Mike Pence pretends to be decent. JD Vance pretends to be masculine

I spent the better part of Trump's first term rolling my eyes, sometimes with rage, at Mike Pence. If you'd asked me then what a nightmare vice president looked like, I'd have pointed to the awkward and strange Pence and his mysterious animosity toward the LGBTQ+ community.

As a variation on Shakespeare’s old saying goes, “Thou dost protest too much, methinks.”

And why wouldn’t we snicker at a spineless man who calls his wife “Mother” and won't eat a meal alone with a woman who isn't her? I did not think, at the time, that having a boring, weaselly, goody-two-shoes, pious homophobe as vice president could get any worse.

Well, just like everything else with Trump 2.0, his vice president this time is much worse. And that is saying oh so much compared to the reprehensible Pence. Yes, it’s a gruesomely tough call, but you can’t get more reprehensible than JD Vance.

Unless, of course, there’s a Trump 3.0 with Vice President Mike Johnson.

Pence and Vance might give off different vibes, but underneath all their oddities are two men with an unwavering opposition to LGBTQ+ rights.

Pence has spent his entire career hammering away at the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ individuals; however, we’re not here today to regurgitate all of his vomit-inducing vileness.

Coming in like a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House was Vance, who is even more proficient in the uglier side of anti-LGBTQ+ and transphobic venom. Similarly, not worth repeating here.

In Vance, we didn’t just get a Pence 2.0; we got bonus points for his arrogant, bellicose narcissism. At least Pence seemed like a nice guy. I mean, he isn’t, but when contrasting him with Vance, he’s a pussycat — apologies to childless cat ladies.

Pence portrayed himself as a sober Midwesterner while deviously doing considerable damage. That paradox popped up last week when Julia Curlee, the transgender former CIA officer who briefed him daily during the first Trump administration, went public with warm memories of how he treated her, even recalling him telling her mother she should be proud of her daughter.

Uh oh! I am sure “Mother” Pence was none too pleased to hear that Mike might have a passing interest in Curlee. Can you imagine that confrontation between Mother and Mikey? Heaven help him!

So Pence jumped into damage control. Asked about it on CNN, Pence visibly fumbled his way toward a gracious answer, saying he was “heartened” by her words. It's genuinely strange to watch a heathen who has been vilifying people like Curlee get flummoxed when one of them speaks kindly of him.

Pence’s grudging glimpse of kindness doesn’t even begin to erase his contemptible attitude.

Related: Mike Pence stumbles through response to his transgender CIA briefer’s praise: ‘heartened’ she felt respected

Then there’s Vance, who is not just awkward but downright weird, one of the most cringeworthy human beings walking the planet today. In Maine this week, in the middle of a speech, he stopped to compliment a maintenance worker's beard onstage.

“Now, they didn’t tell me that Jamie was a good-looking guy with a beard,” Vance said while recognizing Jamie Beers, a maintenance manager at Compotech in Brewer. “Jamie, I hate good-looking guys with beards because they make me feel jealous.”

And just like we imagined Mother having a fit about a trans woman, can you imagine what Usha had to say to JD about his jealous rage over a hottie man with a beard?

Related: Macho man JD Vance says he hates ‘good-looking guys with beards’ during weird manufacturing speech

There’s a now-infamous clip of Vance greeting his own wife, Usha, on her podcast by patting her knee twice like a creepy great-uncle used to do to me. It just shows that JD has the warmth of an ice cube tray and the strangeness of — well, a JD Vance.

Pence and Vance have at least one thing in common: Both are subjects of the social media pastime of turning their personal weirdness and odd relationships with their wives into closet-case conspiracy theories. Well, JD did think he was gay when he was younger, so there is that.

Personally, I hope neither one of them has any secrets about their sexualities because, well, I don’t want them playing on my team.

God only knows what kind of weird secrets they might be hiding behind their devout and hypocritical shared Christianity.

Which brings us to beards, and how they can mean entirely different things to different men.

For Vance, the beard is literal. But what really seems to bother him is that someone else might wear one better than he does. This is a man so narcissistic and egomaniacal that he can’t stand the possibility that someone else might be better-looking, more macho and, apparently, better bearded. Vance always has to be the biggest guy in every room.

For Pence, the “beard” is metaphorical, a God-fearing normalcy that hides unadulterated hate. And Julia Curlee offers a fascinating example of just how effective that beard can be. When asked about Curlee’s praise, Pence’s diabolical two-facedness was revealed, and he had to backpedal.

Pence’s beard isn’t that he is secretly a nice guy. It’s that he can project decency and civility while supporting policies and a political movement that have inflicted enormous damage on the very people he can personally treat with kindness. His beard is supposed to make you forget about the treachery that lies underneath.

Oh, and Mother, don’t worry, I wasn’t going to imply something untoward as they do on Reddit.

So who’s worse for the LGBTQ+ community? Vance, and it isn't especially close. Pence's opposition was consistent and damaging; Vance's opposition comes with a willingness to lean into dehumanizing rhetoric as Trump’s more vicious MAGA lapdog.

Finally, four years ago, most of us would have doubled over in hysterical laughter if you'd told us JD Vance would one day be vice president, so don’t laugh at me when I suggest that Johnson might inherit JD’s job, since nothing with Trump is off the table.

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