Hillbilly Eligibility

By BRUCE LOWITT

Partial transcript of a secret meeting Tuesday in Vice President-elect JD Vance’s Senate Office Building, from a recording made by one of the attendees who provided it on condition of anonymity lest they become a victim of an over-eager supporter of President-elect Donald Trump:

Sen. JD Vance, R-Megalomania: “… didn’t tell you why I called you here because if word got out I would be in a shitload of trouble. Here’s the thing …

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Turncoat: “Wait a minute! Are you saying …”

Vance: “Just listen, then tell me if you’re in or out.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Dither: “In or out of what?”

Vance: “Getting rid of Trump.”

Various voices: “WHAT?!”

Vance: “Not now. After he’s been in the White House a few months.”

Rep. Greg Pence, R-Nepotism: “Whoa! Are you suggesting, um …”

Vance: “No. I’ve decided that despite our propensity for violence we’re not going to, uh, I think the phrase is ‘take him out.’ Besides, someone’s already tried that. So …”

Pence: “Then what?”

Vance: “I think we should Twenty-fifth Amendment him.”

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Tackling Dummy: “Which one is that?”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Icicle: “Jesus, Tommy, don’t you know anything? How’d you get elected? It means the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office.”

Vance: “In other words, me.”

Graham: “Are you nuts?”

Pence: “Hold on, Lindsey. Didn’t you once call Trump, and I quote, ‘a race-baiting xenophobic, religious bigot’ who doesn’t represent the Republican party or the values of our military?”

Graham: “Well, ahem, that’s before I realized that if I, uh, wanted to get re-elected I had to do everything but, um, blow him on the Resolute desk.”

Collins: “So now you love him?”

Graham: “Hell no. But when he’s no longer …”

Vance: “Exactly. When so many of his followers are going broke because they don’t have workers on their farms and in their hotels, and the auto industry and other big business is getting whacked by inflation and Trump’s becoming more and more erratic and all the other shit that turns Congress against him and the MAGA crowd against Congress, he’ll finally become, what’s the word? Inconsequential?”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Exhausted: “Wow! Where’d you learn such big words, JD?”

Vance: “Oh, be quiet, old man. Hey, that’s the point. Trump’s older than you, almost twice as old as me, and he’s showing it. More to the point, that Project Twenty-twenty-five and a lot of his own dumb ideas are going to get us killed two years from now. It’ll be a bloodbath.”

Murkowski: “Like?”

Pence: “Ooh, ooh, I know! Like concentration camps and deporting immigrants, and tariffs and inflation, and RFK Jr., and … and … ooh, and Gaza and Ukraine now that he has to actually end those wars with twenty-four hours of Inauguration Day. And …”

Vance: “Okay enough, Greg. But, yeah. The point is, in two years it’s going to be like twenty-eighteen all over again, except worse. The Democrat party will retake the House and Senate and Trump’ll be a big fat orange lame duck and two years after that I’ll be, what’s the word? Fucked.”

Collins: “Do you think you can get enough of us to get a third impeachment going?”

Vance: “If Republicans want to keep their jobs and not get blamed for a trashed economy, they’ll sign on. Otherwise I’ll be like Kamala Harris, running on the record of her boss, Biden, and people hating it and us, and we’ll be getting slaughtered. But if I can get in there, into the White House, next year or early twenty-six, I can straighten the country out and maybe we’ll keep the House and Senate and then …”

Graham: “Hold on. I thought you loved Trump and the Project and all that.”

Vance: “Well, to sort of quote you, that’s before I realized that if I want to get elected president … “

Collins: “If you can get the party … I mean, if you can actually pull this off …”

Murkowski: “Right. We’ll blow you on the Resolute desk.”

Vance: “You’re on …”

(Recording ends)