TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Mark Kelly: Astronaut, senator, VP short-lister … ex-vitamin huckster.
As Jim Geraghty writes in the WaPo:
In 2015, former astronaut Mark Kelly rode a motorcycle onto a stage in China, with an American flag on one handlebar and the flag of the People’s Republic of China on the other. After dismounting, he told the audience before him how terrific Shaklee vitamins were, and how he took Shaklee Vitalizer on the space shuttle Endeavour in 2011, an out-of-this-world event honored on the Shaklee Facebook page.
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Nice gig, Senator. It makes your $55,000 speech in 2018 for Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, then the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, look respectable. (Kelly returned the money amid his 2019 Senate candidacy; the United Arab Emirates’ human rights record at that time and since is … bad. Lots of politicians equivocate about U.S. alliances with dubious Middle Eastern allies. But it’s unclear how many have accepted five-figure checks from them.)
No doubt, some Kelly fan is scoffing and insisting this is no big deal, and that surely Donald Trump — the guy behind Trump University — is the last person who could criticize Kelly for making a quick buck on an unsavory endorsement deal. Then again, the whole point of the Democratic ticket is to be a clearly better option than Trump, not just a different flavor of the same willingness to smile for a quick buck from chumps.
If Harris chooses Kelly, the Trump campaign would likely try to tie Kelly’s vitamin-pushing days to the Chinese investors in Kelly’s balloon company. The campaign ad labeling Kelly a “Mark-churian candidate” practically writes itself. But there would be no need to gild the lily; the absurd image of Kelly on the motorcycle, touting Shaklee vitamins and the Shaklee rehydration drink, is thoroughly cringe-inducing.
Since the whole point of Kamala’s “JD Vance is weird” campaign is to reflect away from her and the left’s myriad quirks (and to begin the demonization process that all Republican candidates are subjected to by the left), it could be a nice form of turnabout for the Trump campaign to play up Kelly’s brand of hucksterism. “There’s no getting around it,” Geraghty concludes. “For a stretch, Kelly’s name, image and reputation — largely built at NASA — was for sale. Choose carefully, Madam Vice President.”