Vance on joke about columnist's weight: 'I feel pretty good about that'

A vice president getting into a weight-joke war with a newspaper columnist over the price of a burrito is not exactly the debate voters were hoping for when they showed up worried about grocery bills and rent. But here we are, and Vance says he "feels pretty good" about it. That tells you something about where this fight actually started: affordability, a real kitchen-table issue that Republicans should be winning on, got reduced to an insult contest because someone couldn't let a $20 burrito complaint go unanswered.

Thiessen's original point, whatever you think of it, was about prices. That's a legitimate thing to argue over. Instead Vance reached for a jab about the guy's body, which does nothing to explain why a burrito costs twenty bucks or what anyone plans to do about it. Doubling down on Hugh Hewitt's show, rather than just moving past it, turns a cheap shot into a whole news cycle.

There's a version of this where a vice president brushes off the jab, makes his point about prices, and lets the internet fight itself out. That would have actually served the affordability argument Republicans want to be having. Instead we got a segment about whether the joke landed, which helps nobody trying to figure out why their grocery bill keeps climbing.

None of this makes Thiessen right about the underlying economics, and plenty of these online spats are more theater than substance. But when the vice president chooses to relitigate a body-shaming joke on a national radio show instead of talking price of eggs or a burrito with actual numbers, he's picking the fight that's easiest, not the one voters actually sent him to Washington to win.