Political Tribune

2024, JD Vance, News, Social Media, The Media

JD Vance Responds To Backlash From Awkward Donut Shop Visit, Appears To Blame His Staff

He is something else.

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580 points

JD Vance has been involved in a number of embarrassing moments. Many of these incidents have gone viral, and so has the current one, after he stopped at a Georgia bakery last week. The visit went from 0 to awkward in seconds, and now he’s expressing sympathy for the nervous worker he encountered. He also expressed regret that workers at the baker hadn’t been told about his impending visit, and added that his staff needs to plan better in the future.

“I just felt terrible for that woman,” Vance said in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday. “We walked in, and there’s 20 Secret Service agents, and there’s 15 cameras, and she clearly had not been properly warned, and she was terrified, right? I just felt awful for her.”

His entourage stopped at Holt’s Sweet Shop in Valdosta, Georgia. He was schmoozing people last week during a series of stops. This is a common practice for presidential candidates and their running mates during their campaign stops at local restaurants and stores, notes Business Insider. As we know, Vance has learned this isn’t as easy as it looks.

Sorry JD, but no one’s going to forget the comment about “A bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

He dug himself a deeper hole by adding:

“It’s just a basic fact — you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC — the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” Vance continued. “And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Of course, he made this comment back in 2021, but those of us who are “childless cat ladies” (I have 11 of them) haven’t forgotten. I may not have a lot of money, but I live in a beautiful place in Central America and somehow I’m not miserable.

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The footage of the visit shows Vance trying to introduce himself to workers at the bakery while he ordered donuts and cinnamon rolls.

“The zoo has come to town, thank you for letting us come in here,” Vance told the worker, laughing awkwardly as reporters sharp-eyed his every move. Then we see the employee glancing around anxiously. “I don’t want to be on camera,” the employee says, so Vance asks reporters to try to avoid featuring her.

“I’m JD Vance, and I’m running for vice president. It’s good to see you,” Vance said. The worker, not too happy about all the onlookers, responded, “OK.”

Another employee who was not so shy looks on, clearly not impressed by Vance’s visit.

Social media users couldn’t have been happier and they had a field day excoriating Vance over the visit. C-Span’s clip earned 4.2 million views on X, meaning plenty of fun was had by all.

One user noted: “He has the social skills of a table,” while another wrote “Best self-own of the cycle. Don’t worry though, he will find a way to top it.

Some responses were more pointed:

Indeed. If bumbling, addle-brained Trump wins the election, we’ll have a circus in the White House, rather than a capable institution where people act rationally.

Vance tried to smooth things over in his usual awkward fashion.

“We don’t to have these scripted events — I don’t want to go and do three takes of buying Doritos at a Sheetz,” Vance told NBC, taking a slap at Vice President Harris and Gov. Tim Walz’s recent stop at the well-known Pennsylvania gas station chain. “I like to get out there and talk to people, and we want to make sure we’re doing it, but definitely make sure that people are at least OK with being on camera, or we’re going to walk in and you’re going to have a person who has, practically, a panic attack because she’s got 15 cameras in her face.”

Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were also at the famed gas station and she, Emhoff, and Walz can be seen acting like normal people. Walz handed her a bag of Doritos, one of her favorite snacks. No employees were tormented with a camera in their faces.

And she even went a step further, after her campaign sent out a fundraising appeal where she recalled watching Donald Trump’s 2016 win in shock, revealing that she ate an entire “family-sized bag of nacho Doritos.”

“I did not share one chip with anybody. Not even Doug,” Harris wrote in the email. “I just watched the TV with utter shock and dismay.”

His win shocked so many of us. I cried along with several of my friends.

Vance, apparently not content with annoying the distressed worker, tried to chat other employees up, asking them how long they had worked at the bakery and when the business opened.

“When we selected this place, I didn’t know if it had been here for 20 years or four years — you never know, sometimes you drop in,” Vance said.

Yeah, and then bother the hell out of employees who are just trying to do their jobs. Vance is a real winner, isn’t he?

Image via Political Tribune gallery.


Megan Hamilton

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Megan Colleen Hamilton was born and raised on progressive politics and she has long fought for liberal causes. She has lived in the Pacific Northwest, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, parts of Mexico, and now Central America. Her travels have further informed her progressive beliefs in these troubled times. She is currently owned by 11 cats, two dogs, and one naughty rabbit. She actually is one of those “childless cat ladies.”

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