‘Checkmate’: JD Vance gets caught in a classic ‘it’s okay for me, but not for thee’ moment on national TV
MAGA should’ve seen this clip earlier.
This week, the internet dusted off a forgotten JD Vance clip from CNN, back when he was just a senator. A year later, it still plays like an unintentional audition tape for hypocrisy. But we’re only now that realizing it was always this obvious.
The clip comes from Vance’s interview with Kaitlan Collins on CNN, during the height of nationwide campus protests over Gaza. Back then, Republicans were aggressively demanding arrests, expulsions, and harsher policing of demonstrators. So, Collins asked Vance the obvious questions about protest movements, criminal accountability, and the limits of free speech.
Vance’s opening position was straightforward and carefully framed. He argued that people cannot be policed for their beliefs, like being pro-Israel or anti-Israel. However, he added, they can be policed for breaking the law. Vandalism, breaking into buildings, and disrupting official proceedings, should be prosecuted, according to the now VP. So far, so good.
But that framing lasted about thirty seconds. All Collins had to do was something devastatingly simple to break Vance’s pitch-perfect position. She asked whether Vance agreed that people who broke into buildings and vandalized property should face consequences. And Vance agreed. Big mistake. Collins followed up immediately, pointing out that Vance himself had helped raise money for Jan. 6 attack defendants.
Mind you, the Jan. 6 rioters were people who broke into the U.S. Capitol, vandalized it, and impeded an official proceeding, all because Trump lost. Collins did not use any rhetorical trap or raised voice to lay Vance’s hypocrisy bare. She just presented a clean comparison between Vance’s stated principle and his documented behavior. And there went tears down Vance’s perfect eyeliner.
Kaitlan Collins destroyed JD Vance and he didn’t even realize it
Vance’s response was not a denial. Instead, he attempted to escape. He accused the media of being “obsessed” with Jan. 6 and tried to shift the conversation toward the future. Collins calmly stopped him again. “It’s not an obsession. I’m just seeing if it’s a double standard,” she clapped back. Because if vandalism and illegal entry deserve punishment, why defend or raise money for people who did exactly that? That is where the clip quietly ends him.
Cornered, Vance pivoted to a familiar revisionist narrative. He admitted that anyone who beat a police officer should go to prison. But, he added that many Jan. 6 participants were merely peaceful protesters charged with misdemeanors, and thus should not go to prison. His argument was that these protesters had “the full weight of the Justice Department” thrown at them because of other violent protesters. Vance also contrasted Jan. 6 with Black Lives Matter protests, asserting that if rioters there went free, then Jan. 6 protesters should, too.
But in his desperate attempts to prove his point, Vance unknowingly conceded Collins’ point. He was no longer defending a universal principle about lawbreaking that he preached in the beginning. He was defending his people explicitly. And with that, criminal accountability suddenly began depending on who committed it and why, and not on the act itself.
So, Collins pressed once more. She asked Vance whether Trump’s proposed blanket pardons for Jan. 6 defendants should exclude those who assaulted police officers. But Vance did not answer directly. Instead, he deferred to Trump, suggesting that pardons were about correcting perceived unfairness, not justice itself. And that was the checkmate.
What makes the clip so damning is that Vance never realizes he has been exposed. Collins does not accuse him of hypocrisy. She simply lets his own logic collapse under the weight of his record and the contradiction emerges naturally. For Vance, breaking the law is unacceptable, unless it’s his side.
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