The Talented Mr. Ripley

 

You have to hand it to J.D. Vance. He lied with such smooth aplomb. His delivery was so measured, so apparently judicious, that a casual, uninformed, low-info observer would not notice how comprehensively deceptive many of his statements were. For example, I never would have known had not Mr. Vance told us that Trump actually saved Obamacare. Or that Trump peacefully turned over power to President-elect Joe Biden. Apparently, we're supposed to be in awe that Trump didn't stage another coup-attempt on January 20th. (We were actually thankful Trump churlishly refused to attend the actual inauguration ceremony, choosing instead to slink out of town back to Mar-a-Lago. Don't let the door etc.)

MODERATOR: "[Gov. Walz] mentioned that President Trump has called climate change a hoax. Do you agree?"

VANCE: "Look, what the president has said is that if the Democrats, in particular Kamala Harris and her leadership, if they really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America, and that's not what they're doing."

That was slick! Trump has repeatedly said climate change is a hoax. Vance's dodge completely misrepresented the record: "Under the Biden-Harris administration, the U.S. produced a record amount of oil last year — averaging 12.9 million barrels per day. That eclipsed the previous record of 12.3 million barrels per day, set under former President Donald Trump in 2019. Last year was also a record year for domestic production of natural gas." (NPR)

VANCE: Speaking about his and Trump's expressed desire to deport millions of brown people: "...I think you [should] make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers. A lot of people will go home if they can't work for less than minimum wage in our own country, and by the way, that will be really good for our workers who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day's work."

Over the last 12 months the foreign-born workforce has grown by nearly 1.5 million people while the native-born workforce has shrunk by 768,000 people — mostly due to retirements, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Were it not for the influx of immigrant workers, the U.S. economy would likely be shrinking.

The share of working-age men who were in the workforce in August was 89.5% — higher than all but one month during the Trump administration. The share of working-age women who were in the workforce last month was the highest ever — 78.4%.

VANCE: "A lot of fentanyl is coming into our country .... Kamala Harris let fentanyl into our communities at record levels."

It's an outrageous lie that Kamala allowed fentanyl into the country. In reality, close to 90% of illicit fentanyl is seized at official border crossings. Immigration authorities say nearly all of that is smuggled by people who are legally authorized to cross the border, and more than half by U.S. citizens. Virtually none is seized from migrants seeking asylum.

VANCE: "If you look at what was so different about Donald Trump's tax cuts, even from previous Republican tax cut plans, is that a lot of those resources went to giving more take-home pay to middle-class and working-class Americans. It was passed in 2017 and you saw an American economic boom unlike we've seen in a generation in this country."

Complete nonsense. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, more than half the savings from the 2017 tax cut went to the top 10% of earners, and more than a quarter went to the top 1%. Despite Trump’s frequent claims to the contrary, the 2017 tax cut was not the largest in U.S. history. However, it was big enough to blow a large hole in the federal budget.

VANCE: "I think you can make a really good argument that [Trump] salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came about. ... Donald Trump could have destroyed the program — instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care."

One of Vance's most grotesque lies. During his presidency, Trump undermined the Affordable Care Act in many ways — for instance, by slashing funding for advertising and free "navigators" who help people sign up for a health insurance plan on HealthCare.gov. And rather than deciding to "save" the ACA, he tried hard to get Congress to repeal it, and failed -- mainly because of the principled vote of Sen. John McCain.

 

NOTE: The title to this post references The Talented Mr. Ripley, a 1955 novel by Patricia Highsmith about a consummate con man Tom Ripley. The novel has been adapted to film three times: Purple Noon (1960), starring Alain Delon; The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), starring Matt Damon; and the 2024 series Ripley, starring Andrew Scott.