Can You Fire the Vice-President via Truth Social?

Detailed summary

Donald Trump came close on Thursday, ousting J. D. Vance as his Iran negotiator days after the Veep blamed the war for the Republicans’ midterm losses.

On Thursday, Trump began his morning meltdown with a 5:50 A.M. Truth Social post complaining about how “viciously” he and his Administration were being accused of corruption by Democrats when they were the ones who were “CORRUPT AND EVIL.” Thirty-eight minutes later, he accused them of “illegally threatening Republicans with knowingly false accusations and charges.” By 7:04 A.M., he had reverted to one of his favored tropes from his first term, warning that “Huge CARAVANS” of illegal immigrants were on their way to invade the U.S. from the south and that, if they weren’t stopped, he would immediately double tariffs on Mexico.

Historians take note: It’s our first-ever case of an American President shit-posting through the pain of a historic midterm defeat. No amount of self-soothing on social media, however, seems to have quelled the President’s rage over the midterms, and I suppose it’s only fitting that his fury should be equal to the scale of the electoral drubbing, which was truly epic. With ballots still being counted, Democrats are pushing close to a fourteen-point lead in the national House popular vote, the widest margin for the Party in more than fifty years. In my lifetime, Republicans have never come close to that big of a popular-vote win in a midterm.

Perhaps most notable among Thursday morning’s posts was Trump’s announcement, at 8:07 A.M., that he was immediately relieving J. D. Vance of responsibility for negotiating a peace deal with Iran. “We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump said—he wanted the Vice-President to dedicate his “complete and total attention” to uncovering the “Massive Corruption and Crime” taking place in Democratic-run cities and states across the land. In other words, the feckless Veep has been fired from his effort to bring an end to the war that Vance claims was the reason Republicans lost so bigly in last week’s election.

It is likely not a coincidence that Vance’s ouster from the Iran portfolio came within hours of the Wall…

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