Government

JD Vance Heckler's Vetoes His Credibility

Such as it is.

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Sen. J.D. Vance

Sen. J.D. Vance (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

JD Vance has had quite a lot to say about political violence of late. In his desperate bid to seize the mantle of victimhood, even as his lies endanger Haitian migrants in Ohio, he’s been howling about dangerous rhetoric by Vice President Harris and her supporters.

“President Trump is my running mate, and my friend, but he is more importantly a father and grandfather to people who love him very much,” he sniffled yesterday in a spectacularly disingenuous blogpost-cum-tweet. “I want him to have many more years with his family. (And selfishly, I’d like many more with my own.)”

Vance, who scoffs that “school shootings are a fact of life,” insists that Democrats are to blame because deranged men — carrying those gun liberals are always trying to ban! — try to shoot at the former president and maybe him, too.

But if anyone is about to put out a hit on Vance, it might just be his alma mater, Yale Law School. And if they do, it’s probably this appearance with CBS’s Margaret Brennan that pushed them over the edge.

“Well, Margaret, first of all, we condemn all violence and condemn all threats of violence,” he said when asked whether he bears responsibility for the bomb threats that shut down schools in Springfield, Ohio after he repeatedly lied about Haitian residents eating pets. “I want whoever made these threats to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but we don’t believe Margaret in a heckler’s veto in this country.”

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Le sigh.

Vance, who LARPs as Joe Sixpack, also affects to be stupid. How could a simply country lawyer like himself be expected to remember that the heckler’s veto protects speakers from being censored by the government because of the fear that they’ll provoke an angry reaction? How was he to know that it isn’t a general Get Out of Criticism Free card entitling you to whip your supporters into a frenzy based on a blood libel you yourself concede is false? Sure, his own constituents had to keep their kids home from school because of persistent bomb threats and were only able to send them back when the state sent in armed guards, but why should he bear any responsibility for the incendiary rhetoric he spewed beforehand?

The confusion about the heckler’s veto is kind of a thing in Trumpland. His lawyers persistently misconstrued it in a failed attempt to get the gag orders in New York and DC lifted, prompting an exasperated DC Circuit to remark in December that:

The claim also misunderstands the heckler’s veto doctrine. That doctrine prohibits restraining speech on the grounds that it “might offend a hostile mob” hearing the message, or because its audience might express “hostility to” the message. The harm the district court identified here was not that some members of the public who oppose Mr. Trump’s message might react violently and try to shut down his speech. The concern was instead “how predictable” it has become, that some (but certainly not all, or even many) of Mr. Trump’s followers will act minaciously in response to his words.

That didn’t stop Trump’s lawyers from trying it again in June in Florida. And it’s not going to stop JD Vance.

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Because if you think about it … isn’t it the media’s fault for making him concoct those lies in the first place, instead of parroting his xenophobic rants about the Vice President parking 20,000 (not 20,000) people who have no right to be there (they have a right to be there) where they murdered (not murdered) an innocent child?

And if you think about it, isn’t it ultimately Harris’s fault for beating Trump in the polling and forcing him to meltdown on stage in the debate? She’s the real heckler, here. Lock her up!

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