Vance is a younger Donnie. Vance has been vocal about cutting all aid to Ukraine. He is Donnie 2.0; given his flip on trump, he is likely equally easy to manipulate. I assumed that if there were any truth to the Putin connection, then perhaps Pootie thought that Donnie had a chance of winning. And after the win, his useful idiot having lost his usefulness, he would simply see that Donnie fell out a window, putting the younger version in place. That all hinges on Vance being a Putin choice, which the article doesn't mention and may not at all be the case.

I'm not sure we can know what goes on behind the scenes.

Make sure trump and his running mate are locked in? I ask with a pleasant grin.

Ha ha, joke's on you dumb, arrogant assholes.

Now we just have to make sure they don't fuck us at the courts.

1. Trump beats Biden at the polls outright.
2. The election is close enough in key battleground states to demand recounts, then throwing it into the courts

Biden stepping down has skewered #1 and has made #2 far less guaranteed.

As I see it, Trump threw his VP chit away for nothing (and yes, I think he was a Putin plant on Trump). Vance brought with him the promise of Tech Bro money, but that money comes with massive strings, and even billionaires aren't all that liquid - most of their wealth is on paper or tied up in investmetns, and liquidating it, especially in the current environment, is not all that easy (what's more, you can't necessarily get a loan for what amounts to a campaign donation - banks get very tetchy about that). If Trump can't deliver, that money dries up quickly, because no one's going to throw good money after bad right now.

I also think those same tech bros really do not want to be seen associating with Trump. He's NOT popular in the Bay Area, Boston, New York or Seattle (and I suspect that the GOP in general is not seen favorably in Austin), and if they are seen as openly supporting Trump with significant multi-million dollar donations, employees and even board members may take a very dim view. Both Musk's SpaceX and Twitter(X) are faced with mass exoduses for moving to Texas - this is only going to accelerate that.

flame-throwing conservative bombast.

I'm betting he does that soon and puts in someone like Noem.