Donald Trump, Who Famously Hates Beards, Has Apprehensions About JD Vance’s Beard: Report

There are many reasons to be afraid. Donald Trump Name Ohio Senator JD Vance as his 2024 running mate. On the one hand, there is the repetition of Vance’s right-wing lies about the 2020 election. On the other, there is the fact that he has not committed to accepting the results of the upcoming election. In between, there is his stance on abortion (he has compared it to slavery and has said, with exceptions for rape and incest, that “two wrongs don’t make a right”); his stance on gender-affirming care (he wants to ban it for minors and has introduced legislation that would make providing such care to them a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison); his views on marriage (he has suggested that people should stay in abusive marriages for the sake of their children and has criticized no-fault divorce); and his views on gun violence in America (he called efforts to ban bump stocks a “huge distraction”). Among other things!

But for Trump, it seems there’s only one thing about Vance that keeps him up at night: the Ohio lawmaker’s beard. That’s right.

Fortress Marc Caputo And Tim Miller The Bulwark reported that while Trump complimented Vance’s “beautiful” blue eyes and long lashes, the senator’s facial hair gave the former president pause. “JD has a beard. But Trump is a clean-shaven guy. He just doesn’t like facial hair,” a person familiar with Trump’s thinking who supports Vance for vice president told the outlet. “You never know.” As for why Vance didn’t just shave and never look back, it’s clearly not that simple. “It probably couldn’t have happened with Vance because he’s so young and looks like one,” The Bulwark noted, and Trump “wanted someone with experience — or at least the appearance of experience.” Without the beard, “Vance looks like he’s 12,” a Trump adviser said.

Does all of this sound completely absurd? Yes. But does it fit perfectly with what we’ve long known about (1) Trump’s views on beards and (2) the surface details he cares about when hiring people? Yes.

Here’s The Bulwark again:

Trump’s hatred of beards is legendary. On Father’s Day 2020, Trump told his son Don Jr. shaved his COVID quarantine beard and compared it unfavorably to Ted Cruz[’s] And Rand Paul‘s. And in 2016, The Washington Post reported, John Bolton might have been passed over for secretary of state because of his signature mustache. But then Trump picked him as national security adviser, Michael Flynn, And Trump appears to have overcome his fear of facial hair by choosing Bolton as his replacement.

“Look, this mustache thing, my father had a mustache,” Trump told Bolton at a meeting. [at] Mar-a-Lago, according to Bolton, who forwarded the excerpt to The Bulwark. “It was like he said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ I’m not sure if that was a Freudian thing or not. But that was the whole conversation,” Bolton said. [As for] Asked whether a bushy beard was too much for Trump, Bolton honestly replied: “I don’t know.”

As president, Trump is believed to have chosen not to re-appoint Janet Yellen as chair of the Federal Reserve partly because he thought she was too short for the job. He also described Neil Gorsuch And Brett Kavanaugh, two of his Supreme Court nominees, as not being “the chosen ones,” suggesting that senators should support them for that reason. Speaking to Fox News in 2019, he said he found it “hard” to stand firm on his stance on withdrawing from Afghanistan when “great-looking” generals advised him not to.

Yes, this beard looks great.

They fear him because they think he might start World War III for that purpose.