V.P. J.D. Vance has declared that Democrats must stop reposting Charlie Kirk’s actual quotes, because they make Kirk look bad. According to Vance, the real problem isn’t Kirk’s history of mean-spirited rants, but the audacity of anyone who highlights them. “Democrats are taking Charlie’s words out of context,” Vance insisted, “by putting them in… context.” In this strange logic, hateful rhetoric is perfectly acceptable—so long as nobody reminds the public that it happened.
Critics note the move is essentially political dry cleaning: scrub out the stains of cruelty by punishing the people who point to the stains, not the ones who spilled them. If Kirk’s own words are his worst enemy, maybe that says more about Kirk than his critics. Still, Republicans remain adamant. In the new GOP handbook, the villain isn’t the person saying hateful things, it’s the person holding the receipts.
