Donald Trump, Famously Beard-Averse, Has Reservations About J.D. Vance’s Facial Hair: Report

There are many reasons to fear Donald Trump naming Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his 2024 running mate. For one thing, there’s Vance’s regurgitation of right-wing lies about the 2020 election. For another, there’s the fact that he has not committed to accepting the results of the upcoming election. In between, there’s his stance on abortion (he’s compared it to slavery and has said, of exceptions for rape and incest, that “two wrong don’t make a right”); his stance on gender-affirming care (he wants to ban it for minors and has introduced legislation that would make providing such care to them a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison); his views on marriage (he’s suggested people should stay in violent marriages for their children and has criticized no-fault divorce); and his views on America’s epidemic of gun violence (he’s called efforts to ban bump stocks a “huge distraction”). Among other things!

But for Trump, there appears to be just one thing about Vance to lose sleep over, and that’s the Ohio lawmaker’s facial hair. Yes, really.

The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo and Tim Miller report that while Trump has praised Vance’s “beautiful” blue eyes and long lashes, the hair on the senator’s face gives the ex-president pause. “J.D. has a beard. But Trump is a clean-shaven guy. He just doesn’t like facial hair,” a person familiar with Trump’s thinking, who supports Vance as VP, told the outlet. “You just never know.” As for why Vance wouldn’t just take a razor to his face and never look back, well, it’s apparently not so simple. “It’s probably out of the question for Vance because of how young he is and looks,” The Bulwark notes, and Trump “wants someone who is experienced—or at least looks experienced.” Sans beard, a Trump adviser said, “Vance looks like he’s 12.”

Does all of this sound completely absurd? Yes. But is it completely in line with what we’ve long known regarding (1) Trump’s views on facial hair and (2) the surface-level details he cares about when he hires people? Also yes.

Here’s The Bulwark again:

Trump’s aversion to facial hair is legendary. On Father’s Day in 2020, Trump told his son Don Jr. to shave his COVID quarantine beard and compared it unfavorably to Ted Cruz[’s] and Rand Paul’s. And in 2016, The Washington Post reported, John Bolton might not have made the cut for secretary of state because of his trademarked mustache. But then Trump’s pick for national security adviser, Michael Flynn, fell apart. And Trump seemed to overcome his facial trichophobia by choosing Bolton as a replacement.

“Look, this mustache thing, well, my father had a mustache,” Trump told Bolton at a meeting [at] Mar-a-Lago, according to Bolton, who relayed the vignette to The Bulwark. “That was like him saying, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ I’m not sure it was a Freudian thing. But that was the sum total of the conversation,” said Bolton. [As for] whether a full beard would be simply too much for Trump, Bolton was honest: “I don’t know.”

As president, Trump reportedly chose not to reappoint Janet Yellen as Federal Reserve chair in part because he thought she was too short for the job. He also described Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, two of his Supreme Court nominees, as being out of “central casting,” suggesting senators should have supported them because of that. Speaking to Fox News in 2019, he said he found it “tough” to stick to his guns on withdrawing from Afghanistan when “great-looking” generals advised him not to.

So yeah, this beard thing checks out.

They’re afraid of him because they think he might start WW III for the f–k of it