Decryption | Trump’s health and the role of Vance

(New York) To hear JD VANCE, Donald Trump is farting in health.

“It overflows with energy,” he said in an interview granted last Wednesday on a daily basis USA Today. “He is the last to make phone calls in the evening, and he is the first to wake up and make phone calls in the morning. »»

Hence the confidence expressed by the vice-president of seeing the president complement his second mandate at the White House, unless other “terrible tragedies” arise, words he employs to describe the two attempts to assassinate his boss.

“And if, God preserves us, a terrible tragedy came to happen, I cannot imagine better practical training than that I have received in the last 200 days,” he said.

Many followers of the Maga movement (Make America Great Again) would no doubt console themselves from a scenario where JD Vance would succeed Donald Trump before January 20, 2029. After all, on August 5, the occupant of the White House himself appointed his young second as the presumptive heir “very likely” of his movement.

A month earlier, the Claremont Institute, a nerve center of a Maga in the making ideology, had already haloed JD Vance by awarding its “statesman’s prize” for “his civic spirit and moderation when he continues to shape America’s next golden age”, in the words of Ryan Williams, president of the Californian Center for Reflection.

But the interview granted by JD Vance to USA Today was far from reassuring for those who are wary of him as much as Donald Trump, if not more.

And this, for two main reasons. The first is due to the vice-president’s trend to use all the arguments, including the most doubtful, to defend the president.

Historical falsehood

Donald Trump’s state of health is an example among others. These days, the president’s physical condition does not seem as excellent as JD Vance affirms. A bruise on his right hand again attracted the attention of the public, part of which is struggling to be satisfied with the official explanation.

These brands, already observed last July, would be due to frequent hand handles and aspirin intake, standard cardiovascular prevention treatment. They are added to another problem deemed minor by Donald Trump’s doctor: chronic venous insufficiency that swells his legs.

However, it was enough for Donald Trump to spend two days without showing himself in public after the interview with JD Vance so that rumors of his death start to circulate on the Internet. Obviously, the reassuring remarks of the vice-president had not convinced everyone. And for good reason.

A few days earlier, the vice-president had denied that territorial concessions to Russia to end the war in Ukraine were likely to encourage Vladimir Putin to invade other countries.

“This is how wars end up being settled,” said JD Vance to NBC journalist Kristen Welker. “If we go back to the Second World War, to the First World War, to all the major conflicts in the history of humanity, they all ended with one form or another of negotiation. »»

This is obviously false, starting with the Second World War, which saw Germany and Japan capitulate unconditionally.

Sometimes JD Vance attacks the Trump administration criticism on X with an amazing ferocity. Here is what he wrote last Friday about the editor of a politico article on the cost of “inexperience” by Steve Witkoff, billionaire friend and special envoy of Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin:

“There are two possible explanations: either Felicia (Schwartz) is simply not very intelligent and was manipulated by scammers of the deep state, or she is an accomplice and used her position to voluntarily participate in a real operation of foreign influence. In any case, it’s shameful. »»

What is an American?

The man who wrote these lines could therefore succeed Donald Trump, before or after the end of his second term. This is the other reason why those who are wary of him would not console themselves to see this scenario come true.

But the role of JD Vance is not limited to the all -round defense of Donald Trump and his policies on X or in interviews. It also consists in contributing to the definition of this Maga ideology in which the Claremont Institute participates.

Thus, by accepting the “statesman’s prize” of the reflection group, the vice-president made a discourse on “what it means to be an American citizen in the XXI^e century “.

As he had already done to the Milwaukee Republican Convention, he rejected the idea of ​​Abraham Lincoln according to which a new citizen is as American as the signatories of the declaration of independence if he adheres to his principles, at the forefront of which is the equality of “all men”.

According to the vice-president, this idea is both too wide “because it would potentially include hundreds of millions, or even billions, foreigners” and “too close because it would exclude many citizens that the ADL (organization of fight against anti-Semitism) would describe interior extremists, even if their ancestors fought during the war of independence or the war of secession”.

This extract from speeches, where hordes of potential immigrants are opposed to neo-Nazis, neo-confedérés or other members of Ku Klux Klan de Stemche, once again earned JD Vance to be associated with Nazi rhetoric of “blood and soil”.

This is undoubtedly an exaggeration, in particular due to the marriage of the vice-president to the daughter of Indian immigrants. But it is clear that Donald Trump’s potential successor has changed since he treated the latter as “American Hitler”.