A few weeks ago I wrote about the “tragedy” of J. D. Vance, which I subsequently described as “the combination of the senator’s intellect, savvy, and appealing life story coupled with his embrace of the worst aspects of Trumpism.” I tried to make the case that Vance’s Trump transformation might have been sincere. But the senator’s bizarre Twitter defense of Donald Trump’s Super PAC shelling out $40 million to pay the former president’s legal fees is making me think I was naive.
AP reports that the Save America Political Action Committee is “expected to disclose Monday that it spent more than $40 million on legal fees during the first half of the year for costs related to defending the former president, his aides and other allies.” That’s double the $20 million that Save America spent supporting Republican candidates over the course of the entire 2022 midterm election cycle.
It would be one thing if the committee was being transparent about the use of its funding, but that’s not what’s happening. Rather, much of the money is derived from donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign. The former president now diverts 10 percent of all campaign donations to Save America. But according to Vance, noticing this phenomenon is “lame”: The real story, he says, is “that our system has become so corrupted that it costs millions of dollars to fight ir [sic]. Anyone who thinks they wouldn’t do this to DeSantis, or Scott, or anyone else, is kidding themselves.”
Vance also shares the story of a “buddy who wasn’t in DC on J6, had no role in planning the rally, but got subpoenaed by the J6 committee because he was on a few texts with Don Jr. Not even accused of wrongdoing. Thousands in legal fees.”
Assuming that Vance’s tale is accurate and that the committee is covering those legal fees (a risky supposition), his sob story actually illuminates the injustice: Trump is raising money off of the backs of hard working Ohioans — Vance’s constituents — in the name of beating Joe Biden in 2024 and redirecting it so that elite buddies of Donald Trump Jr., alongside Trump himself, don’t have to pay their own legal fees.
There’s not much to say about Vance’s endorsement of such dishonesty — it’s indefensible. But my former affinity for Vance aside, it’s becoming harder to hold out any hope that he’ll recover from his uniquely severe case of Trump devotion syndrome.