The midterms proved once and for all that X is not real life

A week before the midterm elections, Vice President JD Vance hosted a town hall in Texas with Fox News host Jesse Watters. It was a friendly event with a friendly audience in what should have been a friendly state, and maybe that’s why Vance couldn’t help himself. When a college student earnestly asked how the right expected young people like her to settle down and have kids, given the ever-growing cost of living, Vance replied with a quip about Jon Husted’s ass . The student, Kate White, introduced herself as the vice president of the Texas Christian University chapter of Turning Point USA, the conservative group started by Donald Trump ally Charlie Kirk. She was offering Vance an opportunity to explain how MAGA could work for young people, and he turned it into a joke. Vance did eventually answer the question, saying Republicans don’t pay enough attention to the issue of affordability and blaming rising housing costs on institutional investors and the “20 million illegal aliens” supposedly living in the United States. The Senate race in Mississippi, of all places, is still too close to call. Having clawed the White House and Congress back from Democrats, they assumed the public was on board with MAGA’s cultural project when in fact people were largely mad about the price of eggs. The Department of Homeland Security was bragging about record lows in legal immigration, which outside white nationalist circles is typically not considered a negative thing. Bo French, the Republican candidate for Texas railroad commissioner, lost his election by a huge margin after posting anti-Indian memes on X. (Asian American voters, including Indian Americans, moved to the left in Texas elections down the ballot.) Musk did his part to drive turnout, spending nearly half a billion dollars on Republican candidates and PACs.