Vance’s Hometown Paper Rips Him as ‘Lapdog Vice President’
The vice president, who has disappeared in the shadow of Elon Musk, failed to impress an Ohio newspaper that called him an “appendage” to the Trump administration.

Drew Hallowell/Getty Images
Vice President JD Vance was chewed out in an op-ed in his hometown newspaper that described him as the “lapdog vice-president.” In the searing op-ed Tuesday in the Ohio Capital Journal, columnist Marilou Johanek called Vance out for his lackluster first month in the White House. Johanek slammed Vance’s first few weeks in office as a “nondescript role as an appendage in the Trump-Musk administration.” Johanek went on to list the most notable accomplishments of the “lapdog vice-president,” a considerably short list, which includes being rebuked by the Pope, attending a friendly meeting with Germany’s far-right nationalist AfD party and outraging NATO allies. “The last thing the world needs now is a U.S. vice-president trashing eighty years of foreign policy with America’s closest and most enduring friends,” Johanek wrote. German courts actually ruled Vance’s apparent camaraderie with the far-right party as a threat to democracy. The author of Hillbilly Elegy, which is a memoir about growing up poor in middle America, had promised to make his Rust Belt roots proud. According to the op-ed, polls show he is one of the least popular vice presidential candidates in history. “Vance has been doing us proud by attacking friends, embracing enemies, insulting humanitarians, drawing papal ire, and pontificating laughably on what makes a man a man. Seriously, what is wrong with JD?” Johanek concluded.
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