Protesters have expressed their fury at JD Vance’s decision to spend his summer holidays in the rolling hills of the Cotswolds.
Activists held up signs accusing the US vice president of ‘clapping when the plane lands’, referred to Vance as the ‘Gobsh*** Goebbels’ and even plastered his meme on to a caterpillar cake.
The JD Vance cake was sliced up and shared among dozens of protesters from the Stop Trump Coalition in a very British show of defiance. They chanted ‘JD Vance shame on you’ between bites.
Phil Ball, a cameraman who lives three miles down the road, even brought a huge Trump head to the protest.
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He said: ‘I object to him and his government and what he stands for politically. I object to the fact that he had arrived here on holiday and the amount of police that I have seen facilitating his holiday is extraordinary. So many police cars running around.
‘We know that it’s just not a holiday. If you are on holiday, you don’t go to the home of the foreign secretary.
‘He shouldn’t be making under-the-table political decisions.
‘You can see the way he seems to be. Such a man baby and so emotionally fragile that if he is annoyed he is making decisions with global implications, it seems on a whim to do with his current state of emotions. That’s quite worrying.
He said he would be ‘enraged’ if he were to bump into Vance and added: ‘I’d be enraged by the fact that I was in the same postcode district.’
Zoe Gardener, 37, from London, who is part of Stop Trump coalition, said: ‘He is an entirely despicable man. To come here after he insulted our country and then to be shown this disgusting sort of fake bro romance with David Lammy and we are supposed to buy the idea that they are good friends now.
‘This isn’t a family holiday, this is a political visit.
‘The Cotswolds has a reputation for having a small set conservative representation but people here are still angry.
‘People are horrified. People hate him.’
Sue Moon, 54, a therapist from Chipping Norton said: ‘The Cotswolds is the home of ordinary people who are not comfortable with J D Vance coming here.
‘He’s a power-hungry hypocrite and I’m not sure he has any principles.
‘What is happening in America regarding repodructive rights is appalling.
‘It’s also very hard to welcome somebody who said that Britain is a random country.
‘I am not sure what is the purpose of his visit and on a local level it has caused a lot of disruption and roads on our area have been closed.’
The protest came as villagers complained about the ‘Men in Black’ like security entourage treating ‘old ladies like terrorists’.
One woman told The Times the village had seen ‘one blinking pantomime after the other’ and said: ‘We are used to the great and good here. Before David Cameron moved in we had Douglas Hurd and he was lovely.
‘We have Ben Kingsley in Spelsbury and we see him in the woods walking his dog, but to close off the roads is ridiculous.’
The woman told the paper she and a friend had been stopped by police blocking a footpath while walking through the area, and said: ‘I told the police “we are two old ladies, we are hardly terrorists”.’
Another local told the Guardian police were knocking on doors asking for personal details of residents and their social media accounts.
He said: ‘I know several people refused. We asked them if they were protecting us, or Vance. At least they were honest and said it is for him and that it will all be passed on to the American security people.’
One local ranted to LBC: ‘Generally we like to welcome everybody to Chipping Norton, but no, I’d absolutely kick him in the shins.’