For all his faults, Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance always loved his grandmother.
Her bestselling 2016 autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy, is a love letter to herself. Her grandparents were, she says, “the best thing that ever happened to me,” even though her grandmother, whom she called “Mamaw,” was anything but affectionate.
His favorite show was The Sopranos and he especially admired the main character, Tony Soprano.
‘Although he killed countless enemies… Mamaw respected his loyalty and the fact that he was willing to do anything to protect his family’s honor.’
Born in 1933 and pregnant in 1946, Mamaw “came from a family that would rather shoot you than argue with you.”
For all his faults, Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance always loved his grandmother, whom he called Mamaw.
At the age of 12, he saw two men stealing the family cow.
‘She ran inside, grabbed a rifle and fired a few bullets. One of the men collapsed, a result of a shot to the leg, and the other jumped into the truck and drove away screaming.
‘The would-be robber could barely crawl, so Mamaw walked over to him, raised the muzzle of his rifle toward the man’s head and prepared to finish the job.
“Luckily for him, Uncle Pet intervened. Mamaw’s first confirmed death would have to wait until another day.”
Yuck! Mamaw was clearly a far cry from the grandmother our own St Winifred’s School choir celebrated in their signature Christmas song of 1980:
There is no one like grandma
She always has a smile
She never rushes us
But he stays for a little while.
Not really. Mamaw had a short temper. She once poured a can of gasoline on Vance’s drunken grandfather, Papaw: “She lit a match and dropped it on his chest.
‘When Papaw burst into flames, his 11-year-old daughter jumped into action to put out the fire and save his life.
‘Miraculously, Papaw survived the episode with only minor burns.’
No matter how random or violent her behavior, Vance makes Mamaw the great American role model.
For example, he once ignored direction signs on a highway and drove directly into oncoming traffic.
Vance paid tribute to his grandmother in his speech at the Republican convention in Milwaukee as he officially accepted Trump’s vice presidential nomination.
‘I was screaming in terror, but after making a U-turn on a three-lane interstate, the only thing Mamaw said about the incident was, ‘We’re fine, dammit. Don’t you know Jesus is riding in the car with me?’
You or I might see this as the behavior of a madwoman, but not Vance, who draws a cozy, sensational moral from it.
“There was great wisdom in Mamaw’s contradictions,” he reflects. “She gave me a message that I needed to hear.”
‘Letting life pass by unhurriedly was wasting the talent God had given me, so I had to work hard.
“I had to take care of my family because Christian duty demanded it… I should never despair, because God had a plan.”
Vance paid tribute to his estranged grandmother in his speech at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, when he officially accepted Trump’s nomination for vice president.
He told delegates that after Mamaw died in 2005, “we went through her things (and) found 19 loaded guns” — pause for cheers — “now, the problem is they were hidden all over her house.”
‘Under her bed, in her closet, in the cutlery drawer. And we wondered what was going on.’
And here comes the moral…
For one reason or another, Vance did not mention in Hillbilly Elegy that his grandmother kept “19 loaded pistols” in their home, even though he covered his grandmother’s death and its aftermath. Did he consider it too sinister to mention? Or, possibly more likely, did he make it up for his speech?
‘It occurred to us that towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t move very well. And so this frail old lady’ – she was actually six years younger than Donald Trump is now, but that’s best left unsaid – ‘made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s reach of whatever she needed to protect her family.
‘That’s who we are! That’s what we fight for! That’s the American spirit!’
(More cheers from the crowd, accompanied by chants of ‘USA! USA! USA!’)
For one reason or another, Vance did not mention this episode in Hillbilly Elegy, even though he covered his grandmother’s death and its aftermath.
Why not? Did he consider it too sinister to mention at the time? Or, perhaps more likely, did he make it up for his speech, thinking, rightly or wrongly, that it would increase his electoral appeal?
There is no one like grandma
She always has a gun
She never needs to rush us.
She knows we’ll run.