I met Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s new choice for vice president in the summer of 2022. I was covering a conservative convention in Israel, and Vance was the surprise VIP attraction. We talked a bit about the connections between right-wing movements around the world and what American conservatives can learn from their foreign peers. He was friendly, thoughtful and smart – much smarter than the average politician I’ve interviewed.
Yet his worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic tenets of American democracy.
Vance said that if he were to be vice president in 2020, he would be Trump’s plan for vice president to overturn election results continues. he has Fundraiser for rioters on January 6. He once invoked the Judiciary Open a criminal investigation A Washington Post columnist who has written a critical piece about Trump. After last week’s assassination attempt on Trump, he tried to whitewash his extremism by blaming the shooting on Democrats’ rhetoric about democracy without evidence.
This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a second Trump presidency. inside A podcast interview, Vance said Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the courts try to stop it, Vance said, Trump should simply ignore the law.
“You stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson, and say the Chief Justice has given his verdict, now let him carry it out,” he declared.
President Jackson’s quote is probably irrelevant, but history is real. Vance cites an 1832 case, Worcester vs. Georgia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US government must respect local legal rights to own land. Jackson ignored this ruling and continued his policy of letting the whites take whatever the natives had. The end result was the ethnic cleansing of some 60,000 natives — an event we now call the Trail of Tears.
For most Americans, this history is a deep source of shame: an authoritarian president trampling the rule of law to commit atrocities. For Vance, it’s a well of inspiration.
JD Vance is a person who believes that the current government is so corrupt Aggressive, even authoritarian measures, are justified in response. He sees himself as the personification of America’s virtuous people, whose political enemies, interlopers, are hardly worthy of respect. He is a man of law who believes that the President is above it.
Authoritarian wing of authoritarian party
JD Vance wasn’t always like this.
He grew up poor in Middletown, Ohio – a difficult childhood to make it to Yale Law and, later, the alluring world of venture capital. This narrative served as the backbone of his 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy, which became a mega-bestseller: a book that seemed to explain Trump’s appeal to America’s poor. It put Vance on the national map.
The Vance of Hillbilly Elegy was very different politically. Thereafter, he took a conventional conservative line on poverty, describing the working class Surrounded by a cultural pathology fueled by federal handouts and the welfare state.
2016 Vance Trump also had strong enemies. He wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office,” and wrote A text to his law school roommate warned that Trump could be “America’s Hitler”.
Eight years later, Vans has transformed into something else entirely. Today, he portrays himself as an economic populist and co-sponsor of legislation with Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Salary cuts for failed bankers. In a more extreme turn, he has become one of Trump’s leading champions in the Senate — supporting the former president and even, at times, outdoing him in anti-democratic fervor.
When I spoke with Georgia state Sen. Josh McLaurin (D) — the former law school roommate who received Vance’s “America’s Hitler” text — I asked him how he knew Vance was the Vance we see today.
“The line between former Jedi and current Jedi is rage,” MacLaurin told me. “Trump’s turn could be understood as a lock-in on contempt as an answer to anger” — specifically, contempt directed at Vance’s political enemies.
McLaurin’s comments suggest that Vance’s conversion to Trumpism is true. I’m inclined to agree, though the timing of his MAGA conversion is certainly convenient: he converted to right-wing populism just in time to run for an empty seat in Trumpy Ohio.
Ultimately, Vance truly believes that what he says is secondary to the public persona he chooses to adopt. Politicians are not defined by their inner lives, but by the decisions they make in public—the ones that actually affect law and policy. These preferences are deeply shaped by the constituencies they rely on and the allies they judge.
And it’s clear that Vance is deeply involved with the growing “national conservative” faction of the GOP, which combines an incoherent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture wars.
Vance cites Silicon Valley monarchist blogger Curtis Yervin as the source for his ideas about sacking bureaucrats and defiance of the Supreme Court. He had a Senate campaign implied by Vance’s former employer, Peter Thiel, is a billionaire who Wrote once That “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
He is a big fan of Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor who recently wrote a book calling for “regime change” in America. Vance spoke at an event for Dennin’s book in Washington, Describe yourself As a member of the “postliberal right” who sees his work in Congress as taking a “clearly anti-regime” stance.
Vance is also an open admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a right-wing politician who has systematically dismantled his country’s democracy. Vance praised Orban’s approach to higher education In particular, he said “there were some smart decisions that we can learn from the United States.” The policy in question involves the use of national dollars Imposition of state control over universitiesThe government turned to their vehicles to promote the line.
On Vance’s profile, Politico reporter Ian Ward Several leading Republican figures — in particular, factional leaders trying to put these postwar ideas into practice — have been quoted as saying they see Vance as a leading advocate for their cause.
So says top Trump adviser (and current federal prisoner) Steve Bannon Ward That Vance is “at the nerve center of this movement.” Kevin Roberts, president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the driving force behind Project 2025, told Ward that “she’s absolutely going to be one of the leaders — if not the leader — of our movement.”
Executing Trump’s dark ambitions
Vance will no doubt remain in this role if elected vice president. He’ll enable all of Trump’s worst instincts, and not pander to any — deploying his considerable intellectual and interpersonal gifts to bend the government to Trump’s will.
During Trump’s first term, he faced considerable opposition from within his own administration. People like Defense Secretary James Mattis and Vice President Mike Pence acted as brakes on Trump’s most radical impulses, challenging or even refusing to implement his (illegal) directives.
Vance’s ascension represents the demise of this “adult in the room” model. Supported by people drawn from lists of loyal workers Being prepared by places like HeritageVance appears likely to not only support Trump’s radical impulses but also to try to implement them.
He will be a direct conduit to the shadowy world of far-right influencers, where Curtis Irwin is a respected voice and Viktor Orbán is a role model, right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean described himself as “relatable.”Democratic wing of the Democratic Party“If the GOP under Trump has truly evolved into an authoritarian party, Vance is from its authoritarian wing.
