Republican Senate Candidate Claims ‘Our Country’s Kind of a Joke’

Ohio Republican Senate hopeful J.D. Vance claimed that the U.S. is “kind of a joke” in response to a question about his rhetoric and whether it would be a turn-off to voters.

During an interview with Spectrum News’ Taylor Popielarz, Vance, author of the book “Hillbilly Elegy,” was asked about a tweet he sent about the shooting incident on the set of the film “Rust.”

“You had said, ‘Dear Jack, let Trump back on, we need Alec Baldwin tweets’ — as this, you know, deadly shooting was playing out,” Popielarz said.

He asked, “If a voter sees that as they’re plugging into this race, and they say, is that the type of rhetoric I want a US senator to have? How do you explain that?”

“I’d say like, look, people may not always agree with my rhetoric, but I think, unfortunately, our country’s kind of a joke. And we should be able to tell jokes about it. Right?” Vance responded.

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He continued, “I think it’s important for our politicians to have a sense of humor. I think it’s important for us to be real people. Every single person that I knew was joking about what would Donald Trump say if he was on Twitter. Right? So I think the idea that we can’t have somewhat offensive humor sometimes from our politicians is basically just asking us to have fake politicians all the time.”

“That’s not what I’m going to be. Maybe it turns some people off, but I think the realness turns more people on,” he added.