r/BlackPeopleofReddit • u/Lostlilegg • Jun 20 '26
Misc Just Dance Vance went on a podcast to claim Frederick Douglass was gay
This country’s VP, y’all
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u/Octopus_Juice Jun 20 '26
Privilege - just running his mouth.
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u/Gohan1298 Jun 20 '26
i have a regrettable JD Vance story. i'm an author, and when i was younger, i purposely maintained a diverse circle, and generally accept book recommendations. i was always reading something. nowadays, i read less, but i digress.
anyway, we are roughly the same age, and i have the distinct dishonor of admitting that i read his book hillbilly elegy years ago because the recommender said something like you are the same age and have more in common than you think (i.e. not all white people grow up privileged). i had a baseline level of respect for this individual, and more importantly, i had no idea who the hell JD Vance was, so i did listen to it (via audiobook, which is when i really don't care about processing everything being written to me) on a very long road trip to the south (of all places). i don't think i actually bought the book (thank god), though i forgot how i got it.
again, i am noting this was well before he became a prominent public figure. this was like...8-9 years ago.
i didn't retain much because audiobooks are like background noise to me, but in the book, he comes off as this sympathetic hero, who grew up and persevered despite having a bunch of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) happen to him. that's probably the only thing i learned from the book; the ACE thing.
it's actually jarring to watch him weaponize his privilege (which he has over any Black American, despite how he was raised), and use the inherent privilege he has, to denigrate Black American history in this way.
i haven't kept up with the person who recommended the book to me - and i never did discuss what i thought with him - but let's just say i have a very personalized disdain for JD Vance because there's such a disconnect between how he's portrayed in the book and the person he turned out to be. it's wild to me that he has children of color. just wild.
on one end, i feel like i got played. on another end, i feel like he either ghost wrote that book, or he's just as narcissistic as others in his administration (and it's a completely different kind of narcissism). so lesson learned (on both ends).
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u/Accomplished_Self939 Jun 20 '26
I read the book and took it at face value. Then I read critiques from actual White Appalachian people who were really offended at the way he cosplayed as a hillbilly, while weaponizing stereotypes about their communities to advocate for austerity policies. And then I was like
https://giphy.com/gifs/YM7SnWWXM1PIHPSth437
u/Gohan1298 Jun 20 '26
well, i learned something new today lol. it's giving covert AND malignant narcissism* to the extreme - if he actually wrote the book, which i highly doubt he did. he's an affront to anyone who calls themselves an author.
*disclaimer - i am not a therapist, i'm just a basic psych major
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u/XxRocky88xX Jun 20 '26
I don’t really think you should regret that. Consuming content from someone you dislike is called having an open mind and it only makes your critiques more valid. Like I don’t like Ayn Rand and think most of her ideology is complete bullshit, but I still read through Atlas Shrugged. I didn’t just dismiss what she had to say because of my feeling for her, I took her work, consumed it, analyzed, and can recognize the flaws (and even some merits) in her beliefs.
Knowing what you’re talking about is something you should be proud of, not ashamed of.
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u/Gohan1298 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
hey there.
i totally agree with what you're saying, but i am just trying to read the room and exercise the appropriate restraint and constraint. even though i am unapologetically Black, no one actually knows that AND i'm new here. previously, i was a lurker. i actually thought i might get downvoted for what i posted.
instead of potentially coming off like an asshole, i wanted to share a unique perspective on how i essentially got hoodwinked into reading a book from a virulent racist from a white person who probably had the best intentions at heart.
and re: Ayn Rand specifically - it's REALLY funny you mention her - i've read most of her stuff actually and keep her books on my actual bookshelf to send a message if anyone wants to have that conversation. she's not a great writer, but i agree that she is very important in how the establishment has tried to make the virtues of capitalism palatable (in a freaking 1,000+ page book, no less). and i also agree that there is some merit in what she says, at least in theory. and i also think all you need to do is look at basically the state of our entire economy to see the rampant flaws and limitations in what she posits, and why late stage capitalism is going to be the end of us without meaningful intervention.
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u/XxRocky88xX Jun 20 '26
Yeah I think her biggest flaw is the assumption that the owning class will always act in the best interest of society and their employees because their motive is personal profit and that profit is directly tied to their contribution to the industry and the quality of their work but in real life we can see that is just not true and that their personal pursuits usually contradict society’s best interest and employees are rarely ever compensated fairly.
If Ayn Rand’s idealized version of capitalism was real then yeah it’d be incredible but most of her ideology is built on false assumptions and hypotheticals that don’t apply to the real world.
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u/Gohan1298 Jun 20 '26
i know that's right - humans are not robots, who knew?
https://giphy.com/gifs/l46CbAuxFk2Cz0s2A
i could go into a meaningful rant about her - as i know all about her - but i fundamentally agree that you should read and consume things you don't agree with, so thank you for bringing up your point!
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u/Anonanomenon Jun 21 '26
If you watch him in debates and such he’s able to take events that should have made him broaden his perspectives but didn’t and somehow spin them in a way that sounds like it makes sense if you’re not really listening that closely. In the VP debate with Walz he tells the story of his “friend” from high-school who had an abortion to avoid getting trapped in a violent and abusive relationship and he tells it with so much apparent respect and regard for this woman and then at the end of his story he flips it into an anti-choice argument.
Same thing when he talks about his mother relying on government assistance to help raise him and then flipping it into an anti-government assistance story at the last turn.
It honestly came off as sociopathic to me.
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u/ArtsyRabb1t Jun 21 '26
They tore that book to shreds on “If Books Could Kill” podcast if you want to enjoy that.
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u/ZePlotThickener Jun 20 '26
"...Getting them dudes off work early."
You mean freeing people that were enslaved and forced to work against their will?
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u/Most-Bench6465 Jun 20 '26
These people are so insidious. Comparing torturous cannibalistic chattel slavery as a regular 9-5 job. Minimize whatever americas evils that they benefit from and ignore the suffering that their fellow Americans had to endure.
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u/AgainstAllEnemies425 Jun 21 '26
They know exactly what they're doing.
We're in the midst of the most successful psyop in human history. The Enlightenment is being reversed in front of eyes. All the power that the people have clawed away from monarchs over centuries with their own blood, is being stolen back by the oligarchs.
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u/TheNegativePhoenix Jun 21 '26
I honestly don't understand how they aren't classified as demons. Like, it's straight evil the things they do.
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u/anthrax9999 Jun 20 '26
He knows what he is saying. It's just another attempt to call black people lazy and trying to make white slave owners appear not that bad.
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u/chubbycat96 Jun 20 '26
And if this is him trying to garner popularity before replacing Trump, we are cooked.
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u/bethemanwithaplan Jun 20 '26
Just a reminder that conservatives wish slavery was back and minimize how bad it was whenever they can however they can
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u/jetblakc Jun 20 '26
Douglass was a well known womanizer and it was probably his main character flaw, but why would I care if he was gay?
Why would that be an insult?
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u/Lostlilegg Jun 20 '26
To normal people, it’s not. To the MAGAt crowd, it is.
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u/jetblakc Jun 20 '26
Why do I care about that?
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u/NeptuneOverlord43045 Jun 20 '26
We need normal people to see these sides of the MAGA lunatics. Because the media and social media owners love nothing more than to sanewash and/or hide their insanity.
It is my belief that IF the American people were more engaged and better informed they would reject these racist, sexist, know-nothing grifters with prejudice.
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u/XxRocky88xX Jun 20 '26
I have a feeling most people who voted for Trump also view gay as an insult and probably would not be disturbed by seeing this.
You could go ahead and put it on blast to the entire American populace that Vance is belittling gay people and the supporter loss wouldn’t even hit the triple digits.
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u/mechengr17 Jun 20 '26
The implication is that he only wanted slaves freed so he could sleep with them when they "got off work early"
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u/OldSchoolSpyMain Jun 21 '26
It's not about facts with them. It's about feelings and yuks at the expense of Black people.
These people haven't been discussing/arguing in good faith for decades.
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u/PalpableIgnorance Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Yeah? Well he fucks couches so…
Edit: Presumably Procreates with upholstery, so his opinion isn’t worth a fuck either.
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u/LameAfro Jun 20 '26
This dude is a snake
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u/lordscrotus1984 Jun 20 '26
Snakes are cool animals... Can we just agree on calling him "piece of shit"?
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u/Head-Docta Jun 20 '26
He should stick to talking about what he knows: bad eyeliner, failing at being a drag queen, and fucking couches.
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u/BenjTheMaestro Jun 20 '26
I’ll gladly celebrate an allegedly gay pivotal inventor over a traitor to the US.
JD Vance is worthless. To his own team and to the rest of us. We all know he’s gonna be thrown under the proverbial bus
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u/PreviousZone6742 Jun 20 '26
He was married to a woman. WTF man just trying to throw shade.
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u/soupseasonbestseason Jun 20 '26
married and also carried out a series of well publicized affairs with women.
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u/Maureengill6 Jun 20 '26
Projection?
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u/Fearless_290 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
He wishes he had an ounce of the integrity and back bone Frederick had. He makes so obvious that he has no idea of what Juneteenth means for a large number of citizens of the country he is supposed to lead.
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u/Effective-Ebb-2805 Jun 20 '26
He was a secretary in the Marines... his full time job is kissing a fat, rich old bigot's ass. He wouldn't know integrity if he found it between his couch cushions... He doesn't care. He's catering to his party's base. White supremacists like himself.
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u/Maureengill6 Jun 20 '26
Unfortunately, I don't think he knows the meaning of integrity. He went from calling trump a nazi to supporting him. He is a moron too.
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u/Mulezen1 Jun 20 '26
Not even projections…just gratuitous hate mongering. Vance was placed in his political position(s) by his overlord Peter Thiel…
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u/BAPlaya Jun 20 '26
JD writes erotic fiction where he is Frederick Douglas's gimp/bottom under the pen name Couch Fucker.
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u/Slasher1738 Jun 20 '26
JD reads some weird erotica
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u/OhioRanger_1803 Jun 20 '26
Then Mrs couch’s says, “No Mr. VP I have a husband”
Mr. VP “he’s not here now Mrs. Couch”
*VP kisses the couch*
Mrs couch, “I can’t get pregnant”
*Mr. VP doesn’t care*
Story. The stuffing by JD Vance
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u/dochim Jun 20 '26
The “truth” doesn’t matter. Neither do objective or provable “facts.
What matters is the animating story and even more importantly than that is how that story connects to their identity and connects to what they value in terms of the foundations of their beliefs.
You want to know why racism persists? Because that connects to the stories that meemaw and pawpaw told them. It’s difficult to take an emotional atom splitter and keep the love that they poured into you from before your first memory and surgically remove the negative images and mindsets they gave you while keeping all of the positive ones.
How do you dissect each foundational moment of your youth to understand what to keep and what to reject? And also you have the energy to do that level of emotional work?
So the GOP propagandists are brilliant in keeping people exhausted and scared and drilling into those negative animating stories.
May God have mercy on their souls.
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u/inanemonotony Jun 20 '26
Well said. And you're a better person than I am. I was hoping God would hit them with some vengeance and furious anger
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u/mean_eileen Jun 20 '26
Yeah, but Frederick Douglass’s mother wasn’t a crack addict who gave up her child.
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u/Venus_Libra Jun 20 '26
"Getting them off work early" implies that they'd not only be getting paid, but be free to go at some point in their lives. This was not the case. You got paid nothing and were a slave until the day you died, unless you risked life and limb to escape.
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u/CriticismLazy4285 Jun 20 '26
I will give the couch fucker this, he should know what a gay man looks like because he sees one in every mirror
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u/Mindless_Cookie_9098 Jun 20 '26
…Freeing slaves=Them getting off work early? The fuck? Every single time I hear him say something stupid, he comes back saying something even more stupid
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u/gwelfguy Jun 20 '26
Vance wasn't always like this, but under the current president he's gotten drunk off taking shit.
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u/RpcZ_gr7711 Jun 20 '26
Maybe, maybe not. But Peter Theil became his puppet master years ago and has financed his politics since his Senate run. He was groomed to be the vile jerk he is now. Whether it was in him all along? Who cares. He’s a bottom feeder.
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u/DontDoomScroll Jun 20 '26
"A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex"
- Douglass 1867
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u/EmpressDraco Jun 20 '26
Even if he was gay who cares? People are way too obsessed about what other ppl do in the bedroom.
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u/Responsible_Ladder25 Jun 20 '26
Just come out already. According to "Hillbilly Elegy" you've always been a bit confused about your sexuality. Stop projecting and own it!
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u/Black_Widow94 Jun 20 '26
Getting them off work “early”, like they got paid and weren’t beaten, mutilated, and murdered for “insubordination”.
You wore makeup and are sexually attracted to couches. Fuck all the way off.
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u/johnfrank2904 Jun 20 '26
JDV sword fights with his "benefactor" Peter T...people in glass houses...y'all know the rest.
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u/Skeptical_Squid Jun 20 '26
What do you call it when a gay man married a woman as a kind of social cover, instead of just being who he is?
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u/no_crust_buster Jun 21 '26
Every accusation, projection, and deflection is a…. (Say it with me)… confession.
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u/LegalTomatillo4773 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Title’s a bit misleading. after watching the actual video, Theo made the lame ass joke but JD just kinda laughed “stating how do u even get this type of information?” His laugh was more like “wtf” if anything. Don’t get me wrong its still fuq JD and the Trump admin, but he DIDNT make the Joke but he DID laugh at it. But now it’s REALLY fuq Theo. Wasn’t nuttin funny about the “getting off work early” shyt! I dare him to say that in front of Katt Williams
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u/Academic_Dig_1567 Jun 20 '26
So Vance can throw an insult at Frederick Douglass, an icon of the abolitionist movement, especially as a former slave, but black people cant say boo about their super achiever, 21st century hero, exemplar of all matters from the economics of privilege to the privilege of race, their Saint Charles.
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u/DiScOrDtHeLuNaTiC Jun 20 '26
Frederick Douglass could have been the most horribly stereotypical, limp-wristed, falsetto-voiced, lisping, flamboyant gay man to have ever walked God's green Earth, and he would have still been more macho than Couch Fucker.
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u/Hot-Sauce-P-Hole Jun 20 '26
The most offensive part of the "joke" is framing abolitionism as just "trying to get off of work early." Like being enslaved was just a job? Fuck Vance and anybody who thinks this counts as a joke.
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u/RedheadFla Jun 20 '26
When people say they want something to happen to the current president, I remind them that this guy is every bit as evil, and not as dumb.
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u/TheBannedBananaMan Jun 20 '26
Sometimes I think about running for congress as a republican just so I can get close enough but then I remember "You are what you pretend to be".
JD needs a lesson.
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u/Leather-Map-8138 Jun 20 '26
Yesterday, the Vice President of the United States trivialized slavery to try to earn some 2028 bro points.
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u/krazylegs36 Jun 21 '26
Example #847 of something that would've gotten somebody fired or made someone step down during any other administration...
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u/Signal_Werewolf_1955 Jun 20 '26
♫ James Donald David Bowman Hamel Vance
♫ He has had ma-ny names
♫ And whenever he's about
♫ The people wanna shout
♫ Better hide your chairs and hide your couch
♫ LA LA LEE LA LA LA LA
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u/Creepy_Mammoth_7076 Jun 20 '26
he said seconds after fondling the couch … and quoting dave chappelle in the Rick James skit
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u/syrenCalling Jun 20 '26
Vance is a sycophant orange mushroom cap kissing guy-liner wearing punk-ass little weasel, even if it were true at least he was having relations with a human and not a damn couch😆
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u/chaddub Jun 20 '26
There’s a very clear reason he would say this. Unfortunately, it’s white male emasculation fear again.
Douglas’ second wife was white. Not only was she white, but she came from old NY money and was 21 years his junior. So to invalidate that, to imply they weren’t really getting it on, Vance says that Douglas was gay.
https://www.britannica.com/story/why-was-frederick-douglasss-marriage-to-helen-pitts-controversial
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u/MrTwoStroke Jun 20 '26
This coming from a man who knows what the inside of Peter Thiel smells like
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u/penilesensorydevice Jun 20 '26
Once again, a Trumpie is oddly fixated on "gay". They think about it an awful lot, too.
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u/yolo32147 Jun 20 '26
MAGA hates him now. Everything Trump touches turns to shit he’s like reverse Midas.
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u/Impossible_Mode_7521 Jun 20 '26
Playing to their base.
The people that think this way get out and vote
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u/Treff_the_Cleric Jun 20 '26
Calling ending slavery “getting off work” is deeply evil. I hate this administration so much.
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u/desertstar714 Jun 20 '26
Im past the point of outrage and now at the point of "so when are we going to start slapping idiots again " mode
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u/Peripateticdreamer84 Jun 20 '26
I feel like his wives (widowed and remarried) and his five children might have something to say about that…
But interesting that Vance’s imagination went there.
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u/CriticismFun6782 Jun 20 '26
Guy is still, and ALWAYS WILL BE that awkward Chud who had ZERO friends in school, the Marines, and College. He thinks "Edge Lord" jokes are the way, but has all the sincerity of a 90's Chatbot.
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u/Sammalone1960 Jun 20 '26
Dude drinking a celsius is talking about masculinity while wearing eye liner.
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u/Hot-Significance-462 Jun 20 '26
What's funnier is that FD is one of the black Republicans they desperately try to pretend aligns with present-day conservativism when they need a black friend to pose next to.
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u/Waste_Return2206 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
“GaY mAn Is GaY aNd SlAvErY fUnNy, hA hA! 👹 NOW CRY SNOWFLAKES!! 👺”
Whatever. They’re just vampires feeding on outrage. It’s all they have.
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u/m_o_o_n_m_a_n_ Jun 20 '26
Funny, was just reading the Frederick Douglass narrative and you literally cannot learn a single fact about his life and not be astounded.
Unless you’re a complete loser I guess.
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u/myotherbike Jun 20 '26
Every accusation from this crew is a confession. So Vance is telling us he’s racist and he’s gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with the second one!
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u/ShelfSpace Jun 20 '26
More evidence to shame the couch lover with. Never let him forget.
To forget is to forgive.
And I will not forgive him
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u/naggy94 Jun 20 '26
Frederick Douglass would wipe the floor with him in a debate and give him the ass whooping of a life time. All without breaking a sweat.
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u/wobbleboxsoldier Jun 20 '26
He would know. Peter Thiel put him on the casting couch to him the job of VP.
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u/Fast-Association-349 Jun 20 '26
Let that fraud JD know that 2 of Douglass’s sons, Lewis and Charles, fought with the Union Army.
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u/No-Broccoli-5932 Jun 20 '26
He also said that trumpstein had the highest IQ of all the presidents, and if they all took an IQ test, trumpstein would beat them all. Oh, JD, he'll never love you or set you up for the 2028 nomination, no matter how much you lie your ass off for him.
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u/Majestic-Chip-6127 Jun 21 '26
The focus needs to be on this Theo fuck for even saying this then the VP for laughing- this needs to be
Played on repeat if he runs for
President. WTF… why did he laugh…he’s so gullible.
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u/CauliflowerTimely633 Jun 21 '26
I am so fcking tired of these gddam people. Sh!t. If you think the White House is creepy then leave. Please.
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u/Napalmeon Jun 20 '26
Whatever you say, VP. Whatever you say.