Trump Shivs JD Vance as Meltdown over GOP Losses Takes Unhinged Turn

Donald Trump, fuming over the midterms, just unleashed a new series of crazed Truth Social Posts. He again threatened to prosecute Democrats. He raged that Republicans only lost because they failed to pass voter suppression. And critically, he bizarrely decreed that JD Vance will only be assigned to fighting supposed blue-state corruption from now on. Trump ordered Vance to forget about negotiating an end to the war, delusionally insisting we’ve already won so much that “we don’t need a deal with Iran.” That totally shivs Vance. It punishes him for blaming the war for GOP losses. And it prevents him from repositioning for 2028 by getting on the right side of the Iran fiasco. We talked to Zack Beauchamp, author of the excellent new Public Reason newsletter, which is devoted to rehabilitating liberalism. We discuss how Trump kneecapped Vance, why this shows MAGA can’t accept that its worldview unleashed the electoral debacle, how this reveals the deeper failings of right wing nationalism, and how liberals can seize this moment to make a new case for their ideas. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.