Does coup-supporter J.D. Vance know he’s the running mate of a felon, sexual predator and fraudster? Weird!

Republican vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance sat for a softball interview with Trump worshiper and sycophant Maria Bartiromo yesterday.

You know Vance's candidacy is in trouble because Bartiromo's first question to him was, “[S]ome people are saying you were the wrong pick for Trump’s running mate, what are you doing about it?”

Vance dubiously claimed he takes the criticism as a badge of honor and as proof that he is feared by the media and the left. He went on to say that he “grew up as a poor kid,” and not from a political or from a wealthy family. He just forgot to mention – and MAGA Maria let it slide – that he’s extremely wealthy now and is invested in a platform that promotes neo-Nazi and Russian propaganda. His entry into politics was greatly helped by billionaire Peter Thiel. In fact, Thiel and his billionaire tech-bros were probably instrumental in Vance becoming Trump’s running mate. You can best believe the bros will glom even more power than they currently have should Vance accompany their favorite felon back into the White House.

Unfortunately for the bros and the Trump campaign, Vance is historically unpopular. And maybe Bartiromo helped shore him up with her viewers but I doubt he helped himself with any others.

For one thing, Vance had some very weird trouble with facts. He falsely claimed Vice President Kamala Harris “opened up the American southern border.” (Fact check: Harris was never assigned to work on the border but to work on diplomacy with Latin American countries on the root causes of migration.) Of course, Bartiromo did not correct the smear.

Then Vance ridiculously blamed the high cost of housing on Harris and immigrants.

VANCE: I was in Georgia yesterday. They have a terrible housing affordability problem in the state of Georgia, Maria, because Kamala Harris shot interest rates through the roof, and then she welcomed in millions of illegal aliens to compete with Americans for scarce homes.

Lots has been written about the reasons for the lack of affordable housing in the U.S. but I could find none that cited immigrants. Not even via Fox News.

Bartiromo is supposed to be a business journalist but she let that falsehood go.

Then Vance got to a kneeslapper of falsehoods:

VANCE: The other thing that, Maria, that Kamala just seems to have no real compassion or understanding for is that the worst inflation is in the price of groceries, Americans cannot afford to put the same kind of food on the table they could when Donald Trump was president. That is an unbelievable tragedy. No American family should be worried about putting food on the table. And yet going to the grocery has become a source of stress for middle-class Americans all across our country.

Donald Trump and I just want to what people who work hard and play by the rules to have a good life. We don't want to give Medicare to illegal aliens. We don't want illegal aliens to take advantage of our system. We want the American economy to work for hardworking Americans.

Vance is so full of crap here. For one thing, his claim to have compassion for middle-class family is belied by his voting record. The Center for Economic and Policy Research published this yesterday, the same day Vance was pretending to care about those who don’t have a billionaire sugar daddy.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would expand the Child Tax Credit — the very policy that Vance has championed and just accused Kamala Harris of opposing. Vance didn’t show up for the vote. Killing the proposal was a loss to roughly 16 million children in low-income working families, who would have benefited from about $700 in tax relief this year. Estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show that the proposal would have lifted at least 500,000 children above the poverty line and raised the family incomes for at least 5 million more poor children.

Neither he nor Bartiromo said a word about the Child Tax Credit here.

Furthermore, Project 2025's tax plan gives a big tax cut to the wealthy (like Vance and Thiel) and makes the middle class pay for it. There's also a MAGA plan to raise the retirement age for Social Security, thus making those hard-working Americans work longer and harder, cut benefits for nearly three-quarters of Americans and threaten low- and moderate-income workers with economic insecurity once they leave the workforce, as per the Center for American Progress.

Then there’s Vance’s claim that he and Trump are on the side of  “people who work hard and play by the rules.” For one thing, Trump is notoriously lazy. But more importantly, he could not care less about rules. Vance’s idea of an upstanding American was recently convicted of 34 felonies, adjudged to have sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, was fined hundreds of millions of dollars for defrauding insurers and lenders in New York, was caught bragging on video about grabbing women by the p***y, and has been charged with dozens more felonies for stealing classified documents and trying to incite an insurrection.

And let's not forget, Vance has said he was all for Trump’s 2020 coup attempt.

You’ve probably guessed that Bartiromo uttered not a peep of challenge here, either.

You can watch Bartiromo help spread disinformation below, from the August 4, 2024 Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.