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Joel
JD Vance your guy?
Nick
No, not really.
Joel
Not really. JD Vance, Peter Thiel and Palantir. That's what we're going to be talking about in this episode. You got Peter Thiel, he's gay. Talking about, I'm building the framework for ushering in the Antichrist and literally couldn't answer the question. Remember the interview on, like, would it be bad if humanity perished? It's like, like say bad.
Nick
Yeah, Right.
Joel
So you got that guy. Not. Not a great start. Alex Karp, who's the current CEO of Palantir, who, like we mentioned in one of our other episodes, said his greatest fear is Christian nationalist taking power. And he's Jewish, of course. And then you have J.D. vance. So I'll just lead out real quick, you know, show my hand. We talked about it before. We, you know, we mostly agree, but we disagree a little bit. I like Vance. He's, you know, natural affections, quoting Aquinas. Like, I never thought, you know, in, in my lifetime that I'd see anybody at that level in politics, you know, say some of those things. I don't really care, Margaret. There's, you know, some good moments. So I, I do like him, but I, I'm. You. You're suspicious and also dislike. I'm suspicious and like. And so I, I told you. I think I see like three potential story arcs and one of them is going to win. So on. On the one hand, the tech bros. Peter Thiel, Palantir. That's not great, right? Number two, you named your son Vivek. What are we doing? Natural affections, Vivek.
Sponsor/Announcer
You know, like, what are we doing?
Joel
And it's not just that the wife is Hindu or, I'm sorry, Indian, but she's Hindu. So even the religious aspect. So it's not just a different race, but a different country. Not just a different country, a different religion. Okay, so those two. I'm like, not great two strikes, not super hopeful, but the thirds. And I know hillbilly elegy. I mean, you don't, you don't get a Netflix special without, like, this was a campaign. People put money behind it, you know, so who knows exactly how much of it is genuine. But even if just the basic premise of, you know, quintessential Americana, Appalachia, Catholic, white heritage, American blue collar upbringing, that's the third piece. And if there's any truth in that, and I think there's at least some truth, I'm sure the embellishment, then I would say that's the hopefulness. So it's like And I feel like he's going to have a choice, like, am I beholden to feel? Am I beholden to some Hindu God? Or am I going to at some point be like, no, Grandma, Appalachia, America first. Christ is king. And so I, I feel like there is the possibility, but it's one against two. Two potentials that are not great. One potential. So I told you, like, super gay analogy, I get it. But like Star Wars, I see him as the potential kind of, you know, Anakin, Darth Vader, that, like, maybe he does join the dark side, you know, and he does some damage. But at the end he like, realizes, you know, remembers his natural affections and he sees like heritage Americans and Christians being persecuted and he picks up the emperor and throws him over the rail. That's. That's my hope. So that's not my prediction. It's my hope. So in that sense, I like the guy, but I definitely see the potential danger, you know, J.D. vance.
Nick
So when it comes to J.D. vance, I mean, where even to begin? Because there's, there's a lot of ground to cover. There's a relationship with Peter Thiel, which is very suspicious to say the least. And it's very important relationship. That's kind of the defining relationship, not only of his political career, but also even of his career in the private sector. So Thiel is not just a patron in politics, but he's truly like a mentor, arguably like a father figure. I don't know if he would characterize it that way, but Peter Thiel really laid the groundwork for Vance's entire rise in venture capital through to the Senate seat and then to becoming the vice president. So like you said, there's a relationship not only with Teal, but with little Tech, with the Silicon Valley, the Tech Bros. And then there's the book Hillbilly Elegy, which is the jumping off point. And it's his biography or his autobiography. And, you know, we have to talk about the conception of the book, like how it came to be and the message of the book, because it's very important. There's like, if the book is funded, there's a reason why and why that story. And there's a very interesting answer to that question. And then in my opinion, there's his conversion. And by his conversion, not his conversion of Catholicism, ostensibly, you know, he claims to have converted, and maybe that's true, but it's his conversion to Trumpism because. Right.
Joel
Yeah, he was an anti Trumper.
Nick
He was a never Trumper and called Trump a Nazi. And he voted for the third party candidate in 2016, Evan McMullen, who was run by Bill Kristol. So to kind of take it piece by piece, I mean, my history with Vance, because there is a history, is that in 2022, I set up a program called America First Candidates because I wanted to get involved in politics. I saw what happened in the first term, and I said that Trump really needs, like, a vanguard in Congress. It's not just enough, clearly, to have the guy at the top. We need America first guys in the House and the Senate. And I liked Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Greene at that time. I said, we need people like that.
Joel
I like Matt Gates.
Nick
I like Matt Gates a lot. And he's been really solid lately. And although after he's out of Congress, he goes full red pill, it's like, you know, it would have been good earlier, but that's okay. So we were looking for people like that. And I asked around and I knew people that were running Peter Thiel's outfit, his political outfit back then. Peter Thiel was a major force in 22. He was one of the biggest individual donors in the 22 midterm cycle. Millions of dollars into Senate races, House races into art shows, parties in New York. Magazines like until is Richer than People Know. They say that he's a low billionaire. You know, Maybe he's got $10 billion, but if you factor in his crypto investments off the books, he might be one of the richer people in the world. So he is pouring money in in order to secure the ascendancy of his people, which are J.D. vance and Blake Masters, but also his loyalists. And he's trying to create a political ecosystem. Sovereign house in New York City, which is a venue where they host art shows and parties. Passage Press, which they publish Curtis Yarvin's blog, Unqualified Reservations, and Steve Saylor, among many other things. So this is the context in 22. There's all this money pouring in to kind of fashion this new ideology they're calling national conservatism. And it went over a few different iterations. They called it populist nationalism. They called it multiracial working class populism, which is no joke what they called it.
Joel
That's terrible.
Nick
Yeah, it's brutal. But Bannon was very. He was pushing that national conservatism, which I believe they founded in 22 with Yoram Hazoni at Edmund Burke Society, that's the parent organization. And out of this you get Masters, Blake Masters, who's a student of Thiel in Arizona and Vance in Ohio. And I was basically recommended that I should get behind Vance. So I did my due diligence and I go through his Wikipedia and I find he's at the American Enterprise Institute, which is like one of the worst nonprofits in America. They're, they're huge behind the war in Iraq. It's all neocons. I see that he's at cnn. He's got a position at cnn. He's got a Netflix documentary. He's at the Aspen Institute promoting his book. These are all like globalist liberal institutions. I'm thinking, okay, so this can't really be our guy. I was very, very skeptical. In the end, I came down on his side and endorsed him only after he went in favor of a ban on pornography. And he defended me getting back on Twitter and also defended me when I was put on the no Fly list. So I felt out of some obligation, you know, maybe I owed him. So in the end, I did relent and I endorsed him. But then I started to understand the bigger picture here, the bigger story, which is that the relationship not just with Peter Thiel, but his other mentor runs very deep. And maybe we could start there. So where does J.D. vance actually come from? First of all, he was never really poor. He actually came from a relatively middle class, upper middle class background. He did come from a broken home, but they were relatively well to do. His name isn't even JD Vance. That's not his birth name. His birth name. Vc yeah, his name was VC but he goes through a series of different names. He's. He's J.D. hamill for some years. Only after he writes the book does he become Vance. And even before he ever met Peter Thiel, he actually had a different mentor. He comes out of the U.S. marine Corps, where, by the way, he was a journalist there.
Joel
Right.
Nick
I think everyone thinks when you're a Marine, you're shooting guns and running missions.
Joel
I knew that it's not like Tim Walls, it's not truly stolen valor, but I knew that he wasn't combat.
Nick
Right. Like Pete Buttigieg or others. Like, he's in a non combat role. He's writing press releases for the military, which is sort of interesting. He goes to Yale and Yale, for those that don't know, is this is like a pretty spooked up organization. The CIA does a lot of recruiting at Yale. You have secret societies like Skull and Bones. You get the Bush family coming out of Yale, a lot of American royalty. And it's when Vance is leaving the Marines and entering Yale, that he starts writing for a website run by David Frum. David Frum is a Jewish neocon speechwriter for George W. Bush. And he's as bad as it gets. Like, he's on the same level as a Bill Crystal. He's on the same level as any other rhino. Pro war, establishment Republican, literally a Bush alum. And Vance is writing for Fromm's website. And at this time, he's mid-20s, he has no political career, he's applying for school, and he's writing articles in defense of the war in Iraq. He's writing articles in favor of environmentalism and these kinds of things. And from is his mentor.
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Nick
Later on, Fromm writes this big piece which you can find in the Atlantic after Vance became a Trump supporter. And it's a retrospective. And Fromm talks about his time mentoring Vance. And he believed even when Vance was a nobody. We're talking like the early 2010s when Vance isn't even at Yale yet, from his writing about Vance, like he's gonna be the future president, which is really weird because this is just some random guy who was writing press releases in the military, some random from Ohio writing blog posts that are getting no Traction. This is before he wrote the book. And from his saying about Vance at the time, this guy is going to be the future Republican president. And in particular he will deliver the rabble rouser Tea partiers back into the hands of the moderate Republican establishment.
Joel
Wow.
Nick
He says that because there's this crisis where you have the Tea Party and Sarah Palin and the Republican base is like xenophobic Islamophobic. Like they are. They are what they are. They are. The establishment of the GOP is like William F. Buckley. They're very elitist, they're very wealthy, they represent the corporate interest. The base is populist. They're extremely conservative culturally in terms of their religion. Economically, they're populist. And so from as a Bush alumnus is saying, Vance is gonna be the guy, he, he's not only going to be the president one day as a Republican, but he's going to lead as a millennial, the kind of rabble rouser, burn it all down Republicans back into like a moderate conservatism that is environmentally conscious, that is like in favor of America being the policeman of the world. This kind of stuff. Why David from How did he see that? Well, he says, and this is the thing that sticks out in my mind, he says Vance's biographical credibility is what will deliver them. What's biographical credibility?
Joel
It's a story because so almost like selected. So it's like what I said is like, well, this is concerning Peter Thiel, the tech Bros. This is concerning your son is Vivek, your wife is Hindu. But there's one hopeful thing. But what you're saying is the one hopeful thing is not an accident. He was selected because of it.
Nick
Yes, because that story, and think of it, what was the story of Obama, Trump? The story is of the white working class. These like economic. And Sam Francis called them the middle American radicals. And these are people that are maybe not even necessarily Christian. Their party affiliation may not even necessarily be Republican and maybe they voted Democrat, but they're culturally conservative. Like they want to say Merry Christmas. It's the Trump base. It's those that went for Obama in 08, but went for Trump in 16. That's the question. Whoever controls them kind of controls the destiny of America. And from said Vance can appeal to them because he's from Ohio, he's from the Rust Belt. He, he is the, he's a casualty. He's like a Purple Heart in the war on the. The white working class. And so if he can tell them the story about his meme and drug Addiction and fentanyl and poverty and, you know, the casualties of globalization. He can earn their trust and deliver them. So from tells him to write this book. Amy Chua, who is at Yale, she wrote Tiger Mom.
Joel
Chua. That doesn't. Is that in the Civil War registry?
Nick
Yeah. Yeah. I think she's a founding father, founding stock. Amy Chua, she's Asian. She's a tiger mom. She's the author of the book Tiger Mom. She's got her own connections to the CIA and, you know, the defense apparatus. She encourages Vance to write the book. She also sets Vance up with Usha, his future wife, who's also a Yale Law School student, and so does Peter Thiel. And so Vance writes hillbilly elegy and. And let's just stop and talk about what hillbilly elegy is about. It's his story.
Joel
I never read it, and I never watched the movie.
Nick
Yeah.
Joel
And couldn't do it.
Nick
Yeah, it's. The movie's rough.
Joel
Well, it seems like. It's like. I mean, no offense, like, I didn't do it because I knew the conspiracy that Vance would be president one day and he'd do. Like. I literally didn't watch it because it just. It. It. I'm not a girl, you know, I mean. I mean, it really does seem like a chick flick.
Nick
Totally. Well, it's sappy. It's like. It reminds me of, like, a book that Michelle Obama would write.
Sponsor/Announcer
Yeah.
Nick
You know, it's like a New York Times bestseller. It's a tier.
Joel
Maybe with. With less grammar errors.
Sponsor/Announcer
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick
Less Ebonics. Less. Well, I never know, though. In Ohio, they kind of, you know, they might. They might have their own Appalachian dialect, But. But the thrust of the book, if you read any excerpt from it or even watch the movie he writes about why he married an Indian woman, he said that he wanted to get as far away as possible from his relatives. I've heard this because they're failures.
Joel
Which.
Sponsor/Announcer
Yeah.
Joel
Which. I mean, so the one thing that. That I think a lot of guys would be hoping for is like, look, we'll overlook the, you know, the marriage to. Again, not just marriage to a different race, but someone, like, from a different country. And the biggest thing is a different religion.
Nick
Yeah.
Joel
Like, as far as. And I've heard people say, like, well, she's converted to Catholicism. Is that true?
Nick
No, no, She's Hindu, so.
Joel
So you're unequally yoked. I mean, just biblically speaking, I'm a pastor. I can't. You know, you'll have to humor me. I can't help it. But, like, that's, That's a. He should. He should not have married her.
Nick
No, absolutely not.
Joel
He should not have married her. And he should be as a husband. I mean, only, only Christ, you know, the Holy Spirit has to regenerate and, you know, the heart. So I understand, like, he, J.D. vance, can't save his wife, but, I mean, that should be like, his number one vocation in life is like, my wife's going to hell.
Nick
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel
And I'm certainly not going to memorialize the fact that my wife literally worships false gods by naming my son after that heritage and culture and like, you know, so. But all that being said, that's, that's concerning enough in and of itself. But, you know, but I felt like. But okay, but he's quintessential America. It's like the Superman, right? He comes from. He doesn't come from Manhattan. He, you know, he, He. He comes from Kansas, you know.
Nick
Right?
Joel
Yes. Like quintessential America. Farm boy, you know, and so like that, for a lot of guys, a lot of my friends and even myself, it's like, okay, so he married the Hindu. Not great. But he's quoting Aquinas, you know, natural affections, these kinds of things. And he's from Appalachia. I mean, goodness gracious, he's from Ohio, you know, and like, this is, you know, this is our guy who just, you just, you know, made a mistake in marriage, you know, whatever. But when I heard that, because what you just said, I heard before, and maybe I heard it from you, I don't know. But if it's not just a mistake in marriage, right? I mean, you're 21, you're in college, you fall in love, you know, and maybe you're not a divorce. Devout Catholic at the time, you know, and later on you realize this was a mistake. But I mean, even the Catholic and Protestant ethic would be if you are unequally yoked and, and your. Your spouse leaves you, then to let them go, to be. To strive, to be at peace with all men, First Corinthians 7. But if they're willing to remain with you peacefully, then. Then you maintain the marriage. It is. Your. Your spouse is not a Christian, but it is a legitimate marriage. Therefore, if it wasn't, then the children would be spiritual bastards, you know, But Paul literally says that. He says just with one believing parent, the children are holy, so that, like, remaining in the marriage would be so. So that was my thought, was like, he Made a mistake. It was a sin. And. And that's not being hyperbolic. It is a sin to. To, you know, to marry an unbeliever. But he.
Sponsor/Announcer
He.
Joel
There's a difference in I sinned by entering a marriage versus the marriage being illegitimate and being in a continual state of ongoing sin. And the Catholic position, Protestant position is he's not in sin. He sinned, but he's not sinning.
Nick
Right, right.
Joel
And so. So then I was willing to. Okay, so now let's go back to his. His. His story arc, his origin story, you know, well, quintessential American. But if he literally. It wasn't just a mistake, but he intentionally married her because the very. The one thing, the one good thing he's got going for him, he hates.
Sponsor/Announcer
Yes, I hate that I'm quintessential American. And then I'm like, what?
Nick
Yes. So over. It's in defiance. It was like a defiant.
Joel
He said that?
Nick
Yes, it's in his book. He says. He says I went as far as I could go. He said, because I associated my family and my surroundings with everything that I didn't like. Which is. And why did he have this spite and animosity towards his family? That. That's the crux of it. He says it's because they blamed everyone else for their own failures. They are poor, drug addicted, et cetera, and it's their fault because they messed up.
Joel
Now, was his family black?
Nick
Dude, that's good. No, no, they're white, obviously. But this is really at the center of all of it, of the Trump revolution, which is like, after the Cold War was won, what did the country do? Free trade, foreign wars, mass migration. 1990 immigration act. That's really the one that opened up the floodgates. That's what created H1B, H1A, H2A. That is what opened up.
Joel
Is that Reagan or that's amnesty? Oh, that was Bush. Reagan was the amnesty laws.
Nick
Yes. Reagan was the turn.
Joel
California, ironically, blue from forever.
Nick
Right.
Sponsor/Announcer
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Nick
Yes.
Sponsor/Announcer
Right.
Joel
Accomplishing something and then ensuring that the thing you had could never be had again.
Nick
Slamming the door shut.
Joel
Beautiful.
Nick
Yeah. So. So Reagan delivers the amnesty. You get the 1990 Immigration act, and then shortly afterward, you get NAFTA. And what they said about NAFTA is you'd hear a giant sucking sound of all the jobs being sucked out of America to Mexico. When you open up trade between America and Mexico. And. And of course, even opening it up to China and offshoring all the manufacturing to China. America was A manufacturing country until 25 years ago. And so what was wrought in Ohio and Michigan and all these, and it's not just some of these actions, but they accelerated it is that government policy destroyed the small and medium sized towns. They destroyed manufacturing, which was the lifeblood of these small and medium sized towns. It was free trade, mass migration, which is cheap labor. That's the same word for cheap labor in China or from Mexico, coming here or in Mexico through NAFTA and the foreign wars, then sending these people to go die in the Middle East. This is what has created the situation for white people, mostly in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Virginia for that matter. And what the elites are trying now to do to the white people is say, if you're a failure, you can blame no one but yourself. It's not because we, it's not because we sent the jobs overseas. It's not because we opened up the floodgates to infinite labor and immigration. It's because you didn't pull yourself up by your bootstraps. So now you want to blame immigrants and globalism and blame the Chinese, well, why don't you look in the mirror and get off the drugs?
Joel
That's where I ended up parting ways with a lot of older guys that I still love and still respect. You know, ministers and pastors was like, I understand a victim mentality serves no one. But we actually do believe that victim is a legitimate category. There are victims. Irena, it's like, well, you know, it's kind of her fault. No, no, no, it is not her fault.
Sponsor/Announcer
She's a victim. Victims do exist.
Joel
I mean, you just read the Bible and you like, oh, these guys are the bad guys. These guys, they're not sinless. Like, nobody's perfectly innocent. Everybody has faults, everybody sinned, all fallen short of the glory of God. But there actually are, whether it's nation to nation or individual with individual, there actually are bad guys and there actually are victims. And I ended up having to part ways with some of the older guys who. It's one thing to say, hey, you can't just live under a victim mentality your whole life. I agree. But it got to the point where they wouldn't even validate the fact that somebody had been wronged in the first place, specifically younger generation. And I look at like Gen Z and I'm. No, it's, it's. Well, they're lazy. That's what they always said about millennials. Millennials are lazy. And some of them are, yeah, sure, you know, and, well, they're entitled yeah, some of them are. But no, like it is objectively harder to own a home, have a wife, have kids than it was in the 80s. It's not just like, oh well, you know, like there's always been inflation. Like, okay, dude, let's break it down. Here's the average, the average job and what it pays, wages. And here's the average cost of a house. Let's do it proportionally, you know, like with inflation, all those kind of things. What with a mortgage, the average mortgage, what percentage of a paycheck, the average paycheck does it take today? And what was it in the 80s, right? Oh, it's way harder. So. And if you're not willing to look at younger men, like I look at younger men, I say, guys, yeah, it's, it's, it's not right. It's, it's not just unfair, it's wicked. It was malicious. It was calculated, it was intentional. They hate you. They absolutely hate, hate you. And. But I need you to work really, really hard.
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Joel
But you got to say the first half or no, or everyone. Like, no one in Gen Z.
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Joel
to listen to you. If you start with, we're just gonna have to work hard, like I did, going uphill both ways in this. Like, no, you have to start with you were robbed and it was intentional. Like malicious, wicked people stole your birthright. But I think we can get it back.
Nick
Right?
Joel
Let's go. Like, there's a path, you know?
Nick
Well, and, and that's really. That is the message that's at the core of the book is. And. And then, you know, when you take all of it together, you realize his biographical credibility is to kind of put a arm around the shoulder of his fellow white Appalachians or Rust Belt white people and say, you're the problem. Like, it's your fault.
Joel
Really.
Sponsor/Announcer
Yeah.
Nick
Yeah. Because that's. I mean, if that's the message of the book, which is, I. I married so far outside my race because my own people are these terminal failures.
Joel
I'm embarrassed by them.
Nick
Yes. This toxic culture and the Hill. What is an elegy? It's, it's like a message at a funeral. It's like a message of something that's dying. And so he's telling his fellow hillbillies, like, guys, we can't blame immigrants. We can't blame the cosmopolitan elites who have done this. We have to blame ourselves. And so this book comes about in 2016. Now, at this point, this is maybe like a nice segue, but that's the point of the book is like, it has this significance about the American electorate and the globalization which has ruined America. And now the reaction then is Trump. So the book comes at this momentous time when the middle American radicals are coming with the pitchforks and torches in the form of Trumpism, because Trump is breathing life into this and saying, you got robbed. Like, our country isn't great. The elites wrecked it with. They made bad deals because they're not smart, because they're bribed. And so why are we in the Middle east still? We said, we've been there for 20 years, we don't even have it. And you know, China took our jobs, Mexico, like. So Trump is, is animating them against the system at the same time that Vance was supposed to do the opposite. He was supposed to sort of guide them back into the system and get them to trust the system. So it's at this time that Vance meets Peter Thiel at Yale. Peter Thiel goes to Yale Law School and gives a talk and meets Vance. And Vance describes this as the most important thing that ever happened in his life.
Joel
Wow.
Nick
Meeting Peter Thiel and they start an email correspondence. Vance finishes at Yale Law School and one of his first jobs, he works in, I think he works as a lawyer for a short time. Then he goes to Silicon Valley at a biotech company. And the guy that runs that company has since said he only gave Vance that job.
Joel
I heard that he like barely showed up to the office.
Nick
This is a different one.
Joel
Oh, okay.
Nick
This is his very first job before he got into venture capital. The boss of this company said, I didn't even know who Vance was. I gave him the job as a founder. Favor to Peter Thiel.
Joel
Right.
Nick
And then Peter Thiel hires him or gets him a job at another venture capital firm. Eventually Vance makes it to Mithil Capital, which is Teal's VC firm. And this is by, this is a no show job. That's where his colleagues say, we never even saw him in the office. He never showed up. Why? This is when he releases the book.
Joel
So he's basically being paid to sit at home and write the book.
Nick
He, he gets a sinecure. Teal sets him up. While Vance is going around to the Aspen Institute, he's going around to CNN promoting the book. And the purpose of the book, according to David from Amy Chua and Teal, was to pave the way for him to be the future president. This is like, this is, you know, like his Obama dreams of my father. This is like meant to endear him to the public. Cuz that's his claim to fame. Otherwise, who is he? He's a Marine, Yale educated lawyer. The book and the TV show and the interviews, the New York Times bestseller. He's the Trump whisperer. This is his claim to fame and his launch pad to become the president. And Thiel basically paves the road for him, gives him this job and the position to promote it, it's a no show job. And of course it doesn't work out because Trump runs on the opposite platform of what Vance is promoting. So Trump throws a wrench into David Fromm and Vance and Thiel's plan because Trump, like I said, you know, he's breathing life into the grievances of the white people and they recognize this. And so after Trump wins the election, and of course Vance is, is adamantly against Trump, he's marketed as the Trump whisperer, that he is one of the disaffected white people. But he also is educated and at an Ivy League school, so he could speak to the elites, he can translate to CNN their grievances. He's the mediator. And by the way, Vance doesn't vote for Trump. He votes for Evan McMullen, a CIA agent who is run as a spoiler by Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol is a Jewish neocon friend of David From. He wanted Trump to lose by any means necessary. They ran this guy in Utah to deprive Trump of Utah, which might have cost him the election in a certain timeline. Anyway, Trump wins the election. Vance convenes a meeting after Trump's inauguration in D.C. and he invites all his closest friends. And from describes the meeting years later and says it was never spoken aloud, but everyone understood this was a Vance for president meeting in 2017, really after the inauguration of Trump. And this is damage control. They're trying to figure out how after we were never Trump and called him a Nazi and voted for Evan McMullen.
Joel
How do you pivot?
Nick
How do you pivot? Cuz Trump just became the president. And so this is like a war committee, a war room, to figure out in the late 2000s and the early 2000s how he's gonna run for president. And I think what the idea was was kind of like a wait and see approach. Maybe they thought Trump would crash and burn.
Joel
Right.
Nick
Because Vance is still attacking Trump after Charlottesville, which is August 2017, and right up through 2018 and 2019, Vance is on Trump's case. I think then he realizes Trump isn't going anywhere, so he moves to Ohio, buys a house there, and he starts being really pro Trump. And then in 2022, Vance is going to run for Senate. He's, I think he starts at 2021 is when they start doing the exploratory. They run in the Senate primary and they realize we got a problem on our hands, which is that Trump has not gone away. Trump is going to be a force in the 22 midterms, even after J6 and everything. So Vance recognizes I can't win the Ohio Senate primary between the Republicans without Trump's endorsement. So Peter Thiel picks up the phone and he calls Trump. And Peter Thiel arranges a meeting. And Peter Thiel was one of Trump's original donors. He. And he's going to be giving a lot in 22 in the cycle. So he's got some motion, he's got clout with Trump. Thiel arranges a meeting between Vance and Trump in Mar a Lago, I believe, in the summer of 2022, to iron out the differences. And Vance apologizes, and Trump graciously accepts him back into the fold.
Joel
Trump, that's. It's so funny because people would be like, oh, he's mean. He's like one of Trump's biggest failures is he's actually too forgiving.
Nick
100%. 100%, yes. You know, he talks himself up, like,
Joel
stabbed me in the back. But you said you're sorry.
Nick
Yes. Yeah. And, you know, he would talk years ago, like, I never forget who's wronged me, and I can't wait.
Joel
I wish.
Nick
I'll talk.
Joel
I wish.
Nick
Yeah, me too. I'll talk. So Trump immediately forgives him and then endorses Vance. Peter thiel gives Vance $15 million.
Joel
It was the biggest, from what I read. It was the biggest, biggest donation for any Senate race.
Nick
Yes. Yeah, huge. 15 million for Blake Masters, 15 million for Vance. And Teal secured Trump's endorsement through a personal favor. I can't speak to the details of that, but it was Teal that got him the endorsement which got him the nomination from the gop, and that's what secured his entry into the senate. So in 22, and this is, by the way, a big deal because this was a competitive race in a major state, and you're talking about a statewide office. Most people don't go from nobody to senator.
Joel
Right.
Nick
Maybe they start in the House, especially someone with no real name recognition. Vance goes from never Trump or nobody anti Trump, nobody to Trump endorsed senator from Ohio. Then after two years, he gets tapped to be the nominee for Vice President of the United States. Think about that. So he gets seated in the US Senate in January 2023. In July 2024, he's tapped by Trump. That's a fast ascendancy. And how did that happen? Well, you know, we talked about the. In a different episode about the fundraiser at David Sacks House.
Joel
Right.
Nick
Vance, his patron is Peter Thiel. Obviously, Thiel gave him the sinecure at the venture capital firm. Thiel got him his first job. Thiel gave him $15 million, got him the Trump endorsement. And who is Peter Thiel? Well, he made his Fortune first with PayPal, right. Then with Palantir.
Joel
So he's friends with Sachs and those guys.
Nick
He's friends with all of them. He's from the PayPal mafia. All the guys that founded PayPal in 2000, they went and founded all the big tech companies.
Joel
Musk had, like, a falling out for a while, though. With some.
Nick
Yes, with Peter Thiel.
Joel
How about now? Does. Are they still severed or.
Nick
They seem to be cooperating.
Joel
Okay.
Nick
But there's. I think there's still maybe a rivalry there.
Joel
I definitely. I think Musk has problems, but I definitely like him a lot more than Peter Till.
Nick
Me, too. Yeah, but they. They all come from the same place. I mean, David Sachs, Joe Lonsdale, who runs the Founders Fund, and He came in PayPal a little later. Reid Hoffman, all these guys were at PayPal from the beginning. And then they. There's kind of this explosion and they all. And it's also incestuous. They all invest in each other's companies, on the boards, advising each other's companies. So they're all part of, like. That's why they call it a mafia, because they're like a gang and they all work together. And that's Peter Thiel. So if Thiel endorses Vance, Vance's card that he gets to play, it's not just Teal, but it's the whole Silicon Valley apparatus. It's Palantir. And Palantir is deeply connected with Anduril, which is a drone company. And they're deeply connected with Andreessen Horowitz, which they're connected to all the different tech companies. And so Vance and his backers want him to be the vp because he will be their man for little tech, not just for all of Silicon Valley, like Facebook and Google. He'll be the man for the new generation of disruptive, the next wave of tech companies. The drone, AI, the software companies. He's going to be their man. And in particular, what will he do? Give them the federal contracts, give them favorable regulation, get their personnel inside the Department of War, inside the administration, and then eventually he'll be the president and have even more power.
Joel
It sounds like you should be speaking out against Palantir, but to hedge your bets, you should probably buy some stock.
Nick
Yeah. Hey, not a bad idea.
Joel
So if you lose with what you're
Sponsor/Announcer
actually saying, I still win.
Nick
Yeah. Hey, you Know, would have been smart to do that during the election because they went up 100%.
Joel
Crazy.
Nick
Yeah. But so Vance starts working his connections in Silicon valley. And in 16, and in 20, Silicon Valley was decisively behind the Democrats. You know, Zuckerberg chan Foundation put 300 million forget out the vote for the Democrats in 2020, which is kind of like an unreported, Like a donation in kind. In 24, Vance gets them to go behind Trump and Jacob Helberg, who's gay, married to Keith Raboy, who's another big Silicon Valley guy at Facebook. They're. They're gay together, they're both Jewish. Jacob Helberg becomes the first big donor to Trump. He maxes out the contribution for the joint fundraising committee. He leads the way, and Helberg becomes a big advisor to Trump on AI. On tech. In June, Vance coordinates this fundraiser at David Sacks house, and all the big tech people are there writing big checks. They raise millions of dollars. They get Trump on the all in podcast. And that was a big reason why Trump tabbed Vance, because Trump needed money. You need money to be president. And by the way, David Sacks is like a representative of Elon Musk also, because in 2023, when Ron DeSantis announced his primary campaign, it was David Sachs hosting a Twitter space with DeSantis and Elon Musk.
Joel
Yeah.
Nick
On the platform. So if you're getting Vance, you're getting Teal, you're getting Sachs, and with Sachs, you're getting Musk, you're getting Hundred, you're getting Andreessen Horowitz, getting hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of Trump. So it's this reason that Trump taps Vance, because he's going to have all the Silicon Valley money and he picks Vance a few days after he gets shot.
Joel
Right.
Nick
He gets a call from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Tucker Carlson, and they're all beckoning him. You have to support Vance for VP because if you don't, the deep state will kill you.
Joel
Right. No, I remember that. That was. The rhetoric was if you pick, you know, a neocon, you know, Nikki Haley or something like that, then. Then they'll literally kill you and. Because they'd be happy with your replacement. But Vance is so based and he's so yes to it. Like, they'd be worried. Like, he'd be even more hardcore than you.
Nick
Yeah.
Joel
So they'll keep you alive.
Nick
And it's like, is that true? Because advance is a pawn of Palantir and Anduril, which are defense contractors and intelligence contractors. Wouldn't the Deep State prefer Vance over Trump? Maybe they'd even prefer him over. Over any of the other picks that Trump could have had for vice president. So, and it's, it's very strange because, well, you know, the ascendancy is so conspicuous. This guy, every step of the way is being groomed and artificially boosted by these powerful forces that. And the forces run through Yale and Stanford, these elite academic institutions. It runs through Silicon Valley, these intelligence contractors like Palantir and Anduril. It runs through the richest people in the world, the billionaires like Elon Musk, and even the nonprofits, the media, Netflix, cnn, American Enterprise Institute. And what I try to tell people is think about the contrast between this story and Trump. Everyone was against Trump. The Vatican was against Trump. The Republicans were against Trump. The Democrats, Wall street was against Trump. Ken Griffin was going to jump ship on Trump after 2021 from Citadel, whereas Vance, it's the reverse. Trump was a famous billionaire that they had to acquiesce to because he led the people in a populist revolt against the system. Vance is an artificial creation of the system, of the next wave of elites, of Peter Thiel, of all these different institutional forces. And so you have this betrayal where Trump is running for his second term on a platform of vengeance. And we are going to finish what we started and we're going to. We're. We didn't do enough. We didn't go far enough the first time. And he rewards as his successor and heir apparent as the vice president, a never Trumper who voted for Evan McMullen, who could not be more fake and artificial. And you know that Musk and Thiel and Sachs were licking their lips like they are licking their chops at the, at the thought that their guy will inherit the Trumpist revolution. He will be the successor, and Trump will set Sunset one way or another in 2029. And most likely, Vance will then be the nominee and then the guy, you know, and, and then I think it's helpful to talk about Peter Thiel and what they represent.
Joel
Yeah.
Nick
Talk about and how they come from the neocons, you know, because. Yeah.
Joel
Before we do. Quick intermission, but are you really going to vote for Gavin Newsome?
Nick
I don't know. I don't think I will.
Joel
Please don't. I. I ran out of California. I mean it. Gavin Newsolimi, the dude is. Yeah, he's terrible. Now, I do understand the sense that, you know, like, he, you know, he didn't marry a Hindu. He's not in the pocket of Peter Thiel. Like, I get it. You make a compelling argument. But, I mean, this is the guy who was dining at the French Laundry as me and everybody else is locked in our homes and told that we can't do church. Surely, like, I understand the political strategy. I understand the political strategy. I also understand that I'm ruining the strategy right now by bringing it up. Defeats the whole purpose. But I've got, you know, close friends, are like, all right, Joel, I see what you're saying about Nick. I see how he's onto some things. But that's one of the. Just the easy, cheap shots that people can pick up and be like, no, Nick is terrible because he said he'll vote for Newsom. Like, just.
Sponsor/Announcer
Just to show your bona fides.
Nick
Yes.
Joel
You hate Newsom.
Nick
Well, I don't hate anybody. I. I adamantly disagree with.
Joel
As a candidate, though.
Nick
Yeah, as a candidate. Yeah. I hate what he represents.
Joel
Policies, what he represents. You're just. You just also. Just very, very much don't like fans.
Nick
Yeah, well. And here's what I would say about that.
Sponsor/Announcer
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Nick
You know, we. We. And by We. I mean, you and I and people like us, we are being held hostage by this dialectic which says, you sound
Joel
like James Lindsay, but go on.
Nick
Well, dialectic is dialectic. It's an important concept, which is it forces us to take a certain side.
Joel
That's true.
Nick
Because you. You wouldn't ever want to have Newsom. It's like, so we will accept anything the Republicans give.
Joel
Yeah, I know that's.
Nick
And there's some moral hazard there, because then they can give us anything they want. And the argument will always be the same. You know, would we have to vote for John McCain?
Joel
Right.
Nick
Obama was far worse. Far worse. Would you vote for John McCain? Like, the worst neocon ever? Who's a traitor? Who's a songbird? Would you vote for Mitt Romney? Would you vote for George W. Bush? No, I would not vote for Bush, McCain. I wouldn't vote for any of them, even if we get Al Gore or Obama. And you know what I would say about. In general, this has been a problem for the GOP for generations. And there's really good piece by Sam Francis in the night. Sam Francis is like one of the brilliant paleo cons from a different generation whose career was buried, actually by Dinesh d'. Souza. Helped get him canceled.
Joel
Really?
Nick
Yeah, he, like, lied about him. He defamed him in a book, and it got Sam Francis kicked out of Washington examiner and ruined his career.
Joel
Wow.
Nick
It would happen anyway, probably. But he did lie. And anyway, Sam Francis was very close with Patrick Buchanan.
Joel
Right.
Nick
Who was an advisor to Nixon and Reagan. And he ran in 92, 96, 2000. And of course, in 92, Pat Buchanan raised a primary challenge against the incumbent president, George Bush. And Buchanan rallied the populist base. They called them the Buchanan Brigades. And Buchanan came within striking distance of Bush in a number of different primary contests, which is unheard of for an incumbent president to, like, lose to a challenger. You almost never have a primary when that's the case. Case when. When you're the ruling party and, you know, Pat Buchanan lost. I mean, he eventually dropped out, but in the end, he endorsed George Bush. And he spoke at the Republican convention where he endorsed Bush and brought all the Buchanan Brigades back onto the Bush campaign. And everyone recognized that Bush was terrible because he raised taxes, he betrayed his constituents. There was so much apathy at that 1990 and 1992. And Sam Francis said that was Buchanan's biggest mistake. It was his loyalty to the GOP which prevented him from actually having a revolutionary movement. And what I saw as Buchanan's mistake. That's where Trump succeeded. Because let's recall, it was Trump who in 2015 said, if I'm not the nominee, I'll run as a third party and I'll ruin this for everybody. And they hated him for that. He was polling at 15 or 20% in the primary and in the first debate at Fox News, they said, because he was threatening this, they said, raise your hand if you will not pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee. And Trump raised his hand and Bret Baier said, so to be clear, you're saying you will not endorse the nominee, guaranteeing that Hillary Clinton will win. And Trump said, I perfectly understand. He goes, look, he goes, I have a lot of leverage. He said, I want to win as the Republican. He said, but if I don't become the nominee, then I might run as an independent. I have a lot of leverage. And I told them to his face when I had dinner with him. I said, that's how I knew you were serious, because you were willing to play the game and say, I'll let the Republican Party crash and burn. You think you control me? You think you have me hostage? I have you hostage. You better make sure I win. Because if I don't win and bring all my people and policies, then nobody wins. And that's what our cucked sucker Republican base, that loses forever. That's what they don't understand is like they're willing to be the idiot every time and say, well, what are we going to do? We have to vote because if we don't, it's our fault. I say, if we lose, it's their fault because we want to vote. We want change. They have never delivered it. Where's my border wall?
Joel
Right?
Nick
Why are we still in Iraq? Why do we still have free trade? Where's our tariff schedule? You know, and Trump is working on some of these things, but like that, that's what I would say for someone like Vance is like, I'm sorry, you need to convince us to vote for you, not the other way around. So anyway, that would be my rebuttal.
Joel
That's a good rebuttal. I've heard you say that very last part. I've heard that before from you kind of leaving the door open and saying, yeah, I don't like him, I don't trust him. But there is still three years. Is there, like if, if Vance just came out and wowed you, you know, I mean, really took a stand, being courageous. It wasn't just manufacturer this or that, did something that like really Skin of the game. Something sacrificial, something. Something that is clear that it's genuine. Is there any. Is there any scenario where you would vote for Vance?
Nick
No.
Joel
Okay.
Nick
I don't think so. I mean, you know, anything can happen. Nothing's impossible.
Joel
When you say that, you're just saying the GOP in general has to earn your vote.
Nick
Yes. Just as a principle with another candidate.
Joel
But in the case of Vance, it's
Nick
like, no, no, because I don't trust him. And he strikes me as an Obama like, figure who will do and say anything, and he does.
Joel
My wife and I, we. We said that, like, when we. The vice president debate or like, I. And my dad even said that my dad called Obama, like, he had some speech, you know, years before he was elected, and he was like, he'll be the president, especially on the heels of Bush, because, you know, Bush had tons of faults, but I don't think he was an idiot. No, but he. He did kind of talk like one.
Nick
Yes.
Joel
You know, he had the Southern drawl, and I think people from the south are awesome. I live in Texas. But, you know, but he just. He didn't sound as polished, you know, or. Or, you know, an intellectual in the. In the way that he spoke, his accents. And so it kind of made sense that, you know, that Obama would come on the heels of that, you know, that stark comparison of Bush. Like, you know, he would. He would tie his words, you know, like, fool me once, shame on you, two times, three times a lady, you know, you know, those kind of things. And people would make, you know, Saturday Night Live would do their skits and make fun of them. But likewise, like, Trump, I think, is actually a phenomenal speaker, but not polished. He's anything but Polish. That's what. That's what we love about Trump, that he's not polished. But it does kind of remind me of that scenario of like, kind of Bush to Obama, Trump to, you know, to Vance. Like, he is, like, he's a great speaker. So anyways, my dad and my wife, you know, like, that same kind of feeling with Obama, like, seeing that vice presidential debate, like, it wasn't just like, oh, they're gonna win this term. It was like, he's gonna be president.
Nick
Right. Well, and. And my. My connotation with Obama is more negative, which is that he's a freshman senator who was selected rather than elected. You know, he was sort of artificially elevated, really had no business being there, and was a Trojan horse, you know, because Obama was a great speaker and created this Great movement about. Well, great. It was compelling, about hope and change. He didn't deliver change right at all. I mean, it was a continuation in almost every way from the previous administration. Foreign policy, trade policy. And people could argue he's a radical leftist, but he was constrained by the bureaucracy and the deep state. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State. So I see the same thing in Vance that he. And it's so calculated, the way that, like, he appeals to people like us. The, you know, the natural affections. I see calculation. I don't see anything organic there. I see someone who is. And, you know, it's helpful maybe to understand the teal connection on this particular point. Thiel has absolutely flooded the zone with propaganda. All these Twitter accounts that you think are based, based frogs, like these guys are being paid. They're tweeting 100 times per day. Nobody has time to tweet 100 times per day unless they're getting paid. All these projects by Internet eccentrics, they're sinecures. So, you know, Sovereign House, for example, is a venue in New York City where they do the Passage prize from Passage Press and they do fashion shows. And Sovereign House is run by Nick Allen and Future Moldovan Citizen. These are two teal allies. Nick Allen was involved in Ethereum, Future Moldovan citizens involved in the tech world. These are two teal allies. This is like a teal cutout. And who goes through there? Everybody. Steve Saylor, Sam Hyde, and I don't think that necessarily Sam is in on it, but it's a venue for all the right wing people. Passage Press, they hosted the inauguration party with sovereign house after January 20th or after Trump's inauguration this year. And Passage Press is run by. They call him Lomaz, his real name, he's like a Jewish academic from California. His name's Jonathan Keeperman. They published Steve Saylor and Curtis Yarvin, both Jewish. Curtis Yarvin is the philosopher of Peter Thiel, the court philosopher of their whole network. And these guys, these are just a few examples. But all this stuff is funded. They all go to each other's events, they all go on each other's podcasts. They're all prolific on Twitter, retweeting and promoting each other in group chats. And the one thing they're all pushing on the Internet, astroturfing, is Vance for president. Vance is even better than Trump. Vance is based. And there's a reciprocal relationship where they are unloading the slop to the masses. But it goes the other direction. You think when Vance posts something on Twitter. That's based on. He's being fed that by these people. It's like you put every part of right wing Twitter into ChatGPT and said, Write a tweet in the voice of JD Vance incorporating. So a politician's job, a good one, is to mirror the public, their, their tastes, their habits, you know, whatever, whatever is popular at the moment, whatever's in fashion. When people see Vance and say, oh, I. That's really funny. That's really based. I like this guy. That's by design. It is being reflected back to you in a funhouse mirror where it's like you're on Twitter interacting with accounts that you think are organic but are shills, telling you what's cool, what's trendy, what's based. You're interacting with it and then they're feeding that to Vance to market it to you. And you say, he sounds like my favorite Twitter accounts. He's based. So it's a very sophisticated and convoluted deception. But I've seen it, I've seen it firsthand because I know all the people involved firsthand. I know the people at Sovereign House. I know the people at Passage Press. I know the, I know people that were at the party at the inauguration that was co hosted by them. I know them and I know that this is how they operate. And so they, the whole thing is an artifice. And I don't, I don't trust anything the guy says.
Joel
All right, well, you will not be voting for Vance in 2028. That's been made abundantly clear. But you do make a compelling case. And a lot of those pieces, some of it I was already aware of from you and from others. But, but you definitely filled in some of the holes for me. So I appreciate that. I think the listener will be well informed. Is there anybody that you like right now? No, it's not.
Nick
I don't, I, I don't think that nobody is going to capture what Trump did.
Joel
Yeah.
Nick
You know, because you could say Thomas Massey's pretty based and you could say
Joel
he is on some things, he's a libertarian.
Nick
Right.
Joel
You know what I mean?
Sponsor/Announcer
It's like, and I appreciate just, I
Joel
want to go on record because a lot of people see this. I really do appreciate Thomas Massey. I like him. I don't think I like him for precedent.
Nick
Well, and that's what I'm saying is like, everybody's instinct is to say, oh, I like what, Marjorie Taylor Greene?
Joel
Yeah, I like her, but I'm not going to have a woman President. I prefer not to have a woman doing what she's doing now.
Nick
Yeah, well, she's a knucklehead anyway. I mean, that's sort of. My point is there's nobody that is ideologically sound and like president material.
Joel
Right.
Nick
So it would have to be somebody that we don't know about yet. A dark horse. Yeah, that's the only one I would go for.
Joel
Yeah. And then it turns out, like J.D. vance being, you know, point in case. Case in point is the dark horse that nobody knows about and then suddenly appears. Turns out they're not much of a dark horse.
Nick
Right.
Joel
They actually. The reason why they all of a sudden have this quick ascendancy is because they were selected.
Nick
Right.
Joel
You know, so. So it have to really be organic and. And that just takes time. I don't think. I don't think you get that in 2028.
Nick
No, I think you're right.
Joel
You know, so thanks for the show.
Nick
Yeah.
Joel
I hope it's been helpful for all the listeners. And we'll see you in the next one.
Nick
Absolutely.
Joel
All right.
Sponsor/Announcer
For those of you who may not be aware, I have the immense privilege of also serving as president for a sister organization to NXR Studios, which is a nonprofit 501c3 Christian organization called called Right Response Ministries. Our focus with this organization is to train and equip pastors and congregants in the Protestant church, primarily the Evangelical church right here in America. What are we trying to train them in? Well, let's just say we're trying to help Evangelical Protestant churches in America to stop being so insufferable, to stop being Zionist shills, to be engaged, not apathetic, but activated. The realm of politics and culture. The things that you've been hearing in this series that myself and Nick Fuentes are talking about. We want to see Protestant churches right here in America apply these things to get in the game, to win our country back. We want to see evangelicals and Protestants in America actually be America first. Not serving a foreign country at the expense of our own interest, but serving Christ and serving Americans. If you'd like to support us in this mission, we could greatly use your help. You can give a tax deductible donation by simply going to right responseministries.com donate again. That's right Response Ministries.
Joel
Com
Sponsor/Announcer
donate.
Joel
God bless.
Podcast Summary: America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes Repost
Episode: The Real Origins of JD Vance (w/Nick Fuentes) - NXR EP9
Date: February 28, 2026
Host: WANGHAF
Guests: Nick Fuentes, Joel (Co-Host)
This episode offers a wide-ranging, critical examination of J.D. Vance, focusing on the authenticity of his political persona, the forces behind his rapid rise, and his entanglement with influential tech and political figures like Peter Thiel and Palantir. Hosts Joel and Nick Fuentes dissect Vance's personal and professional background, his relationship with Silicon Valley, his purported Appalachian working-class identity, and his alleged function as an "artificial creation" of elite networks poised to inherit the Trumpist movement.
[00:00-01:34]
Quote:
“I see him as the potential kind of, you know, Anakin, Darth Vader…maybe he does join the dark side…But at the end…he picks up the emperor and throws him over the rail. That's. That's my hope.” – Joel [02:50]
[03:28–07:22]
Quote:
“Thiel is not just a patron in politics, but he's truly like a mentor, arguably like a father figure…laid the groundwork for Vance’s entire rise in venture capital through to the Senate seat and then to becoming the vice president.” – Nick [03:34]
[07:22–17:28]
Quote:
“From is his mentor ... writing about Vance like he's gonna be the future president, which is really weird…He will deliver the rabble rouser Tea partiers back into the hands of the moderate Republican establishment.” – Nick [09:38 / 13:10]
[17:28–21:29]
Quote:
“I can't help it. But, like, that's, that's a. He should. He should not have married her.” – Joel [17:53]
Quote:
“It was like a defiant…He says I went as far as I could go...because I associated my family and my surroundings with everything that I didn't like.” – Nick [20:56]
[21:29–28:06]
Quote:
“So now you want to blame immigrants and globalism and blame the Chinese, well, why don't you look in the mirror and get off the drugs?” – Nick [22:08]
[28:06–37:09]
Quote:
"He gets a sinecure. Teal sets him up. While Vance is going around to the Aspen Institute, he's going around to CNN promoting the book. And the purpose of the book, according to David from Amy Chua and Teal, was to pave the way for him to be the future president." – Nick [31:14]
[37:09–41:37]
Quote:
“If you're getting Vance, you're getting Teal, you're getting Sacks, and with Sacks, you're getting Musk, you're getting Andreessen Horowitz, getting hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of Trump." – Nick [41:07]
[41:37–44:42]
Quote:
“Vance is an artificial creation of the system, of the next wave of elites...Trump was a famous billionaire that they had to acquiesce to because he led the people in a populist revolt against the system. Vance is...artificial.” – Nick [42:32]
[47:54–52:47]
Quote:
“I'm sorry, you need to convince us to vote for you, not the other way around.” – Nick [52:29]
[55:06–59:53]
Quote:
"It's like you put every part of right wing Twitter into ChatGPT and said, Write a tweet in the voice of JD Vance...you are interacting with accounts…that are shills, telling you what's cool, what's trendy, what's based. You're interacting with it and then they're feeding that to Vance to market it to you." – Nick [58:21]
On Vance’s roots & credibility:
“His name isn’t even JD Vance. That’s not his birth name. His birth name...he goes through a series of different names...Only after he writes the book does he become Vance.” – Nick [08:38]
Trump’s political leverage:
“He said, I have a lot of leverage...I told them to his face when I had dinner with him. I said, that's how I knew you were serious, because you were willing to play the game and say...You think you control me? You think you have me hostage? I have you hostage.” – Nick [50:29]
Final position on the 2028 race:
“No. I don’t think so. I mean, you know, anything can happen...But in the case of Vance, it’s like, no, no, because I don’t trust him. And he strikes me as an Obama like figure who will do and say anything, and he does.” – Nick [53:21]
The tone is blunt, combative, and conspiratorial, with both hosts using sarcasm, biblical references, and right-wing slang (“based,” “fake and gay,” “selected not elected”). Nick Fuentes is particularly incisive and animated in drawing institutional connections and warning against manufactured populism. Joel brings earnestness and theological critique, lending the episode a blend of cultural, religious, and political criticism.
This episode claims that J.D. Vance is not an organic populist champion, but the product of elite tech, political, and academic engineering—carefully crafted to inherit the MAGA mantle and "manage" the base. Vance’s apparent authenticity is argued to be the calculated output of funded influencer networks and deep-pocketed tech interests, rather than true grassroots conviction. For listeners skeptical of modern politics and the GOP’s direction post-Trump, the podcast serves as an extensive warning against easy trust in candidates who fit the narrative too perfectly.