"A Pair of Small Time Hoods"

 Over the past few painful weeks it has  become clear to me that a lot of my friends, though they remain conversationally well-informed about our current hideous administration, have ducked most opportunities (if that's the word) to observe Donald J. Trump's gruesomely sneering piehole forming words and expressions on ...the idiot box.

Quaint coinage, that. We should bring it back. What comes out of it has It's never seemed more idiotic. It tells us of corruption so severe it requires an angry pushback that we barely have the rigor to show.

And yet, each night the tube offers footage of marches and demonstrations and shouting matches, in all manner of towns and cities, as evidence of emerging resistance against the Trump/Vance/Musk putsch.

You can't avoid that porcine, pumpkin-colored face forever. Over the next three years, count `em, there will be be far, far too many occasions to squint at DJT's smug facial dynamics. We'll see the pretend-blissful, half-closed eyes when he crows about his imagined anointing by God,  the psychotic stare he directs at Democrats and (non-complicit) reporters, the frog-like, tilted-head smirk that seems suitable only for stashing his next mouthful of horsepucky.

But it is J.D. Vance whose weaselly affect I find myself studying more closely than even Trump's abominable mugging. We who were resolute enough to watch both the chaotic February 28 Zelensky White House visit and Trump's March 4 joint address to Congress saw him. We saw him in full vehemence as a lickspittle Trump enabler, in his feral if unconvincing ambush of a much wiser and braver human, Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelensky.  

Does anyone who's reading deeper than the headlines doubt that the chief motive of the Trump cabal has been to sandbag Zellensky and his nation, to harry him into a crap deal giving up mineral resources—and make him yet another time bow to our power-grubbing president? This is what he seems ready to do, along with offering redundant thank—you's, in order to keep alive the armaments, intel and cooperation America can provide to save his nation.

Trump's clawing for absolute power in this case exceeds in consequence any previous episode. In the Oval Office and at the rostrum in the House chamber, he displayed his own, bullying version of  American Sign Language, with the messages being, "shrink back," "shut up," and "f*ck right off"—you and your victimized (but so far indomitable) people.

It's hardly necessary to repeat various credible conspiracy theories that postulate that (a) Trump is still angry with Zelensky for the Ukrainian's refusal to gift him with putatively bad stoff about Joe and Hunter Biden  or (b), he feels he must cosset Vladimir Putin for even more nefarious reasons—perhaps plutocratic, divvy-up-the-grift-money schemes, and of course, Trump's Zach-Galifianakis-in "Hangover" desperation to be in the dictator wolf pack.

My theory and fear is that Vance, who rode into notoriety on the "Hillbilly Elegy" Joe Sixpack cosplay myth that looks faker every day,  knows very well how to implement his personal will to power. 

For now, his role is a mixture of kiss-up and attack rabbit. Vance's February skein of choleric looks and unhinged accusations was fully instructive, turning "the Oval" into a cage fighter's Octagon even as Zelensky bore up sturdily. It all might have felt comical if. It wasn't so potentially tragic for Ukraine's people—and by extension, all of Europe. Trump's key point of leverage was threatening removal of the military and economic assistance that supported both the men in foxholes and ordinary citizens whose schools and homes are regularly being bombed by Vladdy.

(Just moments ago came news of a missile attack on the President's Central Ukraine home city, killing four in a hotel where an international humanitarian group—all survived-- had just checked in. The Patriot misses the U.S. has furnished Ukraine's homeland is intended to knock such missiles out of the sky, but, per the New York Times, "the pause in American military assistance could leave Ukrainians short of the sophisticated interceptor missiles that have helped provide a blanket of protection over the capital, Kyiv, and other cities. “)

Equally instructive were Vance's range of expressions in the above-cited appearances before millions of aghast viewers.   (None more stricken than Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova, who in the Oval buried her face in her hands at one point). 

Yes, the "performative"  tag has rapidly become overused, but isn't that just what Vance, a suck-up if Trump's son Don Jr. ever met one, has been engaged in from the start? Vance seems to think his beard, which gives his face the look of a furry capybara booty, lends him a manly air. In his recent optics face plant at Sugarbush ski area in Vermont, the choicest hand-lettered sign in evidence was "GO SKI IN RUSSIA" as hardy locals lined the roadway mocking and hooting.

But I digress. His presentation as a scold doing Trump's bidding in the Oval Office shakedown carried all the gravitas of someone's rude toddler who badly needs a time-out.

Except Daddy was egging him on. Separating the motivations of their agendas, though Trump adds grift to his will for dominance, is like distinguishing which frat boy's fart stank up the kitchen at the kegger.

 For my friends who are fellow boomers and can’t stand the thought of watching it all continue to unfold, I offer the most boomer thing I can gin up—try to picture Vance as Beaver Cleaver, the clueless if begrudgingly charming adolescent who half-amused a generation of TV viewers for six years beginning in 1957. (He was a suburbanite child of the post-war boom and roughly the same age as me and my pals as we all aged up from second grade.) 

The Oval fracas began calmly, Zelensky solo on a chair beside Trump, with Vance and the dissociated Little Marco Rubio looking as useless as your formerly prized 401 K's now are. But soon a reporter's question ignited Trump, who spoke to the room en route to barracking the Ukranian president: "You want me to be tough? I could be tougher than any human being you've ever seen…"

Maybe a better comparison would be a rabid hyena in a nature doc, but okay,

Then came Vance, piling on and slagging the Biden approach, crowing that "… then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country." (Oh, noticed that, did you?)

This was the stage of Vance's rhetoric that Bowen Yang mimicked so well the next evening on "Saturday Night Live,” turning to the camera as Vance and gesturing: "This kitty's got claws!" (It was a performance that could only be topped by Mike Myers, well-schooled in portraying control freaks, as he came on moments later with a replica chainsaw and an array of psychotic twitches to portray shadow chief executive Elon Musk.  

In the actual meeting, after a brief exchange, Zelensky dunked on the flag-pin patriot Vice President:  "Have you ever been to Ukraine that you [can] say what problems we have? You should come once."

Vance, by his own statement in his 2016 memoir, "was lucky to escape any real fighting" as a Marine, petulantly and ignorantly came back with: "Have you said thank you once?"

Zelensky: "A lot of times. Even today." He further instructed Vance and Trump: I am a wartime president, and prophesied, as European leaders would soon affirm, "You will feel the influence. I'm telling you now, you will feel the influence… I'm not playing cards right now; I'm very serious,  Mr. President. I am a wartime president."

New Yorker editor David Remnick summed it all up with his written response: "Zelensky is a hero of historic scale, brave beyond measure; Trump's behavior was disgraceful. He and his Vice-President deliberately tried to intimidate Zelensky with all the finesse of a couple of small-time hoods. [Boldface mine] The incident was both shocking and inevitable, all in line with the over-all temper of Trump's Presidency—the threats, the firings, the multiple doge fiascoes, the proposal to cleanse the Gaza Strip of two million Palestinians.”

In one instructive moment of "Leave It To Beaver," Beaver's dad scolds him for countenancing the behavior of his portly and sometimes misbehaving pal Larry: "You knew what Larry was doing wrong. You could have stopped him."  

Ah, but the faux country boy is a classic inside-the-beltway operative, like the Republican Congress members who seem almost universally cowed by Trump and the threats he casually wields. He'd go total brat and have the same vacuous answer as Beaver: "Gee, Dad, I have enough trouble keeping myself good without keeping all the other kids good."

Well, enough. Perhaps soon we can bring on Musk or Stephen Miller as the phony, spoiled neighbor, the dickwad Eddie Haskell. 

And what is the statesmanlike quote Big (Pumpkin-Faced) Daddy uttered to sum it all up? Finally something he knows about, and he all but pinned a ribbon on Vance with it: "This is going to be great television. I will say that."