J.D. Vance is for sale to the highest bidder
Shortly before 10:00 this morning in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the Vice President of the United States of America nervously stepped up to the podium to address the graduating class of the United States Air Force Academy. With his freshly pressed navy blue suit, crisp white dress shirt, and deep red tie, he had clearly planned his outfit to project patriotism in the hopes of being taken seriously. After spending years trying to reinvent himself as the heir apparent of the Trump Regime, he knows how much appearances matter.
Beyond dressing the part, he knew he had other optics to be concerned about as well, so just before he began to read his prepared remarks, he paused to force the smug grin off his face to hide his excitement about speaking before a captive audience. His reaction was an odd contrast to the reception he received. There was no thunderous applause. Just a brief round of obligatory clapping before the crowd settled into silence. What J.D. Vance didn’t account for was that although he could control how he looked, he couldn’t control himself from saying some truly odd and embarrassing things. Within moments of taking the stage, he was already making extremely awkward jokes, telling the graduates, “Now, you can’t boo me. I’m the vice president of the United States.” He also told the cadets, “Consider this your very first meeting with the new boss. Congratulations. Don’t screw it up.” Before offering them “advice” not to let “a--holes” stand in the way of their mission.
And just like that, the carefully crafted image began to fall apart. He might have worn the right clothing, but what came out of his mouth turned the entire performance into an embarrassment, not just for him, but for everyone forced to sit through it. And as much as this just reinforces everything we already know about J.D. Vance, the real story was what he was there to do.
Because a little over a year ago, standing before a different graduating class at the United States Naval Academy, J.D. Vance built an entire commencement address around the promise that this administration was finished with “open-ended conflicts” and “undefined missions.” He told those graduates that the era of foreign entanglements was over. That if this country sent its service members into harm’s way, it would only ever be in pursuit of clearly defined objectives. Those were the talking points he was sent to deliver a year ago. He promised that Donald Trump would finally be the president who stopped sending Americans to die in other people’s wars.
And this morning, with the United States actively engaged in a war with Iran, where ceasefires are announced one day and followed by new violence the next, he stood before a new graduating class and delivered a very different message. He told them to prepare for “an entirely new era of warfare.” Then he repeated one of the administration’s central talking points: “When the president says he will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon...” before adding, “it is the men and women you’ll join in just 60 days who give force to that promise and to that guarantee.”
Sixty days. He looked out across a stadium filled with newly commissioned officers and told them that within two months, they could be the ones asked to enforce a war he once promised this administration would never wage.
That is who J.D. Vance is. Not a man guided by convictions, but a man who points himself toward wherever power happens to be and calls it principle. The anti-war candidate becomes the war’s recruiter the moment war becomes politically useful.
And they don’t want us to notice. They don’t want us asking questions about what changed. They don’t want us examining the contradiction. They want us to accept the new words as though the old ones never existed.
And when we look back on his speech, in many ways, Vance’s most revealing line was “You can’t boo me,” because that instinct runs through every part of this administration. The belief that criticism itself is the problem. That questioning authority is disloyal. That accountability is somehow inappropriate. And nowhere is that instinct more visible right now than in the administration’s treatment of the very people whose job is to challenge power, ask uncomfortable questions, reject official narratives, and report the truth. The journalists.
This same morning, as Vance performed in Colorado, we learned the details of CBS News carrying out a brutal purge of its 60 Minutes newsroom. Under its new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, the network fired or declined to renew the contracts of two of the most respected correspondents at 60 Minutes, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, and pushed out the program’s two top executive producers, Tanya Simon and Draggan Mihailovich. In their place, they installed Nick Bilton, a tech journalist and filmmaker with no broadcast news experience.
Cecilia Vega did not go quietly. In a statement that should be read by every American who still cares whether the truth reaches them, she wrote, “In recent months, my producing teams and I have experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories. Reporting teams have held back on submitting story pitches about important news topics out of fear of the internal repercussions.” And then she named it. “Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both imposed and self-driven. It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
Sharyn Alfonsi’s reporting team had put together a segment on CECOT, the notorious prison in El Salvador where this administration has been sending people, and Weiss pulled it from a December broadcast. The piece eventually ran a month later, after the damage of the delay was already done. She, too, called this exactly what it was: politically motivated. In a written statement, Alfonsi said it was “a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom.”
And although none of this is surprising, it is still deeply troubling, and the assault on the truth just keeps growing. This week, we also learned that the Office of Personnel Management released a draft nondisclosure agreement that federal agencies could require every worker to sign, new hires and longtime employees alike. It would bar federal employees from sharing information with journalists without authorization, and it would let the government pursue civil and criminal penalties against anyone who broke it. There is even a strange clause asserting that the government would be owed “royalties” on disclosed information, with no further explanation of what that actually means. It is a gag order on the entire federal workforce, written to make sure the people who witness the wrongdoing are too frightened to ever describe it. Or worse, if they do, they could face criminal charges.
And we must believe that they will start criminally prosecuting people who do not bend to the Trump Regime, because we are already seeing it happen now. Multiple sources have reported that the Department of Justice just opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll. Carroll is the writer who accused Donald Trump of sexual assault, took him to court, and won. In 2023, a jury found that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her, and awarded her five million dollars. She told the truth, under oath, in front of the entire country, and the system worked the way it is supposed to. So now Trump’s Justice Department is investigating her. Prosecutors are examining whether she lied in a 2022 deposition about who helped pay her legal fees, after it came out that a nonprofit tied to the donor Reid Hoffman had contributed to her defense. They are floating possible charges of money laundering, obstruction, and conspiracy against a woman who dared to take a stand against the president. The Chicago U.S. Attorney named in the reporting has publicly denied his office opened any such investigation, while the news organizations stand by their sources.
And we can’t forget that the acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, had to recuse himself from this case, because he personally represented Donald Trump during the appeals in the very lawsuits Carroll won. The president’s former defense lawyer is now running the department, criminally investigating the woman who beat him in court. That is not law enforcement. This is a disgusting display of corruption.
This is the part that people outside this country understand faster than we do, because they have seen it before. The most effective way to kill a free press is almost never to send soldiers to padlock the doors. It is to make the newsroom do the work itself. You put your own people in charge of the institutions. You make an example of the ones who refuse to bend, so everyone watching learns the lesson without ever being told. And then you wait, because fear does the rest. The story does not get killed by a censor. It gets killed by a reporter who has learned not to pitch it. That is exactly what Cecilia Vega was describing when she said the censorship was “both imposed and self-driven.” That is how a captured press works. The cameras still roll, but everyone inside knows what they are not allowed to say.
Tonight I had too much I wanted to share with you all. This could have been ten times the length. These are the nights I struggle because how do you highlight just a few atrocities being committed by the president against our country? How do you pick what we need to focus on when there are fires everywhere? Today I had to focus on my core concerns. Free and fair elections. A free press. Freedom of speech. Because if we completely lose any of those, the outlook for our country is bleak.
And while I was thinking about how bad this is, and how bad it will likely get before it gets better, I thought back to all the other times we, as a country, have faced insurmountable odds. And how we always survived. But I also thought about the years before Trump, when we were on the path to becoming what this country always had within her. The American dream for all. A place where inclusion, diversity, and belonging were celebrated. A place where we gathered on the Fourth of July to remember that we are all Americans, what that means, and the responsibility that comes with it. But now the Fourth of July feels different. It is about walking a fine line between loving your country and knowing what she could be for all people, while also being honest about her past and the instability this administration is causing not just here, but across the globe. We should be able to celebrate this country and feel pride in it. Instead, it has been commandeered by a madman. And we mourn that. We mourn what is being done to it. And we mourn the years he has stolen from us that we will never get back.
And as much as we are allowed to grieve this, we must resist it too. And we must do it in ways that Trump understands. With spectacle. June 14 is Donald Trump’s 80th birthday, and it is the next nationwide day of No Kings protests. While he stages a UFC cage fight on the South Lawn of the White House to feed his ego, the rest of us will be doing the opposite. More information for this protest is going to be released, but plan to spend the day sending a message to Trump, his enablers and the entire world. His time destroying out country is coming to an end. We will not allow this to continue.
And if you need some good news to hold onto right now, Trump’s America 250 celebration planned for the National Mall is facing backlash from many of its headlining performers. Reports indicate that upwards of 50% of the artists scheduled to perform have now declined. They are refusing with a multitude of carefully crafted statements, but given the number of cancellations and the timing, we know the real reason. They do not want to be associated with Trump or any of his vanity events.
Country singer Martina McBride said she had been told it was a nonpartisan event and that it turned out to be misleading. The rapper Young MC said simply that he would not be performing. One after another, performers looked at the opportunity to share a stage in Trump’s name and said no.
These are people with something to lose, and they walked away anyway. That is what a public snub looks like. And it is happening on its own, without anyone organizing it, because more and more people have decided they will not lend their name to this.
But the thing that showed me the resistance is growing and getting louder came from the next generation that will inherit this country. At the News and Documentary Emmy Awards on Wednesday night, a high school senior from Washington named Santiago Campos walked up to accept the Mike Wallace Memorial Scholarship, an award funded by CBS itself and named for one of the founding correspondents of 60 Minutes. Scott Pelley handed it to him. And Santiago, just 18 years old, stood in front of that room and said, “While I want to thank CBS News for funding this generous gift towards my education, I want to also acknowledge how the recent direction of the outlet stains the legacy of Mike Wallace, the namesake of this scholarship.”
He had won that scholarship for a piece he reported on immigration raids, told through the deportation stories of his own family. And then he said this: “As corporate elites take hold over the very pipes through which our information flows, journalism that serves the people becomes increasingly harder to come by, yet ever more crucial, and what the people want is the truth.”
This is what we are up against. This is what we are fighting for. Without a free press to bring us the truth about what is happening around us, to keep those in power honest and accountable for their actions, we are no better than the regimes we condemn. The line between democracy and authoritarianism gets weaker every day.
That is why we must rally around those risking everything to make sure the truth reaches us. We must make sure those investigating what this administration is doing are well-funded and supported. And as more corporate journalists leave or are forced out, we need to make sure they have a soft landing where we welcome them and support their work.
I made a promise that every time this administration weakens our free press, I would not just name it. I would use their attack to fuel our own economic protest. Where we support the very people they are attacking. If you are able to support independent media through a paid membership without any hardship to you, please consider it. Please think beyond supporting me and about your other go-to voices in the resistance, the writers, reporters, journalists, and content creators who lead with facts, and support as many of them as you can. If they offer a paid subscription, sign up. Share their work. Help them reach further, so that nobody is left in the dark about the reality of this moment. We will get through this, and when we do, it will be because we refused to give up, and because we held one another up when it mattered.
After Scott Pelley presented the award, he said what so many of us were thinking: “God, we need young people like you right behind us.” He is right. They are coming. They are walking into journalism with their eyes wide open, knowing exactly what is being done to it, and choosing to pick up this fight anyway. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: Still unpacking and took a drive up the coast to get some fresh air. The colors of the sky and ocean did not disappoint.
Sources:
VP JD Vance Commencement Address: C-SPAN video
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/vance-us-air-force-academy-graduation-ai/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-war-vance-makes-foul-mouthed-plea-for-military-to-keep-fighting/
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/60-minutes-shake-up-cbs-news-ousts-producer-tanya-simon-1236761176/
https://www.thewrap.com/media-platforms/journalism/fired-60-minutes-cecilia-vega-exit-note/
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/media/cbs-news-bari-weiss-hire-nick-bilton-60-minutes-rcna347352
https://www.thewrap.com/media-platforms/journalism/60-minutes-ep-nick-bilton-staff-memo/
https://deadline.com/2026/05/60-minutes-replaces-executive-producer-nick-bilton-1236929220/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/young-mc-morris-day-drop-out-freedom-250-concert-series/
https://deadline.com/2026/05/cbs-news-60-minutes-student-journalist-news-emmys-1236928792/
I thought he was probably smarter than the convict corrupt demented antechrist "in charge". But now I realise I am deadly wrong and the rotten apple did not fall far from the rotten tree. In fact all that fascist cabinet is at the image of that wannabe dictator. Get rid of them!
Vance is little more than a tv set. Just regurgitates whatever's piped into him.
Switch him off?, he's got nuthin'.
'Shapeshifting Grifter' is spot on Mike Hammer.
I'm not an historian, but it seems America has been in an awful lot of wars, both covert and front page.
Its like the family business.