JD Vance: Why Do Kids Need Dolls When They Could Have Weapons Of War?
Just what every kid wants for Christmas.
As if Donald Trump’s comments suggesting that “beautiful baby girls” could just have three dolls “instead of 30” were not awkward enough, Vice President JD Vance has expounded upon that idea by suggesting that parents should think about how much better they’d like it if they knew that when they sent their children off to fight in foreign wars, that they were fighting with “good, American-made weapons.”
“We do need to become more self-reliant, and that’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not always going to be easy,” he said in an interview with Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Thursday. “What I’d ask people is not whether they want two dolls or five dolls or 20 dolls for their kids. I’d ask American moms and dads, would you like to be able to go into a pharmacy and know that the drugs your kids need are actually available to you?”
Well, the last time Trump was in office, he tried to cut the Children’s Health Insurance Program by half in order to pay for his tax cuts for the rich, and it seems likely he’ll go after that again, so I’m not certain that this is a major concern for this administration.
“As an American parent, would you like to,” he continued, “God forbid, if your country goes to a war and your son or daughter is sent off to fight, would you like to know that the weapons that they have are good, American-made stuff, not made by a foreign adversary?”
Unless we’re bringing back and expanding the draft, that’s not necessarily an argument that is going to win over anyone who wasn’t already on board.
As many people noted this week, the two fighter jets we accidentally dropped into the Red Sea cost us approximately $73 million each, while the entire yearly budget of the National Endowment for the Arts is just $207 million. This is relevant given that arts programs across the country — many of which were children’s programs — are currently finding out their grants have been canceled. I’m pretty certain that the parents of these children would prefer that their kids have access to arts programs than to “good, American-made” weapons of war. I’m also quite sure that many of them would like to not worry if their kids’ Head Start program is going to be canceled. Oh! Or maybe instead of manufacturing planes to accidentally drop in the ocean, they could restore the $660 million cut from a program that helped schools get local produce from small farms.
The especially ridiculous thing here is that the United States is very much still the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of weapons. US-made weapons account for 43 percent of all weapons exported worldwide (the second largest arms dealer is France, with 9.6 percent of the market share). There would be no reason for any poor American soldier to use weapons manufactured by a “foreign adversary.”
I’m in sort of a weird position with a lot of this stuff, because I do feel strongly about sweatshops, exploited overseas labor, and murky supply chains and I personally do think it would be better for kids to have a smaller number of dolls that were made ethically than a bajillion dolls that weren’t. And not just because I find dolls largely unsettling.
However, I am quite sure that Donald Trump, JD Vance, and I do not share the same ideals as far as any of this goes. I also don’t think that it’s feasible to bring all of this manufacturing back to the United States at this point. We simply do not have the workforce to support it. As of January 2024, the most recent month for which there is data, there were 622,000 unfilled job openings in durable goods manufacturing (nondurable goods manufacturing was even worse).
According to data compiled by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), by 2030, we will be short 2.1 million workers for manufacturing jobs, and that’s before Trump actually figures out how to Mass Deport Now millions of immigrants.
You know where else we have a labor shortage? The weapons manufacturing industry. We already do not have enough people to work the weapons manufacturing jobs we currently have, so who are they going to get to work in any new factories they might build?
What we need isn’t to necessarily to bring every manufacturing job on earth back to the United States, but to replace free trade with fair trade and ensure that workers around the world are treated well and paid fairly regardless of where they work. That’s obviously not going to happen with Trump.
It’s understandable to want more things to be made in the United States, by people who are being paid fairly. I want that, too! But we can’t create more jobs than we have people to work them, it just doesn’t make sense.
Perhaps this is why they’re working so hard to dismantle and defund our education system.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
...𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒓 𝒅𝒂𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒔 𝒔𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇𝒇 𝒕𝒐 𝒇𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕....
Daughter? Does Hegseth know about this?
If they start the draft again I already have a Pic of my son at 8 wearing a Supergirl outfit teed up and ready to go.
My kids aren’t dying so some defense contractor can hit his numbers for the quarter. Fuck that.