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- [00:00]
J.D. Vance
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Sarah Longwell
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J.D. Vance
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- [00:36]
Sarah Longwell
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, and this week we're covering JD Vance's first few months in the vice presidency. We haven't talked about him much yet. Since Vance joined the ticket, it's been clear that he's indicative of the new right populist strain of thinking in the GOP that is a lot more purchased right now than my, you know, John McCain, Mitt Romney wing rip so I want to learn as much as I can about Vance's influence at the moment, the new rights influence more broadly, and what it all means for where the Trump administration is taking us. We're bringing back a former guest who's been a singularly dogged and insightful chronicler of Vance and the new right, Ian Ward, reporter at Politico and Politico magazine. What's up, Ian? Thanks for coming back.
- [01:24]
J.D. Vance
Hey, thanks for having me back.
- [01:26]
Sarah Longwell
So we've been asking about Vance and the groups and getting a lot of feedback from the voters that you were so good on the last show, you knew so much about this, the new right, and our listeners were really interested in it. And I think even now, watching Vance in this role and the obvious question of is this guy Trump's successor, I think opens up new relevance to discussion of the ascendancy of the new right and what that means for our politics. So, so besides the obvious, which is like Ukraine tariffs, what other footprints have the new right had on the second Trump term that our listeners might not grok?
- [02:04]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, I mean, I think tariffs would jump out as an enormous one. I mean, I think it's hard in retrospect even to think back to how remote the possibility of the current tariffs were even during the first term. Right. I mean, Trump the first time around was surrounded by a bunch of economic advisors who were openly free trade, openly skeptical of tariffs. Vance in the Senate was one of the few senators who was sort of vocally pro tariff. And the case that he made for it mattered a lot, too. I mean, you've seen this in the rollout of the tariffs, which is just that there are multiple competing justifications for them, One being that they're sort of a negotiating tool, the other being that they're a way to re industrialize the country. And the possibility that you'd have sweeping tariffs used and the justification offered for them would be that they would help re industrialize the country was like a pipe dream. Right. Eight years ago.
- [02:55]
Sarah Longwell
But that's the one that Vance goes for. It's that image.
- [02:58]
J.D. Vance
And, you know, different people within the White House use different ones, but that's the one he chooses. And I mean, the Overton window on that has been shifted tremendously. And then I think immigration too, I mean, the kind of economic case for immigration restriction, the idea that the influx of cheap labor has sort of undermined the. The white working class. Again, not idea that was getting a ton of purchase during the first Trump administration. And then the whole vibe shift idea. Right. The idea that this MAGA revolution has to reach into the cultural sphere. It can't just end with policy. It has to sort of seize the relevant institutions of cultural power, be they the Kennedy center or Hollywood or whatever.
- [03:39]
Sarah Longwell
Colleges and universities.
- [03:41]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. You know, that's an idea that comes straight out of the New Right as well. So, you know, I mean, those are three, I think it's been like tremendously expansive. Vance, it. But those are three that jump out to me off the bat.
- [03:50]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. And I guess just on the Ukraine front, J.D. vance, he sort of internalized a lot of America first stuff as nothing to immigrants, nothing to Ukraine. It's about kind of an isolationism. But I understand he's anti neocon, which is funny actually, because that's who he used to be. But leaving that aside, Trump's taken it so far in the pro Russia direction. Is that a New Right tenet? Is that something where they sort of feel like, yes, let's be friends with all the world's dictators and strongmen while we crap on our European and Canadian allies.
- [04:28]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. I mean, I think it can be two separate conversations that are sometimes conflated in a way that's a little bit confusing. One is the foreign policy conversation, which, you know, I think Vance has articulated this kind of. He calls it restraint or realist framework, you know, where foreign policy decisions should be based on. On calculations of U.S. interest and so on. And then there's a separate conversation which is a sort of the future of liberalism. Right. And these are a group of people who are very skeptical that liberalism can survive and persist. And the question from that is, what comes after liberalism? And there is an effort to look abroad at authoritarian or autocratic leaders as sort of models for a type of post liberal governance. Right. And that's where you see them looking to people like Viktor Orban or Bukele in El Salvador or in some respects, Putin as a kind of model of this post liberal governance. It's a valid critique that they're taking their foreign policy cues from Putin. I think the slightly more measured thing would be that they're looking at Putin as a kind of model of a post liberal leader, and they have a sort of admiration for the Russian model and the foreign policy isn't directly tied to that. But again, that sort of depends on your vantage point on the whole thing.
- [05:44]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. That is wild stuff, though. Okay. You wrote a piece back in January called the Spiritual Case for Greenland. This is about how Trump's whole, like, Greenland shtick represents the revival of a frontier mentality for those on the New Right. Walk us through that. Because I will say one of the great ironies or contradictions is in performative maga, which is no dumb wars. No more sending people. And advance got into it with my friend Bill Crystal recently, trying to hit him over the idea of neoconservatism being part of dumb wars. And yet he has become sort of the advance man for are we going to take over Greenland? And Obviously Canada, the 51st state? How does the New Right sort of square those things?
- [06:30]
J.D. Vance
I mean, the argument, which you don't have to give a ton of credibility to, I think it's worth being skeptical towards it, is that they don't want to waste American lives on conflicts that don't serve U.S. interests. Right. It's not like anti war. Right. They're not opposed to war carte blanche. They're opposed to wars that they think don't, like, advance U.S. interests directly. I mean, the pro war side of the argument is that war is sort of spiritually fortifying. This is what I laid out in that piece. Like, American men have grown soft and flabby because they haven't fought a serious ground war since Vietnam. You know, and the wars in the Middle east were sort of like bizarre interludes. But, you know, men need to fight. That's part of men's calling, is to defend their homeland and go conquer new frontiers. Like, the way to spiritually reinvigorate men and solve the kind of crisis of masculinity is to, like, go invade Greenland or launch an invasion of Mexico. That that would be spiritually fortifying somehow, and that those wars need to be in the interests of the US Right. Like to go conquer the cartels, to cut off fentanyl or go conquer Greenland because it allows us pass it to the Arctic and has critical minerals and all these things.
- [07:40]
Sarah Longwell
So is this what we're doing? We're putting our boys on boats to Greenland and also like, how many of them will it take to actually conquer Greenland?
- [07:49]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, I mean, I don't know how seriously to take these things. I mean, the argument that the US should take Greenland. Yeah, I think they're quite serious about that. But you know, the people who offer kind of spiritual justification for that. I haven't heard Vance make that argument. That's just kind of like new right intellectuals who are thinking in these terms.
- [08:05]
Sarah Longwell
But he's influenced by the new right intellectuals. I mean, he does sort of swim in that intellectual pool.
- [08:11]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. It's part and parcel with, like the fascination with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It's not a coincidence that like Mark Zuckerberg and Joe Rogan and a bunch of these guys on the right are into Jiu jitsu because they see it as a kind of expression of this masculine, martial spirit. Right. Like hand to hand, compact actually does something necessary and important. And like, if you extrapolate that to a foreign policy, it's very pugilistic.
- [08:36]
Sarah Longwell
So I actually would buy to some degree that modern society is leaving men somewhat aimless. I'm not sure that invading Greenland is the solution or Canada. If we just have to invade people so that men can be okay, there are other places one could do it. And also this whole thing, stupid. We fight with drones anyway. Where are we going to have a big ground war?
- [08:58]
J.D. Vance
Sure, it's a little nostalgic. Yeah.
- [09:00]
Sarah Longwell
Nostalgic for bloody what? For everybody killing each other. I don't know. You're right. I'm not going to take this one that seriously. But this is part of the problem with the New Right. It's an id, not a set of policy prescriptions or like a serious governing philosophy or anything else. But anyway, I want to get to the groups we're going to cover a couple different groups of voters today, both of which Vance needs to do well with to have a political future. And actually, before I jump into this, let me ask you really quickly. What do you think Vance wants his political future to be? Like, is it a fait accompli that this guy wants to be the next President of the United States? Like he is Trump's successor?
- [09:39]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, I mean, I think that's sort of beyond question at this point. I think the question is what type of political leader does he want to be and what's the shape of the coalition he imagines governing. I think one of the really interesting things he said to me when I interviewed him in 2023, beginning of 2024, I asked him who he sort of admired and modeled himself after as a political leader. And I was sort of expecting, you know, like an Abraham Lincoln answer or something from the American tradition. But he told me Charles de Gaulle, which I thought was super interesting and very fascinating. And he told me he'd been reading a bunch about the post war history of France and all this. And I asked him like, why de Gaulle? And he said ironically that he sees himself as a kind of a unifier in the de Gaulle tradition. He said he admired de Gaulle's cultural conservatism and also the way he positioned France in the kind of post war Atlanticist alliance with a little bit of independence from that alliance.
- [10:35]
Sarah Longwell
That is wild, actually, when you think about who Vance is. This is a guy who has been casual about blowing up our relationships with some of our closest allies.
- [10:46]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, well, I think he admires that de Gaulle kept the Atlanticist thing a little bit of arm's length and managed to keep France from de industrializing at the same rate as some of the other Western European countries. But there's a lot of talk on the new right of building this sort of 60, 40, 70, 30 governing coalition where they went over a big bulk of the American middle and then the traditional right voting constituencies. So they're able to build this durable governing coalition that covers like 70% of the electorate. He aspires to build that coalition. I wrote a piece a couple years ago about sort of revisionist takes on Richard Nixon on the right and looking to Nixon as a kind of proto figure of the new right. And I mean, we forget this because Nixon blew up so spectacularly in Watergate, but Nixon won a massive electoral majority in 72 based on this sort of foreign policy savvy and also the culture war appeal to the middle American conservatives. And I think Van sort of sees himself in that tradition. I really think he wants to be a kind of Nixonian 70, 30 coalition builder. I think the irony is that perhaps the things he's had to do to position himself in Trump world undermined his ability to be that type of unifying figure. Right. Like, I mean, as the clips show, he's proved to be very divisive. But I think like in his heart he aspires to be this kind of the creator of the 70, 30 conservative, durable governing majority. I don't know if that'll be possible, but that's my sense of it.
- [12:24]
Sarah Longwell
Okay, well, let's get into some of the people who would need to be part of that 70% coalition. We've been asking a lot of different types of groups about Vance, and so we're going to play a bunch of them. But these first ones are going to be the 2024 Trump voters who disapprove of Trump at the moment. We talked with these folks for the Dave Weigel pod we did last week, but this is specifically the section where they talked about Vance. So these people who voted for Trump but aren't feeling great about him at the moment, let's listen. He's just a creepy little man. The comments he had to say about women prior to his election, I don't understand. I think my problem with the right is there being so much like the world I came from, which is the repressive Middle Eastern world that is so stuck on religion and gender roles. It just kills me. So I don't know, I think the commentary that comes out of his mouth about those things and I forget the specifics, but quite insulting, I think, just all of that. He doesn't seem like, I don't know, he doesn't represent the whole country. Right. He's too conservative for me, honestly.
- [13:30]
J.D. Vance
He's just like very awkward. I remember seeing clips of him saying like, I will never be a Trump supporter and now he's his vp, which tells a lot about his character. Very flip floppy. Doesn't really stay true to his words. So that kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
- [13:45]
Sarah Longwell
When, when they were having like the.
- [13:47]
J.D. Vance
Vice president debates, I thought he was very well spoken.
- [13:51]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, he was calm, he was level headed. And then once he got in here.
- [13:55]
J.D. Vance
He'S kind of changed. And he just seems like he's Trump's little yes man and that he don't.
- [14:01]
Sarah Longwell
Really have his own opinion.
- [14:02]
J.D. Vance
He just kind of whatever they say.
- [14:04]
Sarah Longwell
He'S going to go, go with and do. So my opinions kind of went downhill.
- [14:08]
J.D. Vance
On him since they got elected.
- [14:11]
Sarah Longwell
I'm glad someone brought up the vice presidential debates. Like, I mean, compared to Tim Waltz, I was like, oh, which one's worse, right? As I was like, okay, fine.
- [14:20]
J.D. Vance
You know, I was like, if he's.
- [14:22]
Sarah Longwell
On the same ticket, then fine, so be it. But yes, I feel like he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. He flip flops. I thought he made a good speech at the un like, right when the administration took over and Then it sort of just got a little bit strange. Again, very beholden to whoever funds him, and I feel like he's just ready to pounce. If anything, God forbid, should happen to the president, I feel like it would not be great for him to step into that role. I mean, I feel that Elon Musk is more of a vice president, I guess. I mean, not that we want him to be, but it seems like the focus is more on Elon than it is him being the vice president. I mean, that's just how I feel. So I honestly haven't followed him too much to get much more of an idea. As someone else said, I think that Elon Musk is more of a vice president than he is. It shouldn't be that way, but that's how it is. I think he's kind of ineffective. He talks too much, does too little. I just think he talks a lot, and he goes with whatever benefits him. So whatever Trump says, he's going to agree with. If Trump says the opposite, he's going to agree with. He just has to keep himself up there by agreeing with whatever anyone says. During the debates, he was very articulate, very charming, in my opinion. Then things started switching, changing as time went on. I didn't like when President Zelensky was there and President Trump and Vice President Vance kind of sandbagged Mr. Zelinsky. I found that very distasteful, and that.
- [15:57]
J.D. Vance
Turned me off big time.
- [15:58]
Sarah Longwell
He was very unprofessional. So this group really ripped him like there were other groups, and we'll listen to them where, you know, people have a more favorable thing on him. But I can't quite tell how much of it is that Vance gives off regular politician vibes, which voters are, like, very attuned to, especially on the right. It's one of Trump's big assets that they don't view him as a regular politician. They also view Trump as somebody who kind of transcends partisan politics, whereas they see Vance as very conservative, which, because of the terms that people throw around, like far right or very conservative, that is not how you'd actually describe Trump. Trump is not that at all. And so people tend to think of Trump as sort of a social moderate in a way that Vance. They don't give him that credit. But what do you make of his sort of first few months here as vice president? Vice president's a terrible job, but it seems like it's not helping him much. People either didn't like him from the jump, or they liked him and have subsequently stopped liking him during his vice presidency.
- [17:02]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. I mean, I think the gamble he's made is that his path forward runs through subordinating himself to Trump. Right. And I think you see this in his rhetoric very clearly, that he doesn't want to break in any respect from Trump. Like, the guy who said he's a bit of a. Of a yes man is picking up on something real, which is, I just think he premises so many of his statements with the view of the president is. Or the president believes, even when he's sort of ventriloquizing what he actually believes. And that's like a rational political instinct. Right. You don't want to break with the president. But it was sort of interesting to listen to the comments because you hear people dinging him for that. Right. That he's not independent, he's not standing up, he's sort of sycophantic. Trump never had to do this. Right. Trump didn't come up through the curses and norm of Republican politics, so he never had to be in a subordinate position. Voters who see in Vance do what vice presidents have to do, which is sort of kowtow to the president and fall in line, and, yeah, that's coded as kind of conventional political behavior. I think the gamble might be that once Trump is out of the picture, he can sort of distinguish himself and voters will kind of forget their initial impressions of him as a bit of a yes man. But it was notable to me that, like, several of the people you talked to criticized him for not distinguishing himself enough. Because you'd think, you know, there's such a cult of personality around Trump, you'd think Trump voters would like someone who kind of marches to the beat of Trump's drum, but clearly they don't like that. So that was at least notable to me. Yeah.
- [18:35]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, sometimes it's tough when I listen to voters, when they give a reason for something, I wonder how much of it is, like, I just don't like this person and I need to give a reason why versus like, is that the real reason? Since I've been asking people about J.D. vance, there are a lot of people who just, at a gut level, do not like him, and they don't like him in a way that where, like, people either hate Trump, they can still accommodate it because of his policies, or they sort of, like, they know they have to say they don't like him, or they know they have to say he's bad on a bunch of things, they disagree with a bunch of things, but deep down they think he's kind of funny, and they like watching him mess with everyone. And so, like, they do sort of like him. Whereas with JD Vance, what I read off of a lot of voters is just, ugh, I don't like this guy. He sucks.
- [19:22]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. I heard this from a bunch of people who know Vance during the campaign, which is in the first couple of weeks that they were deploying him, there was, like, despondency among people who knew him. Like, they are misusing him. Right. Like, they have not understood where his political strengths lie. Right. Like, I wrote this in a column when he was picked. Like, anger and, like, righteous indignation does not come easily to him on the stump. He sort of struggles to summon up this kind of, like, Trumpian anger. Right. He's just not good at it. And it comes across.
- [19:54]
Sarah Longwell
Cringe. He's cringe.
- [19:55]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. It comes across as very forced. And he is good at sort of explaining Trump's policies in a way that sound. Make them sound not crazy and making them sound coherent and rational. And they weren't deploying him to do that, really, until the debate. And you heard some of this from people you talked to. The debate really showed a side of him that the campaign hadn't capitalized on before, and then they used him more in that respect after that. And that's how they've deployed him in the early days of the administration, sending him to Munich, sending him to various Silicon Valley conferences to kind of stitch the whole policy agenda into a coherent thing. But, you know, the fact that they deployed him as kind of attack dog in the first days of the campaign, I think, like, rubbed a lot of voters the wrong way. And I was hearing a lot of consternation from conservatives who know him that, like, this is a very bad introduction for him because they're misdeploying him. Pretty much, yeah.
- [20:46]
Sarah Longwell
That makes a ton of sense, actually. All right, folks, quick timeout. If you've ever tried streaming a game from abroad only to get hit with the dreaded not available in your region screen, you know how frustrating that can be. But there is a workaround. Surfshark vpn. If you're tired of feeling like you're being followed around the web, Surfshark VPNs got you. It masks your real IP address, and by doing this, it hides your online activity, encrypts your data, and blocks creepy trackers. I felt so much safer online since I started using it. Plus, when I travel or pretend I am to get better streaming options, I. I just change my virtual Location boom. I'm watching shows from around the world. Like I'm sitting on my couch back home. And guess what? One subscription covers unlimited devices. Your phone, your laptop, your tablet, your smart tv. Surfshark's got them all covered. You can check out surfshark Alert too. It warns you if your email or passwords are part of a data breach. It's like a digital immune system for your identity. Secure your privacy with Surfshark. Go to surfshark.com the focus group or use code the focus group for four extra months of Surfshark. That's surfshark.com the focus Group or code the focus group for four extra Months. The URL is also in the show notes. Go check them out. And they have a risk free 30 day money back guarantee. So no risk, just secure browsing. So one of the things that is my least favorite personally about JD Vance is his comfort with ignoring court orders. And that was his advice to Trump when he was a Senate candidate back in 2021, just ignore the courts. And now that the administration is stonewalling the Supreme Court and may give them, you know, just the full on middle finger eventually. He's one of the big proponents of that. Like, why should we do that? He shit posts about it on Twitter and gets in fights with like Jon Favreau or Tim Miller. And so like the authoritarian impulses do feel like one of his fingerprints on the administration to me. And you've written about it like, what's his intellectual justification for ignoring the courts?
- [23:02]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, I got this out of him. I'm sort of proud of this as a reporting accomplishment. Back when I interviewed him in 2023, I asked him just to explain this to me, someone saying you should ignore the courts as a constitutional cris. He says what the real constitutional crisis is is the court stepping in and usurping the prerogative of the executive. Right. So the example he gave was with fire and civil servants. And he says if the court steps in and says the chief executive can't control the executive branch, that means personnel and hiring and fire and all that. He says that's the constitutional crisis, which is you have a breach of the separation of powers. And I'm not encouraging a constitutional crisis by counseling the executive to ignore the courts. I'm recognizing a constitutional crisis that's already happening. That's his justification for it.
- [23:53]
Sarah Longwell
Well, he is a Yale trained lawyer and that sounds insane. I think this. And therefore I can ignore the courts.
- [24:02]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, I mean, I think there is a long tradition in the conservative legal Movement of challenging, like, these independent agencies. Right. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you know, the Fed, if you go back further. And I think he's, like, appealing to that tradition of argument. This is the unitary executive theory, just that the executive should have total authority over any entity within the executive branch.
- [24:29]
Sarah Longwell
The courts can't step in and stop him. That has been the function of the courts. This is sort of basic U.S. civics, checks and balances. There are three branches of government. You know, you saw this in some of the judicial opinions that have come down, that even for those who would say that they have a robust view of executive power, that simply ignoring the courts leads to a lawless society, which I'm sure J.D. vance understands.
- [24:54]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. I mean, they haven't said it in these terms, but, you know, I think they're challenging the kind of Marbury Madison consensus on this thing. Right. I mean, like, the foundation of judicial review is up for grabs. Right. I think they think it's fair game. I think he understands the implications of his argument. He's just, like, willing to go there, right?
- [25:12]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Okay. You also interviewed Curtis Yarvin a few months ago, the New Right blogger who's pretty down on the whole, like, democracy thing that we do here.
- [25:21]
J.D. Vance
Down as in not for. Not down as in down with. But.
- [25:24]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not down with.
- [25:25]
J.D. Vance
Not down with. Yeah.
- [25:27]
Sarah Longwell
He's not getting down with democracy. He is. He's against this little project of ours. So walk us through the basics of his view and what influence, if you think he has any. But I feel like he does advance in the New Right.
- [25:41]
J.D. Vance
It's very complicated. But in short, and I apologize for the. The neo monarchists out there for whom I'm simplifying their arguments massively, but basically his argument is that democracy ultimately denigrates into oligarchy, and that oligarchy has to be replaced by monarchy, and that monarchy then sort of decays into democracy, but that democracy is basically a transitional tool. Like, regimes shouldn't aspire to be democratic. They should use democracy to transition between oligarchy and monarchy, and that monarchy is basically the most efficient form of government. You know, democracy is sort of unwieldy. It's slow, it's difficult to respond to crises democratically. And, you know, he explicitly looks towards the corporate world as an example of how this works. You know, he says, like, your iPhone wasn't made by a democracy, was made by a monarchy. Like, Tim Cook is the monarch of Apple. And that's why they're able to create transformative technologies, because they're not encumbered by the kind of bureaucratic managerialism of democracy. It's a whole lot deeper than that. But that's the kind of quick gloss on it.
- [26:47]
Sarah Longwell
It is. And I just want to, for listeners who are like, I don't understand what is this New Right about? This whole idea of a monarchical system is actually quite important. Important like there is a real strain on the New Right. And listen, it goes directly to the politics of the day. Why does Donald Trump like mbs? Why does he like the Saudis? Why does he like autocrats? Why does he like Putin? Trump doesn't want to be a democratic president, as my friend JB Last says, he wants to be a king. And everything sort of layers up into that. The unified executive theory is about giving the executive much, much more power. And you're right, there has always been a strain of this on the right, although there has also been a counter strain on the right. That is no executive should have too much power. It is a unified theory, but not a uniform position on the right. That that is a good thing. It has always been controversial. Anyway, the point is, is that this idea of Trump as king not only flatters and appeals to Trump, but it is part of a coherent idea that is coming out of the New Right that does just veer much more monarchical.
- [27:58]
J.D. Vance
The way I think about it more and more is sort of the organizing question of the right is what comes after liberalism. Right? Like they're thinking explicitly in these terms. A liberal project dating back to whenever you want to date it, to the Enlightenment or the founding of the United States or whatever is like running on fumes. They think it is not going to survive. And there is a systematic effort to think about what comes next. Right? And Yarvin is offering one alternative, which is that democracy is effectively over already. We have a kind of massed oligarchy. And the thing mechanically almost, he's sort of a materialist, like he's almost a kind of inverted Marxist. Like it sort of happens because of these forces that are beyond human control. Just the way that regimes operate is that this thing will decay into a monarchy. His specific twist on it is that it's a monarchy styled after tech startups, like in tech CEOs. Right. You know, you have other thinkers on the right who are proposing different visions of a post liberal future that aren't like monarchies styled on tech startups. But that's the specific flavor of Yarvin's neo reactionaryism is that you have to have a kind of national CEO, he's called it. Who runs the country like a CEO runs a company.
- [29:11]
Sarah Longwell
And does Vance ascribe to this or does he find purchase in this idea?
- [29:17]
J.D. Vance
I wrote a piece after Vance was chosen, running through some of his intellectual influences. I'd encourage your listeners to go look at that because he's cited Yarvin, like he said he's read Yarvin's work, but he cites a lot of conservative intellectuals who don't necessarily agree with each other. He cited Curtis Yarvin and he's also cited Patrick Deneen. Those are two people who do not share a vision of the conservative future. What they share is an antagonism towards liberalism and, and a belief that it's ending. But you can't square the vision of what someone like Rod Dreher, who Vance decided, or Patrick Deneen. You can't square that with a Yarvonite future. So it's sort of hard to say with precision what Vance believes. Beyond that, he's looking explicitly towards post liberal visions of the future. But, I mean, you see Yarvin's ideas cashing out in things like Doge. Right. Yarvin had an idea retire all government employees that he introduced almost a decade ago, I think, if not more. There was a great piece of reporting in the Washington Post talking to some people close to Doge who said, you know, yeah, like we're following the kind of Yarvan Knight playbook. So it's hard to say with precision what Vance believes. But yeah, I mean, certainly Yarvin's ideas are in the mix there.
- [30:29]
Sarah Longwell
Sure.
- [30:31]
J.D. Vance
Packages by Expedia. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights, hotels and hammocks for less.
- [30:42]
Sarah Longwell
Expedia made to travel.
- [30:45]
J.D. Vance
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Sarah Longwell
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- [31:02]
Sarah Longwell
All right, I want to switch gears to the Biden Trump voters that we've talked to people who voted for Biden in 2020, Trump in 2024. We've talked to a lot of those types of voters over the last few months, and the reviews have been more mixed about J.D. mansk than the across the board negativity we just heard. These are people who went Biden Trump and those were people who went Trump. Those were Trumpers the first time. They were just frustrated with Trump's first 110 days and they were super negative. But the Biden to Trump voters, they were still very mixed, but many of them had positive things to say. Let's listen.
- [31:43]
J.D. Vance
He's doing exactly what the Vice President should be doing.
- [31:46]
Sarah Longwell
Trump sends him, go over here, talk to this guy, do this, whatever. He hasn't really signed him a real job as of yet, whereas Biden is signed Kamala Harris the border. And we've seen how that went.
- [31:58]
J.D. Vance
Right.
- [31:58]
Sarah Longwell
So I guess he could get an.
- [32:00]
J.D. Vance
A if they assign a mo job.
- [32:01]
Sarah Longwell
But as of right now, he's just basically telling them, go, talk to this guy, do this, take this hand, go to Greenland, go here. He's been doing what you're supposed to.
- [32:09]
J.D. Vance
Do as a quote unquote, right hand man. Well, I'm glad that they chose somebody that's actually a millennial vice president. That was a welcome change.
- [32:19]
Sarah Longwell
He seems to have dealt with a.
- [32:22]
J.D. Vance
Lot of adversity concern. His mom was addicted to narcotics when he was growing up. And he's pretty articulate. I think that's also what helped Trump win independence, because I watched the News Nation Town hall with him a couple of weeks before the election. He was pretty on point.
- [32:44]
Sarah Longwell
I think that he is so kind. I think that he's beautiful with his family. I like his background story. It's very similar to my own. He understands what America is sometimes and he wants to do better and help be better. And he worked to make himself better and give himself a better future. So I really like him. He's extremely articulate. He is very poised. He isn't just a talking head who just spouts off the same ideas over and over again. He actively listens to people when they're asking him questions. And also when he's been kind of attacked, his way of debating is always very intelligent. I feel like he knows what he's talking about. He doesn't go into any sort of meeting without already knowing how to approach a situation. He's a lot more level headed than Trump is. So that's kind of a nice thing. But I do believe that he believes in the same things about making America great again as Trump does, but he does it on much more, if I were to say, professional level. I just, I like his demeanor. He seems down to earth. I watched a movie that they had out about him and he seemed just like a small town boy who, you know, had it rough, wasn't born into politics, which I like. I like the way he speaks. I mean, that's about it. I mean, he's the Vice President, so I mean, there's only so much, I guess, he's going to do in the.
- [34:16]
J.D. Vance
Four years towards the end, both he and Trump went on a lot of podcasts and they did a lot of long format just having conversations. And I don't remember every detail about his life, but he just seemed genuine. And that's a lot of the reason that I voted the way I did is because I think that authenticity is important. Obviously, the signal thing, he was involved in that. And a lot of the messages were him talking about, you know, bailing out Europe or whatnot. And that spoke to his character. It was in line with what he says in public, was what he was saying in private. And when Zelensky was in the office and they had that spat, he stood up. He was patriotic. America first. Come in here with respect. You know, some people thought that was, you know, kind of scary, but I was like, not coming to the White House asking for a favor.
- [35:07]
Sarah Longwell
Show some respect.
- [35:08]
J.D. Vance
I appreciate him speaking up and saying that.
- [35:12]
Sarah Longwell
And, you know, he's, he's been totally involved. And that's totally unlike a lot of vice presidents that you don't ever see them do hardly anything. Like Kamala Harris, you know, I mean, I'm sure she's a nice person and everything, but I think she was an ineffective leader. But I think J.D. vance has what it takes.
- [35:31]
J.D. Vance
He's kind of overshadowed, but I think that's to be expected. But I feel like he's. He's definitely being poised to be like the next candidate. So I'm curious to see in the coming years how he's going to kind of differentiate himself or is he just going to continue to ride the Trump's coattails and how that plays out. So I think he'll play a bigger role in the future. I do like the guy. I think he's relatable. He's young, which is nice, and I like him. But, yeah, I'd have to give him a B. B minus.
- [35:58]
Sarah Longwell
Okay. So one of the things we kind of touched on this before that I think is under discussed about Vance is that his Yale law pedigree allows him to speak the language of elites and be comfortable defending Trump on say like a New York Times podcast in a way that Trump himself and many Republican electeds are not comfortable, Is Vance's ability to do that kind of code switching, or if you're Tim Walls code talking, is his ability to do that? Is that what the administration wants from him? And also, like, do you feel like his ability to code switch is part of his appeal?
- [36:35]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, I mean, I think you see that in how they've deployed him, right? Like, there's a reason he's at Munich and not Trump, and there's a reason he's at the A16Z conference. Marc Andreessen's venture capital firm has a conference in Washington a couple months ago, and they sent Vance, right? Like, there's a reason he gave New York Times interviews. He goes on the podcasts, Right.
- [36:54]
Sarah Longwell
He is visible for a vice president. I mean, this is sort of more the question is not just how they're deploying it, but the fact that they're using him so much in a way that is quite a contrast with what you saw out of Kamala Harris in the beginning.
- [37:05]
J.D. Vance
In foreign policy, especially foreign policy traditionally, is not arena where vice presidents thrive or are even allowed to be deployed because it's sort of seen as upstaging the president. But, you know, Vance has a foreign policy pedigree. It was a thing that really distinguished him in the Senate. He's got complicated ideas about it. So the fact that they're deploying him in foreign policy context, like they sent him to Munich, like, within two months, that was a vote of enormous confidence, I think. Actually, when I interviewed Curtis Yarvin, he said a really interesting thing to me, which I think is helpful for making sense of how Vance is deployed, which is Vance, I think, has a belief, and there's certainly a belief on the New Right that people like you and I have a kind of spiritual or emotional or psychological investment in the current order, right? Like, we identify with the prerogatives of liberalism. It gives us a kind of way of making sense of ourselves, our role in the world, like how we should live our lives. So that watching liberalism as a political order decay is, like, personally difficult, right? It's like, disorienting. It feels tumultuous. It feels like not only is the world falling apart, like our own self understanding is crumbling, and that's, like, disconcerting and agitates us, right? Like, we get very upset when we talk about it. And the way that. That Yarvin described Vance's role is. He called it disenchantment, right? Like, he thinks that Vance can go into rooms with elites like you and I and convince us that the end of liberalism, like, isn't a scary thing, right? Like, there's a future beyond it that, like, we can survive in, like, we can live in that can help us make sense of the world. Like, we don't need to be so upset and so worried that the liberal order is coming to an end. So he can like facilitate this kind of disenchantment and make everyone sort of calm down about the end of the liberal order. Vance, to be clear, has not said this himself. That's how outsiders are viewing his role. But I think that makes sense in how they deploy him. Like, he's good at making the end of the liberal world seem like a thing that's not crazy and frightening to people who feel like, super invested in its maintenance.
- [39:12]
Sarah Longwell
Well, I will cop to being super invested in its maintenance and that feeling like the post World War II order has been quite good for humanity in general. We don't have to get into all of that, but I'm still a neoliberalism for the win over here.
- [39:27]
J.D. Vance
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Sarah Longwell
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J.D. Vance
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- [40:14]
Sarah Longwell
So we did talk to plenty of Biden to Trump voters, though, because this is I think this spans about six groups. Not all the Biden to Trump voters sounded like that first group. I tweeted something about this that was kind of a stray take as I was listening to all the voters. My broader theory of politics right now, which it used to be axiomatic that politics was downstream from culture. And I think now that culture and politics are very much, if not totally fused. They overlap much more than they used to. And that some of the evidence of that is the fact that the current president and the current vice president both had previous lives in which they were major. Trump was in everybody's homes. You know, during the Apprentice. I remember early on asking people in focus groups if they'd watched the Apprentice, and lots of Trump voters had. I had never seen the show. Wasn't for me. But that is where his enduring Persona of this carefully curated businessman was sort of formed, was in people's living rooms more than a decade ago when he was firing Gilbert Gottfried or whatever. And J.D. vance. You know, you forget he had a whole moment with his book and it was actually an elite moment because he was a decoder of what was happening in Trump country. But then they also made a movie about it, like, Glenn Close was in it and Amy Adams. It was a big movie. And so lots of people know J.D. vance's story. When I was listening to the people who like him, I was interested in how many people sort of mentioned that as the route by which they felt like they knew him and could gauge his authenticity. Because I think for people who come to him cold, they don't find him authentic. But if you can see him through the lens of his story, you get people who do then appreciate him more.
- [41:54]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, there were some funny videos going around when he was picked as VP of, like, people in their living room scrolling through Netflix and the movie went back on Netflix when he was picked. And it was people realizing that the guy in the movie was the same guy who was vice president now. And they were all sort of incredulous, like, they couldn't believe, oh, it must be a different J.D. vance. You know, which I think speaks a little bit to the gap in his perception. But, yeah, I mean, I think it's an enduring American fascination with celebrity, which is just if you're on the tv, you have this kind of mystical aura and a kind of authority that's very hard to shake.
- [42:28]
Sarah Longwell
I think that's part of it. I also think it makes you better at doing the job now in this media environment that we're in. I mean, you even hear the people saying, like, we went on all those long form podcasts and what they meant was, like, they were everywhere. I don't know. I kept seeing him and he was willing to talk to everybody, which really did stand in contrast to how they deployed or didn't deploy. Biden, Harris and Walls, like, everybody on that side said, like, no, we're going to keep things scripted. We are not going to go on. That is where he is, like Trump, his willingness to just sit down anybody and like, BS for an hour, which is what you have to be able to do now.
- [43:05]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. I'll just single out one more aspect of his biography, which is often forgotten, which is actually featured in Hillbilly Elegy, which is when he was a Marine, he was a public affairs officer. He was a PR flack for the military. Like, his job was to interface with journalists and to explain the war in Iraq and, like, tell the stories of people who were fighting over there. And he says, like, this was the first time he felt a sense of competence in his life. Right. Like, he grew up feeling like, very incompetent. And the first time he felt like a sense of self possession was when he was a PR flack in the Army. Right. That's in his comfort zone, like interacting with the media, interacting with kind of normal people and interfacing with them. I just think it's like an enduring part of his biography. So it is very interesting.
- [43:47]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. All right, so let's listen to the voters who are Biden to Trump voters. These are still Trump voters, but they're the swingier ones. And how they talk about J.D. vance because they were much more meh.
- [44:02]
J.D. Vance
On him as a vice president. He is so in a shadow.
- [44:06]
Sarah Longwell
And when you take the Trump aura, you can't see him.
- [44:11]
J.D. Vance
He's invisible. So he's trying.
- [44:13]
Sarah Longwell
But again, he's like every other.
- [44:14]
J.D. Vance
I mean, Pence didn't stand out until it was June 6th.
- [44:17]
Sarah Longwell
I mean, they're there, they're partially on a plate.
- [44:20]
J.D. Vance
He hasn't jumped into anything other than he's the one that is also shaking the saber. But you know, he's just a puppet. I don't think he stood for anything yet that he's come out for. And, and he flip flop before he actually got on the ticket, he wasn't as religious and he was against Trump and then all of a sudden he saw God and the light and now he is Mr. Trump 100% and he's religion and women should have babies and stay at home and okay, dude, but he's, he's fully engrossed in the current ticket, but I think he's just a puppet. I've just heard bad things about him and, and please don't ask me to express what I've heard because I don't remember. Just all of my friends don't like him and, and I just got bad reviews for him. But I'm not super informed on it. So I study up on him. If he was up for election, I.
- [45:18]
Sarah Longwell
Give him a C like everyone else is saying. Like I'm not really sure what he's doing. Like he's doing what he's supposed to according to Trump. I do like that he always, you know, has Trump's back. The Zelinsky interview, I didn't love that, like how he talked to him. So he's just kind of middle of the road for me. I gave him a B because it's, it's more of a B for the administration, I guess because he's just blends into the administration. He doesn't really stand out. So I can't really Give him an A, because I don't know he's not going above and beyond. Like, I'm going to give an A to someone who's really standing out and going above and beyond. So that's why I can only give him a B just to. He's blending in with the administration. I just don't know anything about him.
- [46:09]
J.D. Vance
I guess I don't really dislike him.
- [46:11]
Sarah Longwell
I just don't have any idea who he is.
- [46:14]
J.D. Vance
I think during, like, the campaign, he was more, like, outspoken and more stable.
- [46:18]
Sarah Longwell
So it was like if Trump was.
- [46:19]
J.D. Vance
Like, low, you know, Trump.
- [46:21]
Sarah Longwell
And then I guess, like, that was like, a way of balancing him out.
- [46:25]
J.D. Vance
But I don't know what he's doing.
- [46:28]
Sarah Longwell
That's why I gave him a C.
- [46:29]
J.D. Vance
Because I don't know what he's, like, actually in charge of.
- [46:32]
Sarah Longwell
So Elon Musk is more the vice president, if you were to ask my opinion that that's who our VP is. So I can. I can trump a C. So I have to give the VP a D. There wasn't an F option because I feel like, you know, you're not even really doing your job because someone else has been put in a position to do it. So that's kind of just where I.
- [46:55]
J.D. Vance
Am, because I don't really know what he's been doing. I mean, when he was campaigning, I liked a lot of things that he said. I like a lot of things that he stood for. So that's why I'm kind of in the B area.
- [47:07]
Sarah Longwell
Okay. So in one of these groups, we were asking people to give him grades, which is why you hear people giving him a letter grade. And it was mostly Bs and Cs. And there were some of the Bs and the positive sound that we heard, but a lot more of them gave him Cs. So that was sort of the negative thing. And I guess what jumped out to me is. Well, actually, several things jumped out to me. One is some people think he's incredibly visible, and other people think he's totally invisible. That is, to me, a signifier of how engaged people are in politics, because if you're engaged, he's pretty visible for a vp. But people always do this about vice presidents. This was like the big knock on Kamala Harris that we heard, and it was actually a bit of an upside for her is that they had seen so little of her that for many people, it was like she got a brand new introduction. And I think in some ways that helped. But there's also other people who were like, well, she didn't do anything. And that was kind of the knock. But that is the function of just being vp, I guess, for the guy who I would say is the front runner and the heir apparent, if Trump doesn't do the third term, people don't like him that much. So do you think Trump wants to set J.D. vance up to be the next president? Is my first question, followed by do MAGA voters translate to J.D. vance?
- [48:22]
J.D. Vance
I don't know about Trump. You know, I mean, he makes his cryptic comments that we in the media like to read really deeply into. You know, he says, well, JD could do it, so could Marco. And then it's like, well, is he trying to pit them against each other? And who knows, right? I think the more relevant question is who do the MAGA elite want to be the next presidential candidate? And it's very clear that that is J.D. vance. Right. It's been clear before he was even VP that people saw him in an almost messianic role. When I talked to Steve Bannon about him about a year ago, he called J.D. vance to St. Paul, to Trump's Jesus. Right. The guy who comes in after him and spreads the gospel of MAGA to the world. I think a lot of MAGA elites see him in that role, but I think we talked about this last time, but that Trump is the destroyer and Vance is the builder. That is a very enduring construct within the elite MAGA world. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of momentum behind him. Does it translate to the MAGA voter? I think the thing that stood out to me from that group in particular was how undefined he is. Right. There's a lot of people who just don't know enough about him to have an opinion. And I think that's very valuable currency in the political realm. Right. Like the opportunity to define yourself. Even with all the visibility he's had on the campaign and in the administration so far, there does seem to be a big bloc of voters who just. He's a big question mark for them. And for all his visibility, he has been laying pretty low. I think in some respects, the intervention of Elon Musk in the first couple months of the administration was an enormous political boom for Vance because it drew fire. Right. I mean, one way that a lot of presidents deploy the VP is just to draw fire away from them. That's the function.
- [50:07]
Sarah Longwell
Just be like a pain sponge.
- [50:08]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, exactly. Do the difficult thing and get out of the way and. Yeah. Absorb the political pain and. And Musk served that function, which Meant that Vance wasn't doing it.
- [50:17]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. In fact, he's getting to look kind of presidential. Not the attack dog, but the Munich speaker.
- [50:22]
J.D. Vance
Exactly. Yeah, the Munich speaker, the elite translator. So, you know, I think the fact that he's undefined, if I were in his shoes, would be encouraging in some respects, but we'll have to see. I mean, I also think, like, four years is an eternity in the political world. I go back to Nixon. Right. I mean, the way that Nixon was viewed as Eisenhower's VP was nothing like the way that Nixon campaigned in 68. Right. Like, he had a whole life that's now, like, the first chapter in the biographies about him as the vp. And like, he was able to completely reinvent himself politically when he ran for president and completely distanced himself from his reputation as vp. And, you know, it's possible that the Vance camp, that they'll be able to do a similar thing, like his reputation as VP won't ultimately matter once Trump's out of the way. They can work to really define him differently, and they just need to do what they need to do to get him in that position. For now, I think that's, like, not an insane political gamble to make.
- [51:20]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I agree with you.
- [51:22]
J.D. Vance
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- [52:09]
Sarah Longwell
All right, I want to close on a trend we heard from time to time in these groups that's been pretty interesting. Like, he is an Internet guy, he's an online guy, and whether it's Twitter, whether it's Netflix, as you pointed out before, he's memeified in some ways. Let's listen to a mix of what the Trump disapprovers and the Biden to Trump voters. This is kind of everybody. And what they said about sort of the online vibes from Vance. Firstly, I think just killed the Pope. Vance is a fake Catholic. He called Pope Francis a pastor. That's not what you do.
- [52:51]
J.D. Vance
Then the whole thing of, like, the Pope seeing Vance, like, as the last person before he passed away was kind of awkward and funny as well. So I agree with what most people say that he's just very awkward and maybe even a little dishonest.
- [53:06]
Sarah Longwell
I actually was just looking for a movie to watch, and I haven't watched it yet. But his bibliography, there was a movie, babe. He wrote a book and it became a movie, and it has major actors in it. It came out in 2020, and I didn't believe it was him at first.
- [53:22]
J.D. Vance
J.D.
- [53:22]
Sarah Longwell
Vance was like, it has to be a different J.D. vance.
- [53:25]
J.D. Vance
There's no way.
- [53:26]
Sarah Longwell
And nope, it was him. And it talked about his adversity and how he grew up and bad, bad conditions and worked his way out of it. When I read that, I was like, that's actually cool. You were a regular person. You saw the chance and you took it and you worked to get out. And I think that's a really good concept to represent America. He seems so far to kind of help balance Trump when Trump can get a little angry or things like that. Honest, I haven't really followed very much about him. The only thing I really can say much about, I mean, I did watch the movie about him, the Hillbilly Elegy, so I can base an opinion on that. I mean, he's worked, I guess, you know, in his life to be where he is today. I mean, I'll give him that. I feel like during campaigning, he kind of was doing good until he started to get critiqued.
- [54:13]
J.D. Vance
There were the jokes about him on.
- [54:14]
Sarah Longwell
The couch and et cetera, et cetera. It's like he became a joke.
- [54:17]
J.D. Vance
So I feel like even Trump realized.
- [54:19]
Sarah Longwell
He became a joke. And then we then said, okay, we'll throw Elon. So, because Vance is sort of the first truly, because he's young, truly Internet native person to hold either the presidency or the vice presidency. And he has the Twitter habit, like, to prove it. This guy is on Twitter all the time fighting with everybody, including us over here at the bull work. So he can see all of the couch jokes, the killed the pope jokes, and the did you even say thank you? Memes that came out of the Zelensky meeting. How do you think he's handled that? Like, do you think it's good for him as vice president to be kind of like a shit posting brawler on Twitter? Is that the future of somebody who's going to be the president?
- [55:05]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, I think one of the more relatable things about him is that he clearly spends way too much time on Twitter, which I'm sure you and I both do as well.
- [55:13]
Sarah Longwell
Relatable to us. I don't know about regular people without mental illnesses.
- [55:17]
J.D. Vance
Like, he's online to the point where you can tell he understands, like, the micro distinctions and the clicks on Twitter.
- [55:23]
Sarah Longwell
Right.
- [55:23]
J.D. Vance
Like, he engages with certain accounts that you only would engage with if you, like, really understood how the Twitter world works. And like, you know, occasionally he posts these very long kind of like policy memos almost in, like, replies, which is an insane way to conduct sometimes foreign policy, sometimes domestic policy.
- [55:40]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, you do it on signal like a normal person.
- [55:42]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, I think you kind of have to be memeable to be president. Yeah. To answer your question, I mean, Trump is AI memed all the time. The way he uses Twitter and online generally is sort of bizarre and interesting. He posted a video of himself making biscuits on Thanksgiving. I think it was an attempt to be relatable. I think it's sort of a little bit tongue in cheek. Right. Like, he knows that, you know, there were those memes going around of him as kind of overweight, wearing the spinny rainbow hat. You know what I'm talking about? Like the tweedledee Tweedle.
- [56:14]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I know what the hat is. I'm not sure I saw the meme.
- [56:16]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. I think you want to be memeable, right? Like, you want to be a subject of Internet culture if you want to be president. Because as you said before, like, in this world we live in, where politics is in some respects upstream of culture, the way to have political cache is to have cultural cachet, and that includes being an AI meme or being a gif or whatnot.
- [56:34]
Sarah Longwell
So even if it's a wholly made up but persistent thing that you somehow have sexual relations with the couch, I don't even remember where that came from.
- [56:44]
J.D. Vance
I mean, I don't know how much that's persisted. You know, maybe it defined him in some respects early on. I don't know. The memes of him sort of overweight with the big face have, I think become more ubiquitous from my own Twitter dwelling. But I'm not an expert on these things. So.
- [57:00]
Sarah Longwell
You're right, though, that some of that stuff has gone away. It was quite stupid and certainly untrue.
- [57:06]
J.D. Vance
I mean, he's sort of lighthearted. You know, he posts. He's a poster, Right. Like, when he broke the. There was the video going around of him breaking the college football championship statue. And he made a joke about it.
- [57:17]
Sarah Longwell
He did.
- [57:18]
J.D. Vance
You know, or when. When it came out that Ohio State was going to be in the final on the night of inauguration, he said, like, should I go? You know, he's a digital native and he engages in Twitter in a way that, that not all politicians do. So I think there's maybe some strength in there. I don't know how decisive it'll be, but he clearly knows his way around those corners of the Internet.
- [57:38]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. I think it is a sickness that is still somehow, in the new media environment, an asset.
- [57:45]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. I mean, the ironic thing, just to wrap it up, is there's a very strong critique of the way that communications technology has screwed up the modern world on the new Right. Like, poisoned our brains. And yet all these people seem, like, maximally poisoned by communications technology, you know, so you wonder, like, well, if they are such vociferous critics of it, why do they succumb to it so easily? Is it a refracted self critique? Not to get too Freudian about it, but, like, are they projecting their own insecurities about the ways that technology has screwed with their own brains into the kind of cultural and political sphere?
- [58:23]
Sarah Longwell
Oh, and to take that further, or their own guilt. I mean, this is where the tech titans now live on the new right.
- [58:29]
J.D. Vance
Right.
- [58:30]
Sarah Longwell
You know, it's like, either we're going to be a monarchical society or we're going to go seasteading, you know, with Peter Thiel or whatever, and we're all going to get blood transfusions to stay young forever. Like, I don't know these guys. It has been striking to me, and increasingly so, how much of our cultural life now is dominated by people who do seem sort of broken by the Internet. Like, when I see Zuckerberg saying, well, we're going to give people AI friends because most people want to have more friends and they don't have them. And I'm like, the sadness of Mark Zuckerberg at being a friendless dude is leading us to, like, ruin as everybody, you know, stops interfacing with real people and it's just going to have robot friends.
- [59:16]
J.D. Vance
Yeah. I do think it's a challenge for the left, which is that as the right and the new right in particular, have appropriated these arguments that were once lefty arguments. Right. Like a critique of communications technologies, the way it's alienated us from the world. Right. That's a critique that was pioneered on the left, which has now become the right. And it's challenging for the left not to become reflexively opposed to that. Like, I think a lot of people feel that their relationship with the world is screwed up by technology. And, you know, we don't want to go through our lives staring at our phones constantly. It's not a good way to live. And, like, if that becomes the exclusive purview of the right, and it's not a thing that people on the left speak to authentically, I think that's a big problem when you're talking about the type of voters you're listening to. And I think that replicates across a whole host of issues where the right has appropriate critiques of the left. And now you see a kind of prickliness on the left towards those arguments. But, like, those were arguments the left did make and probably should still be making. It's just a bizarre dynamic of the realignment, I think.
- [60:17]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, it's not just the narratives of the left, it's the policies. You know, tariffs. I mean, I point this out all the time. Trump, Elon, rfk, Tulsi, I don't know, Joe Rogan. They were all Democrats, like 10 years ago, but they're irresponsible. And so they've brought some things that sort of were fringe lefty or. Or had been gone by the wayside from the mainstream left. And they've brought it over to the Republican Party and the Republicans, despite everything I was taught coming up in the conservative movement. And we're basically like, oh, yeah, let's do protectionism, let's do price controls, let's forget the free market, let's ban all the trans fats and the vaccines, too. Those are bad. Like, much of it is new to the mainstream Republican movement. I think it's a good place to leave it. What is interesting to me about Vance more than anything else is that he does have a coherent view of what he would like to do in a way that voters have been like a real kind of weird salad of all kinds of stuff. And there's been a lot of political realignment. And Trump has a political project kind of in America first. It's a presentation of priorities. It's like a way we're going to orient and prioritize things. Whereas Vance has, like, a real ideological project he wants to execute. But I suspect that the deep ideological project might be actually less appealing to voters than the charismatic, above politics, burn it all down approach of Donald Trump.
- [61:51]
J.D. Vance
Yeah, I think he is proving to be politically savvier than a lot of people anticipated. You kind of underestimate him at your own risk, I think, would be my message. I think he has surprised a lot of people, even within the MAGA coalition, who I think were initially skeptical of him. He surprised a lot of people with how savvy he is, both sort of in the blocking and tackling of politics and the ideological and messaging side of it. He hasn't really dropped the ball enormously yet. Four years is a long time, but he has a lot of Runway ahead of him, I think.
- [62:23]
Sarah Longwell
Well, I mean, he did do the whole eating d dogs and cats thing, but yes, didn't seem to go against him. So, Ian Ward, thank you so much for coming back. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the focus group podcast. We'll be back next week, but in the meantime, remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube, and become a Bulwark plus member at the Bulwark.com we will see you next week, guys.