Keep Digging That Hole, JD
The Vice President had some choice opinions about Renee Nicole Good. He should have kept them to himself.
This piece contains footage of a violent murder by an ICE agent. Viewer discretion advised.
It’s been a tough couple of days, so as a bit of self-care I’m going to direct my outrage at one of the worst actors this week: JD Vance.
In the wake of the killing of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, the White House sent Vance out before the media as its chief attack dog and propagandist. Sticking to the script and rather than urging calm, calling for investigations or turning down the temperature, Vance went on the offensive.
He baselessly smeared Good before the American public, pinning blame for the shooting on her before any facts were known. This was a prime example of the regime’s cynical PR strategy and attitude: deny everything, spin the narrative, and never apologize or back down.
The good news is, this is now backfiring on the White House. That’s primarily because its chief messenger is so uniquely unlikeable and non-credible.
Creating stories
Remember the “They’re eating the pets!” business?
During the 2024 campaign, Vance seized upon unverified and outrageous internet rumors and amplified them on social media, falsely claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating their neighbors’ pets.
The bogus account even reached the presidential debate stage when Trump repeated it to the nation, making for a widely ridiculed moment.
When asked about why he first spread this false story, Vance doubled down and tried to justify his lies. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” said Vance, who was a sitting senator from Ohio at the time. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Create stories.” Maya Angelou’s words spring to mind: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Vance has told us plainly that he’s a liar who is willing to fabricate narratives and spread misinformation in order to draw political attention to a matter. That means whenever Vance goes before the cameras, we should start from the assumption that he’s out once more to “create stories.”
Targeting Somalis
Vance repeated this practice of creating stories just last month. He irresponsibly amplified “citizen journalism” by right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley that claimed Somali child care centers were committing fraud all across Minneapolis. In sharing the video “investigation,” Vance crowed that Shirley “has done more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize”—even though within days most of Shirley’s bogus “reporting” was debunked as shoddy propaganda at best.
Despite its lack of factual basis, the narrative that Somali immigrants were committing child care fraud was highly useful to Vance and the Trump regime. At the direction of the White House, the Department of Homeland Security surged some 2,000 additional federal agents to Minneapolis, setting the entire city on edge.
That led predictably to confrontations with the public, including the deadly incident where Renee Good lost her life.
Smearing Renee
As Trump’s second in charge, if you don’t count Stephen Miller, Vance understood his role well: Get out in front of the story, attack the victim, and spew as many lies as possible for the MAGA base to repeat.
“That woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation,” alleged Vance, who frequently used the term “that woman” to describe Good during his remarks.
He also called Good’s actions “classic terrorism”—echoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s unfounded claims that this was an act of “domestic terrorism.”
Recently released footage reveals Good may not have been there to “interfere with” any ICE enforcement action at all. Her vehicle arrived four minutes before ICE was even on the scene. And it’s entirely possible, if not highly probable, that she was only there as a “legal observer” of ICE abuses. In the video, cars can be seen passing by Good’s vehicle without incident.
Indeed, Good can be seen waving officers past her car. She apparently even can be heard informing them, “I’m pulling out” as they approach her vehicle.
Vance also falsely claimed Good “aimed her car” at officers and “pressed on the accelerator.” But video clearly shows Good backing up to make a K-turn and then turning her wheels away from Ross, who nevertheless pulled his gun out and shot her three times.
Vance nevertheless claimed, “Ramming an ICE officer with your car—that’s what justifies being shot.” He declared that the “guy acted in self-defense.”
Attorney Jenin Younes, a civil libertarian best known for suing the Biden administration for leaning on tech companies to take down misinformation, demolished this argument of “self defense.”
ICE officers have no authority to search a US citizen or arrest her (unless there’s probable cause to believe she’s harboring undocumented individuals, not a contention here). A woman surrounded by masked, armed men who have no law enforcement authority over her has every right to try to escape. Video shows her steering wheel is turned to the right, clearly an attempt to leave WITHOUT hitting anyone and steer clear of the officer standing towards the front of her car. That officer had time to step to the side, which is where he was when he shot her.
Even a real police officer would not have the right to shoot at her for trying to flee. This is well-established in the case law; deadly force may not be used simply to prevent someone from getting away. Given that the ICE officers had no law enforcement authority to begin with, AND the video footage shows she was trying to escape a perceived threat, not to kill anyone, the crime is all the more inexcusable.
In yesterday’s piece, I discussed the New York Times’s analysis of the video footage and its conclusion that the White House narrative isn’t supported. Since then, both the Washington Post and Bellingcat have independently analyzed the footage and reached the same conclusion as the Times.
Beyond Vance’s premature and unsupported claims about the actual incident, and before he knew anything about Good at all, Vance called Good “brainwashed” and “a victim of left-wing ideology” who was encouraged by a network of politically motivated groups. But Vance has provided no support for this. In fact, when a Fox reporter asked him who was behind the network he cited, Vance admitted that “it’s one of the things we’re gonna have to figure out.”
If the idea that some unnamed “left-wing network” is somehow responsible for radicalizing Good sounds familiar, it’s because Vance said this before to describe Charlie Kirk’s killer. When he hosted Kirk’s podcast last September, Vance promised to go after “left-leaning” organizations, even though there was no indication that the shooter acted as part of any organized network, let alone a leftist one.
Vance more recently told the crowd at a Turning Point USA conference that to honor Kirk, they are “working to end the scourge of left-wing violence” in the U.S.— once again tying the killer to unnamed groups using baseless accusations.
Vance isn’t interested in the truth of course. And he will never admit wrongdoing or accept responsibility. Donald Trump has made an art of this, but Vance lacks his showmanship and comes off as scolding and smarmy.
He also is terminally online and believes the real world is somehow reflective of his own experience on Twitter. In this, Elon Musk’s algorithms have played a key part; they’ve given Vance a false sense of support as bots and trolls pile on praise for his most outrageous statements.
But shaming and spreading lies about a murder victim isn’t something that sits well with the “normies” who actually make up the electorate. Vance may feel he needs to act as awful as he can, and to own the libs like a right-wing edge lord, all to secure the support of the MAGA base and the far-right Groyper types. But Vance is still the same cruel, charisma-challenged suck-up whom the public first met, and quickly winced at, back in 2024. In the pantheon of White House demons, Vance is now lumped in with the likes of Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem, and there’s no scrubbing out that kind of stain.
If JD Vance truly is the GOP’s best presidential hope for 2028, I like our chances.
Smarmy is an excellent adjective. Unctuous also. And of course we could go all the way to bootlicker. How on earth can anyone tell so many lies at one time with a straight face?
Once you admit you lie you must accept that you will never be believed. For most people, that’s the end of the story, the end of the public service life. Every news article should begin with, “Admitted liar JD Vance …”