Well, howdy there, Internet people. It's Bell again. So today, we're going to talk about

Vance's embarrassingly odd speech to the troops. Vance spoke to troops on July 1st. It was one of the

most painfully awkward speeches I have ever seen given to troops. Is there some

German word for secondhand embarrassment? Troops are supposed to maintain nonpartisan bearing

and shouldn't be exposed to nonpartisan rhetoric. This is something Vance knows from his own time in the military, and he acknowledged that he knew that,

within seconds of taking the stage. He said he was worried about falling down the stairs,

and then said, quote, I'm trying to be nonpartisan. You ever seen these old cartoons where you've got the angel

on the shoulder and the devil on the shoulder? Well, because I'm speaking to all of you,

our great patriots and service members. I've got the angel on my shoulder saying,

JD, don't be partisan. We're going to make this nonpartisan.

And then I've got the devil on my shoulder who wants to talk about every time that Joe Biden fell

up or down the stairs. And the media didn't care about that. So while acknowledging he knows it's incredibly inappropriate,

he sided with the devil to try to make the statement anyway. There were no cheers, but that's

just where it starts. He then did the normal introductions to the base and guess,

then talked about how the political leadership in the country couldn't do their jobs without the military. End that quote.

Bad guys and good guys, friends and foes. Allies and enemies are afraid of you.

What? Our allies are not afraid of our military. They're afraid of

incompetent leadership, who believes it's a good idea to inspire fear in the good guys and our

allies. The leadership of mediocre men who are trying to stroke their own ego.

I know that sounds like an attack, but shortly thereafter, Vance actually said, quote,

One of the reasons why I wanted this job is because it's pretty cool to have the commandant of the Marine Corps have to salute a member of the E4 Mafia. Ego thing. Don't believe me?

The next thing he said was, that's pretty cool.

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