Eyeliner-wearing Ohio Senator and Mike Pence replacement JD Vance on Saturday privately told GOP donors in Minnesota that President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race and being replaced with Kamala Harris was a “sucker punch” to their campaign, the Washington Post reports.

“All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch. The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did,” said Vance on an audio recording of him admitting weakness to donors obtained by the Post.

“We have a very unique opportunity, but also a very unique challenge, because, let’s be honest, 10 days ago, the two candidates who were running for president, everybody had an opinion about them,” the doplin-loving couch fucker continued. “Love ’em or hate ’em, everybody has an opinion about Trump and Biden after the past eight years. But Kamala Harris, people don’t really know.”

In related news, Mother Jones unearthed video of Vance – the old, normal-ish JD Vance – in 2017 telling an interviewer the obvious about the MAGA voter base he’s now appealing to: “Some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons,” but mostly blaming Steve Bannon, rather than Trump himself, for making the 2016 election “hyper-racialized.”