parliament, it seemed, and as there was only one seat in this particular locality, it was obvious that the success of either Robert or Sir John would mean a check to the ambitions of the other, hence, no doubt, the rivalry and enmity between these otherwise kindred souls.  One was seeking to have his enemy done to death, the other was apparently trying to stir up his supporters to an act of “Lynch law”.  All this in order that there might be an unopposed election, that one or other of the candidates might go into Parliament with honeyed eloquence on his lips and blood on his heart.

  9. 9.

    Ishiyama

    Also see Mark Twain’s sketch, Running for Governor:

    A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great state of New York, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on an independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage over these gentlemen, and that was—good character. It was easy to see by the newspapers that if ever they had known what it was to bear a good name, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter years they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But at the very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret, there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort “riling” the deeps of my happiness, and that was—the having to hear my name bandied about in familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came quick and sharp. She said:

    You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed of—not one. Look at the newspapers—look at them and comprehend what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, and then see if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with them.

    It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night. But, after all, I could not recede.

    I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight. As I was looking listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.

    PERJURY.—Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch, their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?

    I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge! I never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I didn’t know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to do. I was crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at all. The next morning the same paper had this—nothing more: ….

    There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep humiliation, I set about preparing to “answer” a mass of baseless charges and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its inmates, because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw me into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened. This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food for the foundling hospital when I warden. I was wavering—wavering. And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children, of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush onto the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs and call me PA!

  11. 11.

    Birdie

    I’m curious to see how much play this gets. We know that if it was about Tim Walz we’d have 92 NYT stories on it by Sunday.

  14. 14.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ishiyama:

    The dishonesty of the press and its biased reporting has existed as long as newspapers, and had long periods of being much worse than now.  A newspaper man himself, Twain was very familiar with it.

    Some of his Op Eds could be quite entertaining.  In my favorite, he replied to a reader asking what he thought of the ‘Jewish problem.’  He said he had been unaware there was one, so he had to do research.  The problem appeared to be that Jews were more honest and hardworking than Christians, and whenever that made Jews more successful in business Christians got mad and violently stole it back.  As a public statement in the 1800s it was incredibly brave and liberal.

  15. 15.

    oldster

    The question for Vance should be: why are you helping Iran and North Korea? That’s what you do when you oppose Ukraine.

  17. 17.

    rodwell

    Did the TFCG team even vetted this guy?  I thought the Trump campaign was being run by professional this time.

  18. 18.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @oldster: We know why he’d help North Korea – those “beautiful letters” their dear leader wrote Trump. Remember when Trump said they were in love? Then everyone forgot it 20 minutes later when something even more bizarre came out of his pie hole?

  19. 19.

    MagdaInBlack

    I won’t link, but over on Rawstory they have  a clip of Jesse Watters critiquing how Tim Walz hugs. I guess he doesn’t hug in a manly way, I dunno.

  21. 21.

    Anne Laurie

    @rodwell: Did the TFCG team even vetted this guy? I thought the Trump campaign was being run by professional this time.

    Theory when it was announced is that Thiel offered the Trump campaign big money ($92 million, IIRC?) to give Vance the slot.  The RNC desperately needs funds, and Trump has never turned down a dollar, however dirty, in his long corrupt career.

  22. 22.

    3Sice

    They’re unable to book venues that they have previously stiffed on rental payments. This sorta “do you know who we are” sleaze runs on until it doesn’t.

  23. 23.

    WereBear

    @3Sice: Not only that, we’ve heard that everything is cut back, from sound to security.

    And Trump exerts a “dumbing down” force, where everyone gets less moral and competent around him. Partly because he refuses to do things right, and the constant arguing and plate throwing doesn’t help.

  24. 24.

    opiejeanne

    @3Sice: That would explain the “rally” in front of the police station yesterday, which was almost all media in attendance as well as a few invited guests.

    That stalking business on the runway was a real dick move yesterday, and the Secret Service should not have allowed it.

  25. 25.

    NotMax

    Weirdo McBeardo* makes George Santos look like a boy scout.

    *As Vance has stated how much he loves and enjoys puerile nicknames, I bestow this one on him.

  27. 27.

    Matt McIrvin

    @opiejeanne: I’ve been wondering what the various Secret Service contingents do if one protected candidate literally becomes a security threat to another candidate. My impression is that the ones assigned to Republicans tend to be more politically loyal to them, and they’re surely all loath to interfere in their protectees’ actions beyond protecting the candidates’ own safety–so I wonder if it could actually come to some kind of standoff between the different bodyguards.

  29. 29.

    Suzanne

    @NotMax: Vance is doing the dude trick of attempting to hide a weak chin and weight gain with a terrible beard, and it just looks sleazy and bad. I feel like he should go to an orthodontist or a plastic surgeon instead.

    There are nice ways to do beards. It is also okay to be insecure about how one looks. Just don’t….. don’t make it worse!

  31. 31.

    BretH

    Jeff Tiedrich is a national treasure:

    their candidate is a quadrice-indicted twice-impeached once-convicted popular-vote-losing adderall-huffing insurrection-leading ear-diapering testimony-ducking judge-threatening lawyer-ignoring witness-tampering day-one-dictatoring disabled-veteran-dishonoring inheritance-squandering rube-fleecing clown-makeup-smearing language-mangling sneaker-hawking serial-sexual-predating draft-dodging casino-bankrupting butler-bullying daughter-perving hush-money-paying real-estate-scamming bone-spur-faking ketchup-hurling justice-obstructing classified-war-plan-thieving golf-cheating weather-map-defacing horse-paste-promoting paper-towel-flinging race-baiting tax-evading evidence-destroying charity-defrauding money-laundering diaper-filling 88-count 78-year-old fluorescent tangerine felony factory — and his veep is a misogynistic weirdo you wouldn’t leave alone with your cat — or your couch.

    https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/kamala-picked-tim-walz-and-every

  32. 32.

    SFAW

    @rodwell:

    Thanks, it would be hilarious if Theil pulls a Trump and not send money after JV Vance’s rollout.

    Thiel strikes me more as the kind of megalomaniac who would pay someone to “make it look like an accident” re: the top of the ticket, so that his lapdog might become president.

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    @rodwell: It may be that Wiles and LaCivita recommended against Vance and in favor another prospect, but were overridden. Their rivals in Trump’s orbit may have persuaded him to show the pros, “You’re not the boss of me!” Trump deeply resents constraint, and people near him may have known how to direct that resentment towards the managers who try to keep their stubborn candidate on the rails.

    Wiles and LaCivita say little publically about such matters, I think because they still want to win and don’t want the campaign to blow up. I expect they will keep quiet and hang in there unless and until Trump fires them. Then they’ll start settling their scores and working on their books.

  34. 34.

    Ken

    @Anne Laurie: Also, as Trump said, “he liked me more than anyone”.

    Or words to that effect — I can’t find the original, because googling “trump vance quote” just turns up hundreds of news stories with things Vance said about Trump before he was the VP nominee. Sounds like the germ of an SNL skit — “Oh no sir, when I called you America’s Hitler, that was a compliment on your leadership.”)

  37. 37.

    Suzanne

    @MagdaInBlack: Ted Cruz does it, too.

    I am not a dude, but I used to have a significant overbite. My mom couldn’t afford braces, so I paid for it myself when I was in my early 20s. I had a couple of years of braces, and about six months of wearing these springy slide-y brackets (for lack of a better word) on the braces that slowly moved my lower jaw forward. I definitely noticed that the overbite was corrected because my mouth felt different, but it didn’t really dawn on me that it changed the way I looked. Until I saw a high school classmate who was utterly convinced that I had had plastic surgery and then it clicked for me.

    It’s okay! It’s normal to want to improve your looks! A shitty beard is not helping!

  38. 38.

    Anne Laurie

    @Geminid: Reports were that Don Jr was pushing for Vance really, really hard.  Because I stay mostly on safely sane center-left social media turf, opinions were divided as to whether this was intended to get Baby Don back in Daddy’s good graces… or to punish him for pushing his namesake away in favor of Melania’s cuter anchor baby.

  41. 41.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Ksmiami: The Republican Party is a disease.

    Not fair to disease, which are just basic organisms trying to live.

  42. 42.

    Suzanne

    @Anne Laurie: Eh. I think most of the people in TFG’s circle — especially Uday and Qusay — spend too much time sniffing their own farts.  I think they genuinely thought Vance would come off well. Because they’re all Too Online, they haven’t touched grass or interacted with actual non-MAGA humans in a while.

    I think they thought he would come off well to the social conservatives (Dreher adores the guy) while reassuring normies.

    Voiceover: The normies were not reassured.

  44. 44.

    TBone

    Meme of the Day (so far):

    Walz holding piglet and beaming his huge smile. Except the little piglet has Donold’s sleeping face 😆

  47. 47.

    TBone

    Second runner up meme:

    Tim Walz is the guy who mows your lawn when you break your leg.  JD is the guy who reports your overgrown lawn to the HOA.

  48. 48.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Matt McIrvin: I have a friend who worked in a Secret Service adjacent job. She didn’t know if protectees got to pick their own favorite agents, though she said the SS would probably try to accommodate them if they could. One interesting thing she said was that most SS agents don’t like the candidate guard jobs because they have to travel.

  51. 51.

    rodwell

    @Geminid: If you are working for Trump now, it means you are awful person, I hope they do get fired and write their books.  When the Trump campaign goes down in defeat, I do not think there will be a market.  The MAGA crowd will not buy anything against the Dear Leader.  This side will not waste the money.  I guess they can leaked to Peter Baker after the election to redeem their reputation.

  54. 54.

    ETtheLibrarian

    I want an apology or an admission that they were wrong from all the political talking heads and talking head shows that fluffed that waste of paper masquerading as that Hillbilly book pretending that there was some sage wisdom in it. I won’t hold my breath though.

  55. 55.

    BritinChicago

    @Suzanne: Let’s not get an anti-beard thing going here.

    Yes I do have one. Am I hiding a weak chin? I don’t think so, but since I’ve had it for 55 years I’d have to dig out some really old photos to be sure. @OldBeardedGuysforHarris-Walz.

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    @Anne Laurie: My theory is that Thiel and other Vance sponsors made actual payments to persons near Trump to use their influence in Vance’s favor. This is a classic form of corruption that can be seen in the Court politics of kings and tyrants throughout history. In the case of Trump’s sordid circle, it’s easier for me to believe this did happen than that it didn’t.

    And I was struck by the way that Trump Junior bragged about helping Vance. Junior is an airhead and a MAGA cheerleader, not a strategist or advisor, and he’s a lazy bum like his father. So why was he suddenly so engaged about a major campaign decision? I suspect Junior was paid, and that he was not the only one.

  58. 58.

    BritinChicago

    @rodwell:If you are working for Trump now, it means you are awful person

    No doubt about that, but I’m not too impressed with people who were ok working for him up until Jan 6 2021 (or some date late in 2020) and now want to get on TV as if they were normal (=non-weird—see what I did there?). Come to that I’m not impressed with people who ever worked for him, or voted for him, unless they have had a genuine change of heart.

  59. 59.

    Suzanne

    @Ken: I will never understand how people who have time and money, and who have to go on TV and get their picture taken as part of their job, don’t take care of themselves. You can even hire professionals to help.

    I mean, apparently he’s wearing eyeliner, which I wouldn’t care about if he and TFG weren’t trying to make third-class citizens of trans and non-binary people. He obviously knows.

  62. 62.

    NotMax

    @BritinChicag

    Not anti-beard. Anti crappy beard.

    Full disclosure: Sport a white Santaesque one myself . There are any number of things I’d rather do in the mornings than attack my face with a sharp object.

  63. 63.

    TBone

    Good news on another front in ongoing war:

    KYOTO — A research team led by a Kyoto University professor announced that they have successfully developed immune cells capable of targeting and attacking cells infected with the coronavirus using human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), which have the ability to differentiate into various cell types.

    The team, led by immunology professor Hiroshi Kawamoto of Kyoto University’s Institute for Life and Medical Sciences, says it could be beneficial for treatment if administered to COVID-19 patients whose immunity has been severely compromised due to cancer treatment and other factors. Clinical trials are set to begin around fiscal 2027 with the aim to launch practical use by fiscal 2029.

    …

    This technology has the potential not only to be used against the coronavirus, but also for other deadly viruses, as it enables the development of killer T cells to target different types of viruses. Kawamoto expressed optimism, saying, “I hope this will be a breakthrough that can save humanity from death by viral infections.”

    https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240731/p2a/00m/0sc/043000c

    Ever hopeful!

  65. 65.

    Geminid

     

     

    @rodwell: I suspect Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita care a lot about their professional reputations and very little about other people’s judgements as to their moral character.

    This is more or less the way I view the matter right now. I just want to see what these people do because they are still factors in a tight election. Trump’s path to victory could be blocked now, but I think he still had one as of a month ago and that Wiles and LaCivita were instrumental in getting him that far.

    As for their futures, I expect the two political veterans will land on their feet one way or another.

  67. 67.

    Central Planning

    @TBone: Yesterday I figured it was time to get my Covid booster because I’ll be around 18,000 coworkers at the end of the month.

    Wegmans told me no because I’m not severely immunocompromised. They estimated the new version should be out in mid-September.

  70. 70.

    Quinerly

    @rodwell:

    My question is why didn’t Tim Ryan dig up some of this stuff when he rain against him in Ohio. Political malpractice.

  71. 71.

    Suzanne

    @Bex: Agree. Zelenskyy is a good-looking man and his beard looks good on him. It’s cared for, it’s the right shape and proportion for his face.

  72. 72.

    TBone

    @Central Planning: yesterday’s AL thread on Covid highlighted an Eric Topol article with info on updated boosters. It said beginning of September.  And

    @NotMax: is correct!  Do not give up easily!  If you can’t wait for the updated booster, try other avenues.

Comments are closed.