JD Vance: Trump’s Willingness to Call World Leaders Fat Shows How Good He Is at Foreign Diplomacy

JD Vance declared at a rally on Tuesday that Donald Trump’s willingness to joke about world leaders’ weight problems—to world leaders’ faces—proves how good he is at foreign diplomacy, and that that is the exact kind of statecraft we need the White House.

Speaking to an audience in Detroit, the VP hopeful shared one of his “favorite Donald Trump moments.” Asking if everyone was familiar with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, Vance explained: “He’s, you know, the leader of North Korea. And let’s be honest, Kim Jong Un hasn’t skipped many meals. So Donald Trump, goes to Kim Jong Un, he meets with him, and all the photographers come in, and President Trump looks at the photographers and says, ‘Alright everybody, make us look good, make us look very thin.’ And Kim Jong Un…is kind of of offended a little bit…I see a lot of you laughing,* but I’m not just trying to make fun of Kim Jong Un. The point is, you have to go and talk to people, you have to be willing to engage in diplomacy, engage in conversations. That’s how you keep the world from falling into disarray and war, and Donald Trump was better at it than anybody over the last 50 years.”

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Incredibly, this wasn’t the first time Vance relayed this story. In August, he told the same anecdote—replete with the same line about Kim not missing meals—and said: “It means something to have a president who’s not afraid to go into hostile territories, tell a few jokes, and actually engage in diplomacy.”

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Here’s the original scene Vance has taken to referring to, in which Trump comes off less like a diplomatic mastermind than a third-rate Don Rickles:

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Incidentally, Vance did not have anything to say Tuesday about what kind of leadership skills were on display after The Washington Post reported that Trump sent Vladimir Putin COVID tests when there was shortage of them in the US., and then apparently followed the Russian president’s instructions to not “tell anybody.”

*Note: no one was laughing, at least not audibly, as the dead silence in the video shows.