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Vance’s Media Mastery
Vice President JD Vance gave another master class in shutting down media bias and disinformation last Sunday when he sat across from smug antagonist Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. When she challenged him on the deportation of illegals and vetting immigrants, Vance shot back that he doesn’t want unvetted migrants “like the guy who planned a terrorist attack in Oklahoma a few months ago. He was allegedly properly vetted, and many people in the media and the Democratic Party said that he was properly vetted. Clearly he wasn’t.”
Brennan tried to argue that he may have been radicalized after arriving here, but Vance returned, “I don’t really care, Margaret. I don’t want that person in my country, and I think most Americans agree with me.” Stymied, Brennan moved on.
That moment and Vance’s “I don’t really care, Margaret” are fast becoming an amusing internet meme (see below) which represents Vance’s indifference to liberal “feelings” about immigration. His refusal to accept the premises of the media’s subversive narratives is a lesson all conservatives must take to heart and employ in all media interactions.
Captain UnAmerican
Actor Anthony Mackie, who is taking over from Chris Evans as Captain America in the forthcoming installment (Brave New World) of the Marvel superhero franchise, just torpedoed the movie’s box office potential by declaring, in an onstage interview making the rounds of social media, that Captain America “represents a lot of things” and that “America” shouldn’t be one of them.
“For me Captain America represents a lot of things, and I don’t think ‘America’ should be one of those representations,” Mackie stated. “It’s about a man who keeps his word, who has honor, dignity, and integrity. Someone who is trustworthy and dependable.” Perhaps sensing that he was straying off-script into controversy, he shifted gears and went on to blather about how actors want to recapture the imagination of a young kid playing with a stick as a sword, saving the princess from the dragon.
Mackie will probably be attacked by his Hollywood fellows more for this perceived sexism (“The princess can save herself! She doesn’t need a man!”) than his anti-Americanism, but he just alienated all those audiences in flyover country who would otherwise have thrilled at the latest cinematic exploits of the red-, white-, and blue-clad all-American.
Prominent conservative podcaster Dan Bongino posted the Mackie clip on X with the comment, “Another shit movie I won’t be seeing.”
Outkick founder Clay Travis posted, “The new Captain America says Captain America shouldn’t represent America. Are there any actors and actresses employed by Marvel who aren’t complete and total morons?”
Someone needs to remind Mackie of two things: one, “America” is literally right there in the character’s name, and if he wants his (reportedly) nearly $400 million film to make its money back perhaps he should think about connecting the dots between Cap’s heroic qualities and the exceptional country he represents; and two, undermining a beloved character by imposing your woke worldview while promoting the film is box office poison – just ask Rachel “Snow White” Zegler, whose open contempt for the classic character in interviews has doomed the forthcoming movie to epic failure.
We Don’t Need “Qualified” Nominees – We Need Wrecking Balls
President Trump’s unorthodox choices for cabinet members and department heads in the new administration – Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Elon Musk to the Department of Government Efficiency, and others – have sparked blustery complaints from Democrats and establishment Republicans that the nominees aren’t “qualified.” “Hegseth is just a Fox News host!” goes a typical objection.
These whiners need to get it through their thick skulls that MAGA Americans, who voted Trump into office in a nationwide red landslide, don’t give a rat’s behind about whether his nominees are conventionally “qualified” to take the reins of these government roles. The “qualified,” standard-issue politicians like lifelong politician Joe Biden are the ones who, over the decades, have run this country nearly over a cliff and got obscenely rich doing it. They constitute the Deep State, the Status Quo, the Establishment.
We don’t need or want nominees who check off all the usual “qualified” boxes that took us from being the freest and most prosperous country in world history to the brink of collapse. What we need and want is a team of wrecking balls who have the patriotic vision and courage to smash these entrenched, bloodsucking departments and lead America back to liberty and greatness. By that measure, Donald Trump, for all his loose-cannon volatility, is the right man at the right moment, as are his department picks.
According to conventional thinking, Hillary Clinton is qualified. Mitch McConnell is qualified. Nancy Pelosi is qualified. Lindsay Graham is qualified. Look where those people got us. Donald Trump, despite having been President once already and re-elected, is still not the sort of lifetime politico that the Establishment would consider conventionally qualified, and yet, at the rate he’s going, he’s going to end up with his face on Mt. Rushmore alongside other giants of American leadership.
Pete Hegseth, for example, is not “just” a Fox News host but a highly decorated Army veteran and advocate for servicemembers, whose top priority will be the lethality of the military, not its diversity of skin color and sexual orientation. This makes him more qualified than careerist General Mark Milley who, as Biden’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fretted that the greatest existential threat to America was not China or Iran but “white rage” in our own ranks.
Forget career politicians who check off all the “right” boxes. It is long past time for out-of-the-box visionaries like Trump and Elon Musk to step up and get the job done making America great again.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior