At 11:51 this morning, Vice President JD Vance landed at a small regional airport in Texas, exited Air Force Two, and had a six-vehicle motorcade drive him 295 feet, a trip that took just seconds, to the nearby rally podium outside an airplane hangar. With his plane visible right behind him, he opened his remarks by making sure the crowd knew two things: first, that he was the vice president of the United States, and second, that he was not attracted to men.
“I love you too, sir, in a totally platonic way, to be clear,” Vance told a man in the crowd who had shouted that he loved the vice president, before adding, “I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.”
Talarico, or as the Republicans have taken to calling him, “Talafreako,” is the Democratic candidate running for U.S. Senate in Texas against Ken Paxton, and a major threat to Trump’s unchecked power over this country. So much so that Vance flew halfway across the country to hold a rally on the tarmac of an airport. With little more than a handful of manufactured controversies and the usual culture war scare tactics at his disposal, Vance picked up where others had left off, attacking Talarico for things like buying vegan products from local businesses, supporting transgender rights, and expressing Christian beliefs that challenge the religious far right.
They are right to be concerned. Talarico is a former teacher and devout Presbyterian Christian who has been able to reach voters way beyond the Texas Democratic base because of how he speaks about his faith and the compassion he shows to people on both sides of issues. That was enough for Vance to spend an entire morning building an innuendo campaign designed to make voters associate a political opponent with something sexually deviant, without ever saying the word out loud.
Before boarding Air Force Two for his flight to Texas, Vance stopped to answer questions from the press. A reporter asked what he meant when he said people wouldn’t want to see Talarico’s internet search history. Vance responded by talking about transgender children and drag queens, claiming that people who make comments like Talarico’s tend to have “some pretty unusual search histories.” Then he added, “Maybe he doesn’t. Just guessing, but I wouldn’t want to see it.”
By the time he was talking at the podium today, he had decided to go all in on the performance to try to convince Texas voters that even though Paxton had been impeached and acquitted, faced felony securities fraud charges that were later dismissed, and been accused of abusing his office, he was still the better choice than a candidate who had never faced such serious charges, or any charges at all. In fact, Talarico has faced no credible controversies at all.
When Vance brought up Talarico’s views on religion and transgender youth, he called him “a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and told the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, you don’t want to find out,” referring again to that baseless claim about Talarico’s supposed search history. He called Talarico “Tali-freako” once more, and he told the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, this guy is a freak. Don’t elect him.” He became increasingly animated and told the audience that they needed to keep Talarico’s “freaky paws” out of their schools, whatever that means. He even found a way to mock Talarico for sharing about buying from a local vegan business, which is an interesting line of attack coming from JD Vance, since his own wife is a vegetarian. He also went on an odd tangent about education and told the audience, “Elect Ken Paxton so that our kids learn how to read at school. That’s all they need to be doing.”
When a woman in the crowd trolled Vance by waving a Mexican flag, Vance called her a “crazy person,” and told her to leave, adding that, “We’re talking about how to save America.” He continued, telling her to “Get the hell out of here.”
JD repeated many of the same talking points this administration keeps recycling, but one thing he said stood out was that he is now describing Talarico’s candidacy as a “plot to seize power.” The Republicans have reached the point where they are describing political opposition as a threat to the country itself, rather than an ordinary part of the democratic process.
This is who JD Vance is and always has been. He is a chameleon who can be bought by the highest bidder. He is great at repeating whatever he is told to say. Today was another audition for the presidency more than it was about the Texas election, at least for JD. He wants people to see that he can do the work, stand in front of a crowd and say the cruel, ugly things to keep the MAGA base engaged, while still keeping the MAGA donors satisfied by delivering on their demands.
Donald Trump and Vance both had rallies today, and I had the general displeasure of watching both. I watched Donald Trump in Wasilla, Alaska, performing much of the same act he’s been doing for months now. He shared the same recycled stories, talked about how “brilliant” he is, and made the same claim that America was a “dead country” before he came along. He told that ridiculous windburn swimmer story again, where he claims a female swimmer suffered serious burns all over her body because a transgender competitor passed her so fast that the wind burned her skin. Both swimmers were underwater in a pool. The story changed ever so slightly this time, but he still managed to tell it with a straight face, apparently convinced that his followers are not quite as “brilliant” as he is and would believe such a preposterous story.
Watching Vance speak earlier in the day showed how he continues to try to carry the same persona that Donald Trump does. He is copying, albeit very poorly, the insults, name-calling, and same targets: transgender people and migrants. He was really putting in the effort to follow the same playbook Trump uses. But he just does not have it. He is lacking the charisma and stage presence that Trump brings to his rallies, and nearly everyone can see it. He doesn’t have the same cult following Donald Trump does, and try as he might, he has remained unable to recreate that connection with the crowd.
This should make him less dangerous than the president. But the reality is that it might not be true. Because we have already seen multiple versions of JD. He changes with the wind, and we need to ask ourselves what would happen if someone like him were called upon to take over the presidency. What happens if he actually has to be the person in charge?
Because we all know what is coming. Whether it’s his health, or the 25th Amendment, or a post-midterm reckoning where the party finally decides Trump is more of a liability than an asset, we could be stuck with JD, and I don’t know if any of us know if we would be better off. Part of me thinks yes, because Trump is volatile and impulsive and increasingly detached from reality, and replacing him with someone who can at least finish a coherent thought and a sentence might reduce the daily chaos we are all living in. But the other part of me recognizes that it could be a lot worse. Trump is a shell of a man who doesn’t care about the day-to-day of running a government, or maybe he made some sort of deal to get himself elected to stay out of jail in exchange for letting the direction of the country be determined by someone else.
Vance on the other side is very different. Vance is committed to some of the worst things being done to this country in ways that Trump isn’t. Trump is surface level while Vance is deeply embedded in it. Vance knows this, and he knows what he is doing and who he is doing it with. He once compared Donald Trump to Hitler. Then the right amount of tech money found him, and they groomed him and told him it was his job to execute the vision Trump was never capable of carrying out on his own. The visions he is willing to carry out are the ones from Stephen Miller and the Heritage Foundation. He doesn’t really care about their missions; he only cares about the money. JD is extremely awkward; he offends people, and he carries himself with a strange combination of arrogance and insecurity that makes it difficult for anyone to take him seriously. Our allies would see through him in a heartbeat.
Trump is the evil we know, and JD Vance is the evil in the wings. Trump is a wrecking ball swinging in every direction, breaking things all over the place. Vance would be easier to control and more strategic as he destroys whatever guardrails remain around executive power.
We are now just three weeks from the midterms. We need to remember that even though Donald Trump and JD Vance are not on the ballot, they really are. When we vote, we are sending a message that we are done with the uncertainty and chaos. If we can flip the House and possibly the Senate, we can build a firewall, not just against Trump’s remaining time, but against whatever version of this movement comes next.
It’s been a while, but the next No Kings movement is this Saturday, October 17th. They will be holding over fifteen hundred events across the country focused entirely on voter turnout, early voting, and election protection. These events have grown from four million people in June of 2025 to an estimated 8 million in March of this year. This one on Saturday is expected to be the largest one yet.
Vance said something today that he probably wishes he could take back. When a reporter asked about the midterms, he said, “We know that we’re swimming upstream,” admitting that it is going to be hard to hold onto all of the unchecked power they have right now. Meanwhile, the No Kings movement just keeps getting bigger. They know what is coming, and so do we. That is why I still have hope for America. You should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
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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: I was thinking back to last year’s Halloween decorations and I realized a couple of things. This is the first year in over 26 years that I haven’t decorated. I just haven’t found time with the constant barrage of news coming out of our government where I have felt like I could step away from the news and get it done.
I’m watching BBC all throughout the night to stay as informed as I can about what is happening outside the US. I know BBC might not be ideal, but it is the closest we have here to any resemblance of independent journalism. And then during the day I’m watching Trump and his enabler cabinet members’ commentary while piecing it all together and searching out experts on subjects I’m not well versed in.
The reality is that we say that we need an educated populace who is up to date on everything that is happening right now, but they are intentionally throwing more at us than any one person could ever keep up with. I’m extremely lucky that I have help in my personal life and that my older daughters help out tremendously with their little sister and that I have my husband doing all of the production work, editing these posts and filming my daily videos, but the way politics are right now, and I use that term loosely, I can’t fault those who have typical jobs or who have small children. Which just means we have to do our best to break down what is happening into smaller, more manageable pieces and share that information with people wherever we can, whether on social media or in real life, so that more of us understand what is happening and what we can do about it.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
WATCH LIVE: Vance speaks at a GOP rally in Texas: YouTube Video
JUST IN: JD Vance Speaks To Reporters En Route To Midterm Rally In Texas: YouTube Video
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2026/10/08/trump-hold-midterm-rally-wasilla/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/2026-means-2028-why-jd-100349517.html
https://politicalwire.com/2026/10/01/vance-predicts-tough-midterms/
https://gulfnews.com/world/americas/vance-2028-buzz-grows-but-midterms-could-sting-1.500705402
https://newsweek.com/jd-vance-approval-rating-plunges-historic-low-11809549
Ummmm, did JD miss Donnie’s remarks in Ohio about John Husted??? The homoeroticism is coming from inside the house, not from a Texas candidate who has not a single scandal to his name
Good luck on Saturday. I shall be watching from UK - make it big and my hopes it will be safe and peaceful. I have never known a government to be so openly racist, abusive and horrendously verbally rude as the Trump enclave. Awful.