A famous TV host has joined the backlash against JD Vance’s family vacation in the English countryside.
The vice president’s motorcade thundered into Dean in Oxfordshire this weekend, much to the ire of residents who have seen roads closed and dozens, if not hundreds, of police and Secret Service descend on the usually quiet area.
And while some residents complain about the saga on humanitarian grounds with homemade signs that urge Vance to “Stop funding genocide,” for example, Jeremy Clarkson is rattled because it has stymied the filming of his popular TV show, Clarkson’s Farm.
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The presenter shared an image showing a no-fly zone on Instagram. The exclusion zone includes his property, Curdle Hill Farm, also known as Diddly Squat Farm. He added: “The JD Vance no-fly zone. We are the pin. So on the downside, no drone shots today. On the upside, no annoying light aircraft.”
Other residents have said Vance’s visit, alongside his wife Usha, and their three children, has left them feeling “completely sealed off from the outside world.”
Jonathan Mazower, communications director for the charity Survival International, has taken issue with the lockdown imposed on the tiny hamlet.
“JD Vance has taken over my village–send help,” he told The Telegraph. “We’ve been completely sealed off from the outside world.”
“It’s the inconvenience but also, who it is in aid of,” the 59-year-added, “This area is well used to having politicians and celebrities around–people are generally very live and let live–but the fact this huge upheaval is for an appalling politician has got people very angry.”
Mazower, who was critical of Vance’s behavior during the Oval Office attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also said the restrictions imposed on the roadways have made protest nearly impossible.
“Those of us who feel obliged to make some kind of protest, however token, have stuck posters in our gardens, in the probably vain hope he sees them as he speeds past,” he said.
Others are due to gather in nearby Charlbury on Tuesday afternoon local time for a protest, organized by The Stop Trump Coalition.
“We are organizing a Vance Not Welcome party alongside local residents. We plan to meet up, make our voices heard, and dance against Vance,” an organizer told the Telegraph.
Another group, Everyone Hates Elon, also raised over $6,000 to pay for a van featuring a meme of a chubby-faced Vance to drive around the Cotswolds during his visit.
The same meme, which got a Norwegian tourist kicked out of the U.S. in June, appeared on a billboard in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, another town in the Cotswolds, a sprawling area of natural beauty popular with politicians and celebrities.
Locals have been voicing their concern about the visit since Vance left Kent after a bromantic fishing trip with British Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
“I’d absolutely kick him in the shins,” one elderly lady told LBC.
One local woman in her seventies told The Times, after she and a friend were stopped by a police officer while out on a Sunday stroll, that she confronted the police’s overreaching approach.
“I told the police, ‘we are two old ladies, we are hardly terrorists’,” she explained.
“We said, ‘You poor things, guarding this awful man.’ It must be costing us a fortune. Another few thousand pounds down the pan.”
