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Vice President JD Vance is a pronatalist creep who got famous for writing Hillbilly Elegy and then kissed ass all the way to the Senate in 2022 and the White House in 2024. In news that may shock you to your core, Washington Monthly recently noted that Vance is the most disliked new VP in U.S. history.
Two months into his tenure, Vance’s net favorable is negative 3.2 points, with 41.7% favorable and 44.9% unfavorable, according to a Real Clear Politics polling average. That’s worse than Donald Trump‘s job approval (negative 0.8 points). By contrast, former Vice President Kamala Harris‘ rating at this stage in 2021 was net positive by 4 points, though she did cross into net negative territory three months later, in late June 2021.
Washington Monthly points out that other veeps including Dick Cheney and Joe Biden enjoyed ratings as high as the 60s at the start of their tenures. And while Trump’s first VP, Mike Pence, started in the low 40s, his favorability was still net positive.
Vance’s nearly 45% unfavorable rating is still a record, even going back further to a pre-Internet age, when many voters responded to such polls with “undecided” or “didn’t know enough.” Al Gore notched 36% favorable to 7% unfavorable, while Dan Quayle did start underwater with 19% to 23%. Almost twice as many people have a negative view of Vance than they did of Quayle!
It’s not hard to see why. There’s all the baggage from before he became VP, like his support for abortion bans, opposition to no-fault divorce, and suggestion that women without children shouldn’t be able to vote. He also promoted a racist conspiracy theory that legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets.
Then there’s he stuff he’s done in office. In February, Vance said Germany needed to be nicer to members of the far-right neo Nazi party, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD. Two weeks later, he had an embarrassing outburst in a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where Vance berated him for not saying “thank you” enough to the U.S. for providing assistance to help avoid World War III. And in between those events, he lamented on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that our culture tells men that they should “suppress every masculine urge.” (The good people of the internet have extensively memed Vance this month.)
That brings us to this week and Vance’s absurd responses on the Signal chat heard ’round the world—the one where he and other cabinet officials were discussing attack plans against Houthi militants in Yemen in the presence of a journalist, who was inadvertently added to the group by national security adviser Michael Waltz. Aside from the national security risk of discussing classified information outside the proper secure channels, when Vance was informed that the U.S. military had collapsed a building that would clearly kill civilians, he responded, “excellent.” On top of everything else, he simply loves war crimes.
Another disgusting part of all of this is the proof a blatant war crime to which the Vice President of the United States responded: Excellent.
— Maxwell Frost (@maxwellfrost.bsky.social) 2025-03-26T13:45:31.484Z
Then there was the tweet the White House posted Wednesday of Vance shooting a gun in full fatigues, but the post referred to the bullets as…”freedom seeds.” While it’s not clear who wrote the text, that does sound unnervingly like something Vance would say.
This is like being asked to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game and promoting it like you're Nolan Ryan
— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) 2025-03-27T16:09:20.781Z
The presumptive GOP frontrunner for 2028, everyone!
- Speaking of Signal Gate: While no one on the text chain has faced consequences, a Department of Homeland Security employee who accidentally sent unclassified information to a journalist has been placed on administrative leave and is set to lose her security clearance. [NBC News]
- Health Secretary and brain worm survivor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has hired vaccine skeptic David Geier as a senior data analyst, a role in which he will reportedly examine the thoroughly debunked links between vaccines and autism. One expert called it “a worst-case scenario for public health.” [New York Times]
- An Agriculture Department funding freeze led to suspended shipments of produce, poultry, and dairy products that were set to go to food banks across the country, including in California, Maryland, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, and West Virginia. [New York Times/Columbus Dispatch/VC Star]
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio says his agency has revoked more than 300 student visas over students’ political views. [Politico]
- As if her trip to an El Salvadoran concentration camp to film a propaganda video wasn’t appalling on its own, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem filmed it wearing a $50,000 Rolex. [Washington Post]
- Some Republicans want shadow president Elon Musk to do fewer interviews because he keeps attacking Social Security in contravention of Trump’s pledge to leave it alone. [NBC News]
- Headline: DOGE staffer ‘Big Balls‘ provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show [Reuters]
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