JD Vance’s childhood bully is causing problems for him again as MAGA conspiracy shatters
A new folk hero is born
Mark
JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy past is coming back to haunt him, and it’s not the only thing. After a school bully started reengaging with the Vance legend on TikTok, the forever frazzled VP came after him. But as usual, it backfired spectacularly.
“I got a text today from JD [Vance],” opens fitness coach and influencer Chris Baker on a TikTok uploaded yesterday. Baker explains that he and Vance have more than “crossed paths” on their very separate life journeys.
“For those of you who have seen the movie Hillbilly Elegy,” he continues, “there’s a scene at the very beginning of JD getting beat up by a boy. Well, that boy was me.”
Obviously Baker had our collective attention after that. While Baker had no way of knowing who Vance would become in later years, it seems that something of the VP’s spineless sell-out nature was apparent from the very start.
How about we take this to the next level?
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But Vance’s text wasn’t about his grade school rumble with Baker. Their beef goes much deeper. After Baker started putting forth theories about the most recent alleged assassination attempt on Tr*mp at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Vance just had to slide into Baker’s DMs to set the record straight.
Only it didn’t exactly work out as planned. “Chris,” Vance allegedly wrote in a private text. “Please stop making videos about your “theories” how these assassination attempts were staged. Your last video was aired on National Television for Christ’s sake!”
Vance is referring to Baker’s video last week casting doubt on right-wing influencer Nick Shirley’s claims that he’s being “held hostage” in Cuba…a place that Tr*mp has spoken openly about wanting to take over.
Vance continued, saying Baker “can’t prove anything” and that he’s “pissing everyone off.” He finished by threatening legal action.
The thing about Baker is that he’s far from a tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist. In fact, when it comes to what most Americans actually think about both of Tr*mp’s assassination attempts, the joke is on Vance. In a Newsguard poll published Monday, 1 in 4 Americans expressed skepticism about at least one of the attempts on Tr*mp’s life.
The poll showed that citizens across party lines are growing a little tired of Tr*mp’s schtick in this area. Even MAGA is starting to feel like the math isn’t mathing. From Tucker Carlson to fellow ex-Tr*mp stan Tim Dillon, more ex-MAGA voices are taking a closer look at the first attempt and its timing. And let’s not forget the imagery that resulting from the near-miss in July of 2024.
The interesting point here isn’t that Baker believes that both assassination attempts look a little bit implausible. It’s that Vance felt the need to send his own cease & desist text to Baker instead of, you know, sending an actual, legal C&D. As usual, it’s a pretty sloppy look from JD, and the context of their relationship isn’t helping matters.
Baker isn’t letting up, either. “JD, you know as well as I do,…that we would have to have discovery if you pursued legal action,” Baker says. “And in discovery, we would look at all the evidence behind what happened in Butler [Pennsylvania.]”
We sure would! Baker stands ten toes down on his theories about both of Tr*mp’s convenient escapes from the jaws of death, and public opinion is behind him. No matter the truth of Baker’s theories, it feels like Vance has fully stepped in it by sending the text in the first place. Aren’t any of these people media trained?
Apparently not, but with Baker’s promise that he won’t be letting up on Vance any time soon, it seems like we’ve found a new folk hero in the making.
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