JD Vance has a diligence of transformation – and this is a problem

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“He acquires great confidence, Mike, isn’t it?” It was Donald Trump in the White House garden in a pink garden on Wednesday afternoon, talking pretty condescendingly about his 40-year Vice President JD Vance to speak with a joker Johnson-before announceing heavy tariffs on most major trading partners in America.

Trump may have been mistaken to celebrate the Global Trade War as a “Liberation Day”, but he was not mistaken in Vnes. In the end, a person who feels qualified to talk to a heroic president aimed at war as if he was a small child-assured VolodyMyr Zelenskyy told you thank you to the president who recently called him a “dictator without elections”.

The same confidence to which I could add arrogance and ignorance was demonstrated during Vens’s recent unwanted visit to Greenland. Vice President, with its characteristic mixture of seriousness and cultThe embarrassed Denmark is the country he had previously accused that he was “not a good ally” because he did not defend Greenland from threats to Russia and China. “Our message of Denmark is very simple: you have not done a good job of Greenland residents,” Vnes said at an American military base. “You are insufficient in Greenland residents, and you are insufficient in the safety architecture of this incredible, beautiful land filled with incredible people.”

Greenland can be forgiven for not finding the vice president quite sincere in his flattery. However the most amazing part of the press -conference was Veng answered the question From the journalist about whether Trump was serious about his desire to “acquire” the territory. “The president said we should have Greenland and … we can’t just ignore the president’s desires,” his answer was.

The idea that Trump needs to be perceived “seriously but not literally” is repeated so often that almost a cliché. But Vnes does not seem to have received a memo. It seems he views Trump’s word as sacred.

But while Trump appears to be most moving the desire to be loved and accepted, Vens seems to be conditioned by the thirst for power. This can make it more dangerous. While Trump is often called “unpredictable” and “chaotic”, it remained extremely consistent in a number of questions, and trade is one of them – Interviewing 1987 with Larry KingIn which it breaks about other countries that “break America” ​​should be observed in the modern context.

Meanwhile, Ven’s dramatically changed his position on all kinds he seems very seriouslyTurning into Catholicism in 2019) and Trump himself.

And both in Trump and his radical ideology, Vnes reflects the zeal of conversion. In 2016, he wrote a private friend that he could not decide whether Trump was simply “a cynical asshole” or “Hitler of America”; Now he refers to Trump as if he had been elected by the Supreme Leader. When the president had endured the attempt to murder last July in Pennsylvania, Vnes said at the rally that “God saved President Trump’s life on that day” and that “what happened was a true miracle. It is so devoted to the cult of Trump, in fact that he is even glad to criticize the president for not having enough a pipe, as it was in the recent leaks of signal chats involving senior administration members.

There is thin leatherness to Vnes, which also worries. Allegedly Elon MuskAnother recently converted and powerful cote Trump, Haens gets into small shoulders with journalists The social media is mistaken all this time. His best friend from the university said that bullying Netflix Hillbilly ELEGY, His memory of growing up in poor white America was the “last point” in distance from the “liberal elites”, which originally accepted it.

From three and a half years before the next presidential election, Vens is currently the favorite of any party, and the bookmakers give it a chance of up to 9/4, which is more than 30 percent of his likelihood to become the next president. Second-fobrit? Trump himself, who says he does not joke about this opportunity. Bookmakers offer 9/2 chances of Monarch Mar-a-lago. I’m not quite sure which of these statistics is more concerned.

jemima.kelly@ft.com