The Press Corps Flies Trump Force Two 

CAMPAIGN TRAIL DEP'T. 

REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENTIAL nominee JD Vance—it's spelled without periods now, officially—was flying around yesterday, on a private Boeing 737 that the Trump campaign refers to as "Trump Force Two." The New York Post reported that the "[l]eg room was much more spacious than what’s typically found on a 737" and published photos of its reporter's personal welcome-aboard note and a sign above a window reading "GAS WAS $2.39 A GALLON WHEN TRUMP LEFT OFFICE." 

Michael Bender of the New York Times, on the same Ohio-to-Virginia flight, noticed the gas-price signage too, but his eye was on the candidate. Specifically, it was on the surface of the candidate. Vance, Bender wrote, "was unsure where to stand or where to put his hands" and "uncertain of how to start" his back-of-the-plane session with reporters: 

Where a more seasoned politician may have simply leaned against a seat, Mr. Vance in his initial confusion hinted at the inexperience of a 39-year-old embarking on his maiden national campaign just one year after being sworn in to his first elected office. When a flight attendant approached and urged everyone to fasten their seatbelts before landing, Mr. Vance plopped into an empty seat in the press cabin and quickly buckled up — as if he were just another passenger, and not the only one inside the plane with his name on the outside of it, too.

JD Vance may be a profoundly unsympathetic figure, but the dispatch read as supremely petty. After all the years of skeptical readers raising an eyebrow at Vance's account of feeling lost and intimidated among the elites he met at Yale Law, here was a real encounter with judgmental snobbery: when the flight attendant said it was seatbelt time, this rube sat down and put on a seatbelt! Can you believe it?

Somewhere down below and away, outside the spacious cabin, people with limited access to the up-close workings of American politics were reading about or reporting on Vance's longstanding interest in neo-monarchism, his formerly expressed belief that Trump committed sexual assault, his remarks that unmarried people like Kamala Harris were "cat ladies," and his spectacular failure to win over any voters after the Republican National Convention. On the plane, Bender was noting that Vance "easily sparred with reporters." 

The nominee, Bender wrote, showed "his quick wit and combative instinct when asked about criticism from Gov. Andy Beshear, a Kentucky Democrat, that Mr. Vance has overstated his blue-collar roots," with Vance saying Beshear—a potential Harris running mate—was "a guy whose first job was at his dad’s law firm and who inherited the governorship from his father." Good zinger, although a reporter who was there to spar in earnest might have pointed out that what Beshear  really said was that the Hillbilly Elegy author, born in the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, "ain't from here." Details! 

In another bit of potential sparring that went un-sparred, the press on the plane talked to Vance about abortion. "Mr. Vance explained to reporters that his anti-abortion positions would take a back seat to Mr. Trump as the party’s presidential nominee," Bender wrote. The Post provided the actual quote: 

“If I wanted the world to hear my vision on something like abortion, I’d run for president myself,” Vance said. “But I’m not. Donald Trump is. And he has a vision on those issues. That’s the vision I care about.

This was a less craven position than it seemed; for Vance to truly subordinate his abortion beliefs to Trump's position, Trump's position would have to be at odds with Vance's beliefs. All the Republican platform really did about abortion was to remove the old demand for a federal abortion ban and replace it with language that presumes fetuses enjoy protection, as legal persons, under the 14th amendment. But that sold publications like the Times on the idea that Trump was somehow moderating his position. 

Still, Bender caught out Vance in an inconsistency: after telling the reporters on his plane that he, as the vice presidential nominee, could have personal positions separate from those of the presidential nominee, Vance went a rally in Virginia and "said it was fair game to make Ms. Harris answer for all of the Biden administration’s policies." More sparring material—but would Bender have another chance to press Vance on it? 

Here's the account of what happened after that rally: 

At the end of the day, as the sun set over the Appalachian Mountains and Mr. Vance climbed up the stairs for his return flight home to Ohio, he paused when a reporter on the runway shouted a question asking how he had enjoyed his first day on the trail.

“It was fun,” Mr. Vance shouted back.

Reporters, mostly stunned that he had stopped to answer, didn’t immediately offer a follow-up question. So Mr. Vance ducked back into his plane.

The naive and ignorant candidate had met the people who understood how things were supposed to work. And somebody demonstrated they didn't know what they were doing. 

WEATHER REVIEWS

New York City, July 23 2024

★★ The early rain went away but the dampness stuck to the pavement for hours and saturated the air. A short spell of sunlight did nothing noticeable to dry it all out. It was hard to tell if the clouds were clinging to the ultratall at the foot of the Park or just hanging nearby and matching its color. A woman sat on the ground feeding squirrels from a big plastic bag of peanuts. The stiff wrinkles in the hanger-dried cotton shirt were steaming away on the walk. The mingled fumes of growing things and rotting things were thick enough to taste. The worst of the sogginess had eased by the five o'clock hour, and the sky that the swifts or swallows were veering around on had big swaths of blue in it. A lanternfly lay crushed flat on the sidewalk. 

EASY LISTENING DEP'T.

CLICK ON THIS box to find today's Indignity Morning Podcast.

Indignity Morning Podcast No. 307: Being Bob Menendez.

THE PODCAST OF THE SUMMER

INDIGNITYTom Scocca

SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.

WE PRESENT INSTRUCTIONS in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected for afternoon teas from Mrs. Ericsson Hammond's Salad Appetizer Cook Book, by Maria Matilda Ericsson Hammond. Published in 1924, and now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all.

Lettuce Sandwich à la Blanche

Sandwiches de Laitue à la Blanche
For Six Persons

Twelve thin slices of bread, two tablespoons of butter, one cup of finely chopped green tender lettuce, juice of half a lemon, cayenne pepper and salt.

How to Make It. Stir the butter to a cream; add the chopped lettuce, the lemon juice, pepper and salt, and spread six slices of the bread with the mixture; put the other slices of bread on the top and press it down firmly, then cut in triangular shape. Arrange them on a platter in a row, one resting on top of the other and garnish with lettuce leaves.

If you decide to prepare and attempt to enjoy a sandwich inspired by this offering, be sure to send a picture to indignity@indignity.net. 

MARKETING DEP'T.

Supplies are really and truly running low of the second printing of 19 FOLK TALES, still available for gift-giving and personal perusal! Sit in the crushing heat with a breezy collection of stories, each of which is concise enough to read before the thunderstorms start.

LESS THAN 10 COPIES LEFT: HMM WEEKLY MINI-ZINE, Subject: GAME SHOW, Joe MacLeod’s account of his Total Experience of a Journey Into Television, expanded from the original published account found here at Hmm Daily. The special MINI ZINE features other viewpoints related to an appearance on, at, and inside the teevee game show Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, and is available for purchase at SHOPULA.

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