How Is JD Vance So Bad at All of This?
The Republican nominee for vice president is seemingly unable to act normal on the national stage. What gives?

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
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You simply can’t make an idiot make sense, according to The New Abnormal’s Danielle Moodie, and that’s especially true when it comes to JD Vance.
When questioned by CNN’s Dana Bash over the weekend about his baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, the Republican nominee for vice president melted down, calling her a “Democratic propagandist.” He insisted that it was “disgusting” to insinuate that his lies had led to threats against Springfield’s Haitian community, as well as city schools and hospitals.
“Andy, you can’t make this idiot make sense,” Danielle tells co-host Andy Levy. “He is so very bad at this, and by ‘this,’ I mean ‘seeming normal,’ being able to do regular interviews and not get himself caught up in a web of lies.”
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Then, Maya Wiley, former New York City mayoral candidate, ex-MSNBC legal analyst, and current president and CEO of The Leadership Conference, joins the podcast to talk about her new memoir, Remember, You Are a Wiley.
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The book, which she’s been thinking about since her mayoral run, is a chronicle of the lessons Wiley learned as a child of activists.
Plus! A conversation with independent journalist Justin Glawe, who writes the newsletter American Doom and has reported for the Daily Beast, Rolling Stone, Vice, Esquire, The Guardian, and more. He’s here to talk through “Collective hysteria,” his recent dispatch for Luke O’Neil’s newsletter, Welcome to Hell World, which concerns election officials who just so happen to also be election deniers.
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
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