Republican JD Vance’s vice presidential campaign is the farcical gift which keeps on giving.
After being continually marred by couch memes following a viral (and baseless) tweet; making a Swiss cheese-related blunder in Philadelphia; and having to counteract the argument from the Democrats that he’s “weird”, the Ohio senator has now made yet another gaffe during a rally in Pennsylvania.
Speaking in the city of Erie – coincidentally, another word to describe Vance and Donald Trump’s election campaign – the politician tried to take a swipe at Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her use of a teleprompter at events.
He told the crowd: “Ma’am, I don’t need a teleprompter; I’ve actually got thoughts in my head, unlike Kamala Harris.”
Now to some, this may have been a funny ‘roast’ of his political opponent. Except, true to form, Vance had to go and undermine himself just moments later.
Addressing a recent NPR report which claimed a Trump staffer verbally abused and pushed an official at Arlington National Cemetery who tried to stop them from filming in Section 60, where veterans killed in action are buried, Vance went on to add: “There’s verifiable evidence that the families of these poor people, who had their loved ones die three years ago at Abbey Road – Abbey Gate – those 13 Americans, a lot of them were there with the president, they invited him to be there and to support them.
“That’s not an insult to the memories of their loved ones, they wanted Donald Trump there, and thank God that we have a president who stands with our veterans, instead of one who runs away from them.”
Of course, Abbey Road is an iconic album from The Beatles. Abbey Gate, meanwhile, relates to an area near Kabul’s airport in Afghanistan, where 13 American soldiers and approximately 170 Afghan civilians were murdered in a terrorist attack by an ISIS suicide bomber in 2021.
The third anniversary of the attack was marked on Monday.
The unfortunate conflation, not long after Vance was bragging about how smart he is, has since sparked a humiliating ‘before and after’ comparison from people on social media:
One even branded Vance “an Onion headline brought to life”, in reference to the satirical news site:
Awkward.
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