An Interview, A Bully, and More on that Cemetery Visit

It’s time to talk about the election again!

I’m trying to do one post per week on the upcoming presidential election itself, with separate posts discussing the pro-life movement and the shenanigans in Ohio in far more detail than anybody asked for. But at this point, with sixty-two days to go in the entire election and less than five weeks until early voting starts right here in Steubenville, I may need to cover the news in a couple posts per week because life is coming at us fast. For example, I’m probably going to have a breakdown after the televised debate on September Tenth: by which I mean both that I’ll write an article breaking down what I saw, and I will also suffer a nervous breakdown from having to watch it. I’ve not quite recovered from the debate in June.

Please continue to refer back to my boilerplate about voting and Catholic Social Teaching. It is spiritual abuse to tell somebody they have to vote for your preferred candidate or they’re in sin. It just is. No political party is “the Catholic one.” It’s up to each voter’s individual conscience to decide who they think would be the best candidate. You can be mistaken, you can be painfully ignorant, we can get into a big angry throwdown and each walk away thinking the other is a dufus, but it’s only a sin to vote for a candidate if you’re doing it IN SUPPORT OF an intrinsic evil they promote. That’s the rule. And now, we’re off to the races.

In the past week, Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, sat down with CNN’s Dana Bash for Harris’s first official news interview since her nomination. For some reason, CNN opted to sit the candidates at an extremely awkward table and chairs that made Walz look as big as the giant from Mickey Mouse and Harris look about four feet tall. Harris hunched over the table as if she were going to slide right out of the chair, but she kept her other mannerisms ladylike and professional. I especially enjoyed her answer when she was asked to answer Trump’s accusation that she wasn’t actually a Black person. Harris rolled her eyes and pleasantly retorted “same old tired playbook. Next question, please.”

This response flabbergasted the media. Politico, in particular, had to change their headline three times, and accused her of “evading questions about her identity.” Apparently, in the nearly ten years that Donald Trump has been in politics, nobody ever thought of briefly ridiculing the bully and moving on to weightier topics.  Of course, this only works with certain types of bully.

Speaking of bullies, Trump’s running mate, Senator J. D. Vance, posted a little video to his X/Twitter feed just before the interview began, with the caption “Breaking! I have gotten ahold of the whole Kamala Harris interview.” The video was that 17-year-old viral video of Carol Upton panicking and giving a nonsensical answer in a teen beauty contest. Miss Upton, who is reportedly a Trump supporter, was so humiliated by all the attention from that video back in 2007 that she suffered depression and considered suicide. In response to Vance’s dredging up of her humiliation, Miss Upton tweeted “Regardless of political beliefs, one thing I do know is that social media and online bullying needs to stop,” and then deleted her account.

When asked if he’d apologize for posting the Upton video and embarrassing her, Vance smirked like Garfield and refused to do so. “Politics has gotten too lame,” said the man who can’t even order doughnuts or drink a root beer float like a normal human being. He added “A politics of boring scolds telling people they can’t laugh, that is not lifting Americans up, that’s how to tear us down,” and went on and on about how we ought to laugh and make jokes and be frolicsome like him.

My heart sank watching this clip. I was immediately transported back to every time my snarky and insulting family teased me until I burst into tears and then teased me for crying. “We’re not laughing at you, we’re laughing with you! Boys will be boys! Oh come off it, we’re Irish. Learn to take a joke.” And I wasn’t the only one. I saw similar reactions all over social media. Everyone knows a J. D. Vance in their lives, and loathes him. Nobody wants such a person to be vice president. Nobody wants their sadistic alcoholic aunt to be vice president. Nobody wants their mean officious boss or the gym teacher who gave them nightmares in 1995 to be in the government. Nobody wants the schoolyard bully they always hoped would end up in jail to be in power over us. No wonder Vance’s approval ratings are in the toilet.

Vance was then subject to some internet shaming for a viral video himself. We all had to listen to what the media referred to as another “unearthed video” of Vance being Vance. As usual, “unearthed video” doesn’t refer to a hot mic moment where he didn’t realize he was being recorded, but rather a publicly available video of him voluntarily appearing on a podcast only three years ago. I don’t know why these videos are being treated like a sneaky revelation. In this particular “unearthed video,” Vance expresses his revulsion for women yet again. This time it’s women who “can’t have kids” because they “passed the biological period when it was possible,” whom he regards as “miserable.” I don’t know how many different ways I can say that this man hates women and we’re not so keen on him either.  I hope he’s every bit as unhappy as he always looks.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who is aging at a rate of approximately five years per week and it shows. Lately, he’s taken to referring to his famous stream-of-consciousness speeches as “the weave” and claiming that they’re actually literary art, and that he’s been praised for them by English professors. Said English professors couldn’t be reached for comment.

Trump is still dealing with the fallout from his trip to Arlington Cemetery, which I wrote about last week. It turns out that the situation was even more shameful than we originally thought. Trump was attempting a political maneuver that’s technically known by a name I can’t say on Patheos— a  “rat amorous congress,” if you will. Trump was invited to Arlington National Cemetery by some of the family members of the soldiers killed by a suicide bombing in the August 26, 2021 Kabul Airport attack. These families blamed Joe Biden for the bombing, and are campaigning for Trump. The officials at Arlington National Cemetery worried that this would turn into a campaign appearance, which is strictly illegal on cemetery grounds. They conceded that he could lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a ceremony that was open to the press, but he couldn’t bring campaign staff, and his visit to Section 60 to the graves of the soldiers had to be private and off camera.

But of course, Trump couldn’t comply. He wanted to use footage of himself at the ceremony as proof that he cared about these soldiers more than nasty old Joe and Kamala who didn’t show up (when this wasn’t an official ceremony and they hadn’t been invited). He brought his whole entourage, including a videographer and a photographer.  Said photographer and videographer proceeded to go with him to the ceremony in Section 60, where unauthorized photo and video aren’t allowed. An official approached them to remind them of the rules, and she– yes, you know the victim of Trump’s bullying had to be a woman– was shoved and verbally abused by “a larger male campaign aide.” She declined to press charges for fear of retaliation from Trump’s fans, who have made life hell for so many women. An incident report was filed. Trump flashed his grin and thumbs up and posted his campaign TikTok just as he’d planned all along.

The families who invited Trump rose to his defense, but Arlington isn’t their cemetery and they don’t make the rules. You can’t film a campaign ad there. And the family of at least one soldier buried in Section 60, who did not consent to have their loved one’s grave illegally used for a campaign stunt, are horrified.

Trump is now having a tantrum about the blowback he received for what he intended to be a slam against Biden and Harris. He posted to his social media: ““It was a made up story by Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad. She made it all up to make up for the fact that she and Sleepy Joe have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS for the INCOMPETENT AFGHANISTAN Withdrawal – THE MOST EMBARRASSING DAY IN U.S. HISTORY!!!”

Trump is the one who is to blame for the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, for the record. Although it happened under Biden’s presidency, the National Security Council conducted a review and found that Trump’s choices had “severely constrained” President Biden.

Meanwhile, Trump has filed a not guilty plea in his new superseding indictment for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. This new indictment, which was voted on by a brand new grand jury, avoids any of the evidence that would have been thrown out under the Supreme Court’s recent ruling granting Trump immunity for “official acts” and only focuses on Trump as a candidate. And just a moment ago as I was editing this very post, a federal judge refused to remove Trump’s Manhattan criminal case to federal court, declaring that his convictions are for “private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.” We’re still waiting to hear whether his September 18th sentencing on the 34 felony convictions will be delayed.

I have a feeling the political news the next couple of weeks is going to be spectacular.

You can be sure I’ll keep you posted.