ArcaMax

SAN DIEGO -- How many of us are lucky enough in life to find ourselves exactly where we belong?

Vice President JD Vance is one lucky guy. This administration is a legit three-ring circus, where President Donald Trump reigns as the Ringmaster. And Vance has steady work serving as head clown.

Nearly every day, MAGA is faced with another embarrassment. Just recently, Trump threatened countries in Europe with "serious tariffs" if Canada is named an "associate member" of the European Union. Trump said the gesture could be considered a "hostile act."

Hostile against whom exactly? The United States? Has Trump put us at war with Canada, the EU -- or both?

As second-in-command, Vance seems to think it's his job to keep up with Trump in terms of saying offensive things. The 42-year-old has a gift for saying the wrong thing. As a gaffe king who never lets a thought in his head -- no matter how hurtful or half-baked -- go unexpressed, Vance could really use a filter.

For instance, while speaking at the recent GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Vance paused his remarks to single out someone in the audience. When a protester shouted at him and waved Mexican and Palestinian flags, Vance went full nativist. Oddly, he only zeroed in on one of the flags. Guess which one.

"What the people at home missed is that we just had a protester interrupting us and waving the Mexican flag," Vance said. "Well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your a-- over there. I'll buy you the plane ticket."

The crowd -- which I assume was made up mainly of Texans who couldn't get through their day without a helping hand from a Mexican immigrant -- erupted into nationalistic chants of "USA! USA! USA!"

In the same speech, Vance tried to deflect from the many failures of the second Trump administration -- including the disastrous Iran war, which Vance reportedly opposed at first -- by painting a bleak picture of what things were like when Democrats controlled the White House.

"Two years ago, we have to remember, our nation, ladies and gentlemen, was tired," he said. "We were tired of seeing our factories close. We were tired of our neighbors dying of drug overdoses. We were tired of not being able to afford anything. We were tired of seeing the cartels and the criminals given free rein over our great country."

That was the windup. And then came the low blow.

"And we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous," he said.

Vance alleged that America was all those things -- dirtier, poorer, less safe, less prosperous -- due to immigrants and non-whites. How could anyone call that racist?

The vice president's view of America is upside down. Immigrants, and non-white people, who go to work every day aren't making America "less prosperous." They're keeping us afloat, genius.

In fact, Vance is so clumsy with his words that he has become the Joe Biden of the Republican Party. Biden was always making fellow Democrats uncomfortable with off-color remarks, often about race, ethnicity, culture, immigration or language.

In 2006, the Delaware senator was famously caught on camera boasting to a voter about his support among Indian Americans in his home state, where that ethnic group is so prevalent that "you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent."

Somehow, I don't think Vance would find that comment amusing. His wife, Usha, is Indian American. And, as a Yale-educated lawyer, she doesn't run a convenience store or a donut shop.

A lot of Americans cut Biden some slack because he was born in 1942. That was a dozen years before Brown v. Board of Education desegregated America's public schools. As a white male in the so-called Silent Generation, Biden grew up at a time when -- when it came to racial issues -- enlightenment was in short supply.

Meanwhile, Vance is a millennial who was born in 1984. His wife has brown skin and his children are of mixed race. What's his excuse?

Only politics. Vance is staking out a lane for the 2028 presidential campaign. He wants to be the choice for nativists who want to make America white again.

Those voters are terrified that different cultures, foreign languages and changing demographics harm our national identity.

Like Vance, these folks have it upside down. Diversity doesn't threaten our national identity. Diversity is our national identity.

========

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Copyright 2026 Creators Syndicate, Inc.