BEST OF: George Packer on JD Vance

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

The Al Franken Podcast – BEST OF: George Packer on JD Vance
Date: March 22, 2026
Guest: George Packer (Staff writer, The Atlantic)
Main Article Referenced: "The Talented Mr. Vance" (The Atlantic)

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Episode Overview

This "Best Of" episode revisits Al Franken’s in-depth interview with journalist and author George Packer, centering on Packer's widely discussed profile of J.D. Vance, current Vice President and once-author of "Hillbilly Elegy." The conversation explores Vance's transformation from introspective memoirist and critic of Donald Trump to a leading MAGA figure and Trump’s running mate, as well as the broader implications for American politics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The J.D. Vance Arc: From Outsider to Insider

• Vance’s Background (04:11 – 09:16)

  • Raised in deindustrialized Middletown, Ohio, by a troubled, heroin-addicted mother.
  • Served in the Marines, deployed to Iraq as a public affairs officer; returned disillusioned by America's role in the war.
  • Rapidly completed Ohio State, then attended Yale Law School, marrying Usha Chilukuri (daughter of successful Indian immigrants).

• Transformation Trigger (06:19 – 11:47)

  • Vance’s fame exploded with "Hillbilly Elegy" post-2016 election as America sought to understand the "white working class."
  • Initially called Trump "cultural heroin" and "America's Hitler," but gradually shifted positions to enter Republican politics.

Notable Quote:
"He takes four years to go from the introspective, eloquent, sensitive explainer ... to the guy who starts talking about childless cat ladies and then begins making up stories about Haitian immigrants eating pets..."
— George Packer (08:01)

2. Vance’s Political Identity: Genuine or Opportunist?

• Real Believen or Political Chameleon? (04:28 – 05:28)
  • Central debate: Did Vance’s political shift stem from policy revelation or cynical ambition—or a blend?
  • Packer suggests Vance's transformation defies simple explanation and possesses "a long arc," with both authentic and tactical elements.

Notable Quote:
"I don't think he's purely a creature of cynicism. But on the other hand, I don't buy the 'road to Damascus' epiphany."
— George Packer (04:44)

• Public Disavowal vs. MAGA Embrace (07:55 – 08:55)

  • Early criticism left Vance with a reputational "hole" to climb out of in Republican politics.

• Culture Warrior Persona:

  • Vance evolved into a prominent right-wing culture warrior, echoing themes he once criticized in Trump.

3. War, Foreign Policy, and the Vance Doctrine

• Post-Iraq Disillusionment (09:05 – 10:36)

  • Frustration with U.S. counterinsurgency and policy hypocrisy led to a turn toward isolationism and "America First" ideology.

• Ukraine & Contemporary Isolationism (11:47 – 14:10)

  • Vance’s infamous "I don't care what happens in Ukraine" stance, playing into MAGA antiglobalism and antagonizing mainstream Republicans and Democrats.

Notable Quote:
"It feels to me like it comes out of the same place as all the other culture war hatreds which Vance has embraced."
— George Packer (13:48)

4. Ambition, Identity, and the Elite Divide

• Education and Social Mobility (16:23 – 21:21)
  • Yale Law School as a culture shock; Usha Chilukuri served as "Yale spirit guide," emphasizing America's class divide not by ethnicity, but by educational attainment and social codes.

Notable Quote:
"In our country and culture, there's nothing strange about the daughter of Hindu Indian immigrants being the insider who is the guide to Yale for the son of many centuries of native born white Christian Americans..."
— George Packer (21:21)

• The Peter Thiel Connection (23:17 – 25:15)

  • Billionaire investor became a mentor and ideological influence, introducing Vance to critiques of democracy and the allure of more authoritarian alternatives.

• Ohio Return and Political Calculus (25:17 – 27:11)

  • Vance’s supposed intent to "give back" to Ohio largely a prelude to seeking office; his resentment of elite condescension was pivotal in rationalizing his MAGA shift.

5. Vance’s Evolution into MAGA Star

• Transition Timeline (27:14 – 31:20)
  • Four-year transition from reluctant observer to full participant in far-right culture war rhetoric.
  • Created rhetorical space for himself to justify Trumpist politics, culminating in his Vice Presidential candidacy.

Notable Quote:
“He can claim to be doing it in the name of the working class, even though he’s really not doing anything for the working class. And neither is Trump. Trump is doing it for the rich and the grifters.”
— George Packer (30:37)

• Comfort in Conflict (31:20 – 32:28)
  • Packer analogizes Vance's comfort in MAGA rhetoric to "hillbilly culture," thriving in combativeness, distrust, and loyalty—traits Vance once sought to escape.

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Broader Implications for American Politics

6. Performance, Policy, and Tribalism

• New Era of Politics (35:12 – 38:37)
  • Discussion expands to whether political success today is about concrete policy or about "owning the libs" and performing for the tribe.

Notable Quotes:
"It seems to be a kind of continual performance that makes certain people feel okay about the country, even if the facts are otherwise..."
— George Packer (37:48)

• Democratic Party Challenges
  • Al Franken and George Packer ponder whether Democrats should moderate socially or focus on coalition-building, with Packer suggesting that the traditional policy-centric politics may be obsolete in the Trumpist era.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamps | |-------------------------------------------|-----------------| | Introduction to Episode and Vance’s Bio | 01:04 – 04:09 | | Vance’s Contradictions: Sincerity vs. Cynicism | 04:09 – 08:55 | | Iraq, Disillusionment, and America First | 09:05 – 14:10 | | Education, Usha, and Meritocracy Divide | 16:23 – 21:21 | | The Peter Thiel Years | 23:17 – 25:15 | | Return to Ohio, Elitism, and MAGA Alignment| 25:17 – 31:20 | | Full Embrace of MAGA and Culture Warrior Role | 31:20 – 32:28 | | Politics Today: Tribe vs. Policy | 35:12 – 38:37 |

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On Vance’s Ambition:
  "He's a very, very smart man and hardworking and at that point, intellectually curious, too."
  — Al Franken (16:51)

• On Political Transformation:
  "The repressed culture of his childhood, which he had to get rid of to make it at Yale, he's now not only is he swimming in it, but he's thriving in it."
  — George Packer (31:23)

• On the State of Modern Politics:
  “Now the media is different and politicians are different, and Trump seems to have figured out the sweet spot, as hideous as it is, as corrupt as it is.”
  — George Packer (37:13)

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Conclusion

Al Franken and George Packer deliver a rich, at times darkly humorous, exploration of J.D. Vance's political odyssey, raising deeper questions about authenticity, ambition, and the transformation of American politics into a battle of identities and narratives. Packer’s insights illuminate how Vance’s personal journey mirrors the seismic class and cultural divisions in the United States—and why both his biography and his political transformation warrant close attention.

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For further reading, see George Packer's article “The Talented Mr. Vance” in The Atlantic.

Transcript

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[Al Franken]

Hey everybody, we got a great one today, you know, for a change. And that's because this one is a best of I'm taking a little break from the podcast. I've been doing this show for seven years and and I deserve it. So I'd like to revisit my conversation with George Packer from June of last year. George is a staff writer for the Atlantic who wrote a fascinating biographical article about Vice President J.D. vance. I'm not a fan of Vance's, but after listening to George, you will come away thinking, yikes. As much as I do not like this guy, he is not to be underestimated. The author, of course, of Hillbilly Elegy, Vance writes about growing up poor with a heroin addicted mom, four years in the Marines, out of high school, including a stint in Iraq as a public affairs officer, from which he emerges disillusioned about the war. Graduates from Ohio State in two and a half years, off to Yale Law School, where he meets Usha and Peter Thiel, who's visiting Yale at the time and who mentors him in Silicon Valley. Vance sets his sights on politics, makes a slight misstep in 2016, calling Donald Trump cultural heroine and America's Hitler, but with Thiel's help, gets Trump's support for his run for the Senate, wins, and becomes a MAGA disciple and the perfect running mate for Trump in 2024. Because, like Trump, he wants to keep us out of foreign wars, at least until recently. Vance, you'll notice, is now Playing it a little coy. He officially supports the war in Iran, but asked recently if he encouraged Trump to go to war. Vance has been saying that he is not sharing what advice he gave Trump, ostensibly out of respect for the president, but I think he's keeping his options open if this thing continues to go south. Not sure if that works, but he is a slippery guy. Anyway. It's a great one, you know, for a change. George Packer, the man who may very well be our next president. I don't think he will be unless Trump doesn't make it till January 2029. Understand, I'm not hoping for that. I want him to enjoy his $400 million plane from Qatar. The Atlantic's George Packer on JD Vance. It is a great one, you know, for a challenge. The talented Mr. Vance is your piece. This is in the magazine, right?

[George Packer]

It's in the print, Atlantic, as well as online. Yeah.

[Al Franken]

It's called the talented Mr. Vance. So if you're looking for it and you don't see it right away online, just search for it and boom, you'll get it. And it's a great piece. This is a complex guy, or maybe he's a very simple guy, which. Who just lies a lot.

[George Packer]

That's a good way to put the core question about Vance.

[Al Franken]

Right. The core question is, you know, either he genuinely realized Trump was helping the working class or sort of cynically betrayed

[George Packer]

his own values for political ambition or something between those. A combination of those. I don't like to oversimplify people, even people in public life and politics, because I just find it boring. And so I was drawn to Vance and wrote about Vance because I think he's interesting and complex and troubling. I don't think he's purely a creature of cynicism. But on the other hand, I don't buy the. I had a policy epiphany on the road to Damascus and realized that tariffs and lower immigration levels were the way to go.

[Al Franken]

And that Donald Trump wasn't America's Hitler.

[George Packer]

And that Donald Trump was not Cultural Heroine or America's Hitler.

[Al Franken]

Right, right. Did he publicly say that?

[George Packer]

Yeah. Cultural Heroin was in an Atlantic article. Of all places. In the summer of 2016, America's Hitler was in a private email that got released by the recipient. But Cultural Heroine is strong and shows his talent with language. He was. He's a good writer.

[Al Franken]

Very talented guy, obviously. Yeah. Hillbilly Elegy was number one New York. Beautifully written. Number one New York Times bestseller.

[George Packer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

And so he's a Very talented guy, and he continues to use that talent, but he's changed.

[George Packer]

He's changed. So it's a long story, a long arc. But the key moment comes in 2016 when two things happen. Vance publishes Hillbilly Elegy, and these two things happen simultaneously. It does. Well, it becomes a very widely read and highly praised book. But it becomes a sensation after election night because suddenly, America needs an explainer, a native informant to tell us, who are these people who just elected Donald Trump? Well, J.D. vance seems to come from the world of many of them.

[Al Franken]

He comes from Middletown, Ohio, which was a steel town, which is failing as he's growing up.

[George Packer]

Exactly. It's got all the. The problems of the deindustrialized heartland, in this case, white heartland, but it's the heartland. It's the working class, and that's Vance's people. But at the same time that he becomes a national spokesman, Donald Trump becomes president. And that's a problem for Vance, because Vance has call Donald Trump cultural heroine. And if you are a Republican as he is and want a career in politics, as he did, you have a real problem. You've dug a bit of a hole for yourself.

[Al Franken]

So this poses our problem, which is, is he real or is he not real?

[George Packer]

Yeah. Because it takes about four years, Al. Four, for Vance to go from the introspective, eloquent, sensitive explainer of his own life, his own people, and of more and more of the working classes as people want to hear from him about the white working class that just elected Trump. It takes four years to get from there to the guy who starts talking about childless cat ladies and then begins making up stories about Haitian immigrants eating pets and just becoming this aggressive, taunting culture warrior who seems to be peddling the same cultural heroine that he said Trump was peddling. And so what happened? That's the. That's our challenge. That's our question. What happened?

[Al Franken]

Well, you kind of review his life in this, and it's pretty interesting. He. After high school, he. He went into the military, went. He enlisted in the Marines.

[George Packer]

Yep.

[Al Franken]

And he goes through Iraq, but he doesn't fight there. He's a. He's a public information guy.

[George Packer]

He's a public affairs.

[Al Franken]

Public affairs.

[George Packer]

Yeah, that's right.

[Al Franken]

So he doesn't see any action, but he's emerges from that very cynical about the war.

[George Packer]

That's what he says. Later, even on his way in, he heard from guys leaving that it was futile that we would go in and take a town and then leave, and the insurgents would come right back. So the classic Sisyphean counterinsurgency effort, that wasn't working.

[Al Franken]

This is a war we should not have been in. I mean, this was under false pretenses. We went in. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, was what Cheney said.

[George Packer]

It's a question. What did J.D. vance think about all that? And the bit of evidence I got was that he didn't question the war when he went. He was a Bush Cheney supporter and a believer that we were spreading democracy and good things to the Middle East. And he came home disillusioned and bitter and feeling as if those Marines he knew who had been injured or died had it had been in the. In a lost cause, in a. In a unnecessary cause. So the experience of a lot of veterans of that war, you and I both talked to a lot of them.

[Al Franken]

Yep.

[George Packer]

Did it necessarily mean he would end up putting a finger in the face of the heroic president of Ukraine and saying, you've never said thank you? And did it mean he would say, I don't care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other? That seemed like a endpoint that didn't have to happen because there are plenty of other Iraq vets who got into politics disillusioned by the war, but not utterly nihilistic about the fate of democracy abroad. Seth Moulton, Jason Crow, Tammy Duckworth, and even some Republicans. Dan Crenshaw. So I think Vance. It was part of that trajectory we were just talking about that landed in the Tucker Carlson camp that led him to take his disillusionment with Iraq and turn it into America first. Hardcore. We have no friends. We have no allies. We're just. We're in it for ourselves.

[Al Franken]

At one point he says, I don't care what happens in Ukraine.

[George Packer]

Yeah. Yeah. He said that to Tucker Carlson, and I'm sure Tucker Carlson was happy to

[Al Franken]

hear it, but I don't understand that at all. I mean, Russia invaded Ukraine. Isn't that a whole different story than what we're talking about?

[George Packer]

You would think he also. Vance also stood up in the Senate when he became senator from Ohio and gave a long speech about why we should cut off all aid to Ukraine at the key moment when aid was on the table. So he played a decisive role in trying to end American aid. He did not succeed at that point, but he seems to be doing a pretty good job right now of putting that imprint on Trump's policy. Why did he say, I don't care about Ukraine? I have this sense, and I can't prove this But I have this sense that who are the kind of people who care about Ukraine? Oh, they're do gooders. They're humanitarians. They tend to be more liberal. They didn't fight in Iraq. They sent other people to fight in Iraq. That's the mentality I'm imagining of America first in the mind of this Iraq vet turned MAGA culture warrior. And Ukraine and Zelensky become like childless cat ladies or parents who trans their kids or Haitian pet eating Haitian immigrants. They become or God forbid, you know, the worst of all the media, the mainstream media. They, Zelensky and Ukraine have joined the enemies of MAGA. And Donald Trump Jr. Uses absolutely vile language to describe Zelensky. I think he called him a tutu wearing con man, scam artist, you know,

[Al Franken]

is the uniform he wears.

[George Packer]

Yeah, I mean it's, it's. There's a kind of animus or hatred that goes way beyond. This is not in America's national interest. It seems more visceral and it feels to me like it comes out of the same place as all the other culture war hatreds which Vance has embraced.

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[Al Franken]

Let's go. Because your piece goes through his life and I find it very interesting. And each step is an interesting way to look at his evolution. After Iraq, he goes to Ohio State. He graduates in two years. So he gets his degree in two years. There's no question this is a very,

[George Packer]

very smart man and hardworking and at

[Al Franken]

that point, intellectually curious, too.

[George Packer]

He's intellectually curious. He's reading all kinds of political philosophy and theology and he's on a mission. He has a escape velocity that's very high because he has gotten out of Middletown, Ohio. He's gotten away from his very troubled and abusive mother. He's escaped the fate of working at the corner store for the rest of his life because he is so smart and so ambitious. And so he writes in hillbilly elegy he felt this incredible optimism, this surge of hope because he had gotten out.

[Al Franken]

I kind of laugh at the moment in his acceptance speech where he says, he points to his mom and says she's been sober for 10 years. You remember that. And she kind of waves and smiles and I'm thinking, she's thinking, yeah, great. I'm the one who was shooting up heroin and hillbilly elegy. Thanks. It is a weird pointing to me.

[George Packer]

Well, it's a weird turn because throughout hillbilly elegy and then his public appearances when the book came out, she's the problem and even the ogre who he had to get away from. Even though he says he loves her, he still cut off communication for a while. And then when he became a politician, she became the feel good story about his mom, which kind of proved his authenticity. He came out of a very hard, even traumatic background. But things are looking good for his family because his mother's sober. And, and yeah. Does she want to be. Have the public know her as the former heroin user?

[Al Franken]

Well, anyway, anytime anyone has gotten sober, that's a big, that's a feel good

[George Packer]

story and it's a great achievement and I just wish it didn't feel quite so instrumental. But what do you want? He's in politics. He's going to use his mother's story, of course.

[Al Franken]

Well, he used it in one way and uses another way, but either. Both are legitimate, I guess. Certainly, actually. Well, so. So he goes to Yale Law School.

[George Packer]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

And meets Usha.

[George Packer]

He meets Usha Chilukuri, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants.

[Al Franken]

Indian immigrants who are in. Where are they? In San Diego.

[George Packer]

They're in San Diego. They're academics. They're successful people. They, you know, her mother, I think, is a dean at UC San Diego. I think her father, I think, is a scientist. She, you know, a lot's expected of her and she delivers. She goes to Yale College. She gets a degree, a master's at Cambridge, England. She gets into Yale Law School. She is a striver and an upwardly mobile meritocrat and an unlikely, in some ways, an unlikely match for this guy.

[Al Franken]

Here's something from, here's something from your piece. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I just love this. This is a quote from a law student, a friend at Yale of dances. I never got the sense that he was worse off because he hadn't gone to Yale or Harvard just because he was so well spoken. That is really what he was at Yale.

[George Packer]

He was many things. And in hillbilly elegy he makes it clear that he felt out of place. He felt like an alien. He didn't know how to use all the tableware at a fancy high school.

[Al Franken]

That's a scene in the book and in the movie.

[George Packer]

And the movie at this recruitment dinner at a fancy restaurant. And there's all these forks and spoons and knives and what are they for? And he has to leave the table and call Usha and she tells him. And it's sort of charming. It's sort of funny to me. It's a little strange. It's a sort of almost sad.

[Al Franken]

Well, you know, here's my, you know, my wife would have said to me, why don't you just look at what other people, how they use their silverware and do what they do?

[George Packer]

Well, you get the feeling that Usha was giving very precise instructions.

[Al Franken]

Yes.

[George Packer]

A lot of, a lot of the time she was, he said, his Yale spirit guide. And what interested Me al was that in our country and culture, there's nothing strange about the daughter of Hindu Indian immigrants being the insider who is the guide to Yale. For the son of many centuries of native born white Christian Americans, Vance is much farther away from Yale than Gushachilicuri because we don't have the old WASP aristocracy. We have this multi ethnic meritocracy that is based on your SAT scores and where you went to college and who you know and whether you know how to use the knife and fork and spoon at your table and if you know how to network at a cocktail party and how to ingratiate yourself at a job interview. And she's his guide to all of that because that's her world, not his. And it tells you something about the unbelievable divide in America between the highly educated and the not so educated and how that is the big class division that Trump exploited and that Vance has embodied. He's both. He's the whole, in some ways, he represents the whole country. And that's getting. Jumping ahead. I think the lost promise, the potential that he never lived up to, he could have really been a unifying figure. Instead, he's been this very divisive figure.

[Al Franken]

Well, being the divisive figure was. I mean, as you say, he is the person most likely to be the next president. I think so he may not be the next president, but he's most likely to be.

[George Packer]

I think that's pretty self evident.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he's the vice president. So he gets out of Yale and he meets Peter Thiel at Yale.

[George Packer]

That's right.

[Al Franken]

And this is a kind of cynical billionaire.

[George Packer]

I don't know that I'd call him cynical. I would call him dark, ominous billionaire, has many big ideas about American decline and the failure of democracy that kind of point toward a more authoritarian system. And he's a brilliant investor, made his money at PayPal, Facebook, Palantir, and becomes a big influence on Vance. He gives a talk at Yale that Vance goes to as a law student. And the talk is about how while you're here cutting each other's throats to get the best jobs that you will then find meaningless and unfulfilling in corporate law. America is declining in a decadent phase. Technology is stuck and no one seems to be aware of it. We're just fighting each other for these elite jobs that are dwindling because we're stagnant. All of this speaks very deeply to Vance because I think at that point he had also begun to feel, what am I here for? Why Am I trying so hard to make it in this world when it doesn't really seem to have a whole lot of value other than just credentials? He continues to make it in that world and to do all the right things. But I think Thiel planted a seed of doubt that paid off when Vance got out of law school, did a couple years of law, and then went out to Silicon Valley to work for Thiel. And that established a relationship that was extremely useful to Vance and to Thiel for the next 10 years.

[Al Franken]

Well, he makes money there, right?

[George Packer]

He makes some money. I don't. Yeah, I think hillbilly elegy probably accounts for most of his wealth, but he makes money, he makes connections. He goes back to Ohio claiming to be doing it in order to give back and reverse the brain drain, but really doesn't do that much. He doesn't do much for that. What he's gone back for is to enter politics. But there's a problem, and the problem is called Donald Trump, because now Vance has a public record of having been very critical of Trump, and he goes back to Ohio and finds out his family are big Trumpers, his community is big Trumpers. Ohio seems to be all behind Trump. How is he going to enter politics? And this is the really interesting point where you ask yourself, how opportunistic is it? How much is there a genuine change? What's it motivated by? Is it pure political ambition? Or maybe there's something else, too, which is resentment of those elites who let him into their world, stamped his passport, but also let him know that they kind of despise those working class people he came from, that he starts telling stories about dinners with CEOs who say stupid, offensive things about working class people. And maybe that resentment and his own, you know, why am I here? What have I been doing all this for? Starts to create a backlash within himself against the very people who raised him up to kind of be a star of the elite world. And that makes it easier to justify, in his own mind, turning to MAGA after calling it cultural heroin.

[Al Franken]

And when does he do that exactly? And how does he do that?

[George Packer]

It takes four years, from 2017 to 2021.

[Al Franken]

He gets elected in 22. Right?

[George Packer]

In 22. But before that, by then, he's jumped in head first.

[Al Franken]

Right.

[George Packer]

But before that, Al, there's a moment right after Trump gets elected where he's in a classic kind of liberal elite setting, the Institute of Politics, David Axelrod's institute at the University of Chicago, and he's talking about hillbilly elegy he's giving his thousandth interview about it and he says, you know, in Trump's rallies, only 5% was offensive, inflammatory stuff. The other 95% was about how what's wrong with your community and what I'm going to do to fix it. Bring back jobs.

[Al Franken]

The offensive stuff was about Mexicans.

[George Packer]

Mexicans and Muslims and immigrants. Yeah. So. And. And elites who are an easier target for bands. So he's already begun to prepare a narrative which is, it actually isn't that bad. It's only 5%, so who cares? When, in fact, of course, it's a lot more than 5%. I'm sure you've listened to some of Trump's rallies. Yep. And not only is it more than 5%, it's 100%. Because even the talk about jobs and making America great is all about making America great without them, because they have made it bad. They are poisoning the body politics. He can't do it without vitriol and demonizing. So there is no distinction between the 5 and the 95, but Vance creates it. And I think it's a very clever way to prepare the ground for saying, actually, Trump's not that bad. And you know what? He's for tariffs, he's against free trade, he wants to close the border and lower immigration and get rid of the illegals. All of that's good for the working class. So I'm actually beginning to think that he's an okay guy. So there's a policy intellectual conversion that starts, there's a rhetorical shift toward Trump. And then in 2021, when he announces he's running for the Senate, there's a total burst of MAGA rhetoric and demonizing, and it goes very far, very fast, so that he's going after all kinds of groups of Americans and non Americans, and he's saying, why should Trump obey the judges and why doesn't he get rid of the entire bureaucracy, et cetera? It's extremist. It sounds more like Peter Thiel and more like Curtis Yarvin and Tucker Carlson. He's gone to the far right, and that feels to me as if he's liberated himself. He doesn't need to be polite. He doesn't need to smile and nod when someone at the Institute of Politics asks him a stupid question. He can be a full throated, angry son of the working class, and he can claim to be doing it in the name of the working class, even though he's really not doing anything for the working class. And neither is Trump. Trump is doing it for the rich and the grifters. But this is the claim my people have been mistreated and I've come into politics to settle scores and here are the enemies. And that I think there's a genuine, authentic liberation for him that's not just cynical and not just opportunistic, but that allows him to at least be part of himself.

[Al Franken]

But he's comfortable swimming in that.

[George Packer]

He is to me. It reminds me of what he describes as hillbilly culture. These are the enemies. Most people are the enemies. The only people I trust are the people close to me, people loyal to me. If you challenge my honor, I'm coming right back at you. I'm going to pick a fight with people I don't like. He does that as vice president. He goes on Twitter and uses profanity to go after his critics. So it's as if the repressed culture of his childhood, which he had to get rid of to make it at Yale, he's now not only is he swimming in it, but he's thriving in it. Because that's the culture of maga. It's the culture that allowed him to get on Trump's radar, to be forgiven by Trump for his offenses, and to be named as Trump's vice president. Anyway, that's my armchair analysis of that change in J.D. vance. It's a little more complicated than just he was a cynic.

[Al Franken]

And if you want to read the piece, you can go to pick up the magazine at your newsstand or go to The Atlantic online.

[George Packer]

TheAtlantic.com

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[George Packer]

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[Al Franken]

Well, is there anything else you want to get into, George?

[George Packer]

I don't know. How, how are you doing these days, Al? I mean, how do you absorb the news? How do you think about.

[Al Franken]

It's terrible.

[George Packer]

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party and the future of the country. In 30 seconds, go.

[Al Franken]

Okay, well, in 30 seconds, I feel like we have to basically just speak out about Trump and I'm not sure who our leader is going to be in the next election. And I don't think we have to know that right now. We've only had like two magical kind of figures, Clinton and Obama. You don't get them very often, but we've won the election without it. That's Biden and 20. And I think right now we have to just, I think Biden, what Biden did really hurt the party. That's more than 30 seconds, I guess

[George Packer]

my question is so a parallel to Vance. Vance would claim he changed policy views. He became a America Firster and an isolationist and an anti trade, pro tariff guy. Okay, people change policy but is that what made Vance a hero to Magda, or is it his willingness to own the libs? And so my question for the Democrats is whether embracing economic populism, moderating social issues that are unpopular, is that the way people win elections these days? Or is it by aligning yourself with a tribe and going to war for it?

[Al Franken]

Well, I mean, the people getting response now are AOC and Bernie.

[George Packer]

Yeah, I guess what I'm getting at is you and I may have lived for a long time at an age when politics and policy and coalitions and all those old fashioned things were the way elections got won. And now the media is different and politicians are different, and Trump seems to have figured out the sweet spot, as hideous as it is, as corrupt as it is.

[Al Franken]

What is that sweet spot? What is that sweet spot?

[George Packer]

It seems to be a kind of continual performance that makes certain people feel okay about the country, even if the facts are otherwise. And his voters, it seemed like in the last election, the, the biggest jump he got in the polls was with voters who were paying no attention. And so do Democrats need to go after voters who are paying no attention? Because Democrats usually kind of like voters who are reading the Atlantic and listening to the Al Franken podcast. So I don't know. It's a mystery.

[Al Franken]

Well, thanks. It's, it's a, it's a great piece and people can get it in the Atlantic.

[George Packer]

Thank you.

[Al Franken]

And get it online.

[George Packer]

Thanks, Al.

[Al Franken]

Well, I, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke, the great Leo Kotki. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next.

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[George Packer]

Listen, today.