← The Rest Is Politics
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- [00:01]
Rory Stewart
Thanks for listening to the Rest is Politics. Sign up to the Rest is Politics plus to enjoy ad free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com the.
- [00:14]
Alistair Campbell
Price of getting Trump's support is you have to say the election was stolen or you have to say that Trump won the election and Biden is not.
- [00:20]
Rory Stewart
The president, which he doesn't believe.
- [00:22]
Alistair Campbell
How is it actually possible to say I'm this really serious heavyweight guy who cares about morality and character and Donald Trump is abhorrent and the Antichrist, and then say actually I was wrong. Donald Trump's great.
- [00:34]
Rory Stewart
The shift has been so profound to accommodate Trump, to be alongside Trump, to be the Vice President, and hopefully set himself up to be president.
- [00:42]
Alistair Campbell
He does it by choosing to abandon the thoughtful, Christian, empathetic, tolerant, conservative vision and instead re embrace his hillbilly identity. This is where this other side of his personality comes through. He's reverting to blame. Anger Anger with immigrants.
- [01:03]
Rory Stewart
There is some talk that the Vance's favored idea for the next election ticket is Vance Trump.
- [01:11]
Alistair Campbell
Vance with Donald J. Is his running mate correct?
- [01:14]
Rory Stewart
How better to keep Trump Senior on board than to have Trump the name still on the ballot?
- [01:19]
Alistair Campbell
VP.
- [01:28]
Rory Stewart
Hi there, it's Alice here. Now you may know Rory and I are right bang in the middle of our first ever long form series, the Real JD Vance, exclusively available on the Rest Is Politics. Plus. In episode one we explored Vance's early life, the chaotic family background, the small town struggles, and the personal myth making that turned Hillbilly Elegy, his memoir, into a bestseller and made Vance a political rising star. In episode two, we looked at the billionaires who are backing him, a really powerful network of tech elites who frankly see democracy as a total inconvenience, and who've alighted upon Vance as their political vehicle, chief among them a guy called Peter Thiel. He doesn't just see Vance as a future president, but as a kind of American monarch. And now in episode three, we look at, frankly, the most extraordinary transformation of all. That's J.D. vance's journey from the days when he called Donald Trump Hitler to become his most loyal acolyte and vice presidential pick. He's abandoned the thoughtful Christian moral Persona that he once performed and now leans hard into grievance, anger and conspiracy. So how do you make peace with your former self to get close to someone you once referred to as cultural heroin? What does it take to go from moral clarity to sycophancy. And what is the end game? To hear all three episodes in full, just go to therestispolitics.com and sign up to the Rest is Politics. Plus, there's a seven day free trial, no ads, loads of bonus content waiting, and it takes less than two minutes to do so. Here's a short extract from episode three. I really hope you enjoy it.
- [03:04]
Alistair Campbell
The price of getting Trump's support is you have to say the election was stolen.
- [03:09]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [03:09]
Alistair Campbell
You have to say that Trump won the election and Biden is not the.
- [03:12]
Rory Stewart
President, which he doesn't believe. But also the other thing I don't find we talked about his wife, Usher. You have to assume I know that, you know, if you're in a political family, you're a political person. You have to assume there's a sort of, there's some kind of political crossover going on. Have there been no points since he stopped being an ever Trumper and started to sort of move over? Have there been no points at which he's gone home and his wife or other members of his close entourage have said to him, hold on, this is disgusting. You can't pretend you believe this or do you believe this? In which case, that person that I married, is that the same person? Now, I don't want to intrude into their marriage. I get the feeling with Usher that she's totally on board for everything. Looks like she's really enjoying it, traveling around the world, taking the kids to this Europe that he seems to despise. But I just don't get that. Nobody says to him he does occasionally do difficult interviews, but I've very rarely seen him pressed on. Hold a minute. You said this. Did you believe it? You now say this. Do you believe it? What do you really believe?
- [04:13]
Alistair Campbell
Let's go through what we think J.D. vance does believe. Number one, I think he's pretty consistent in his social conservatism. He's pretty consistent in believing that the world was better in the good old days when people had more traditional values. And those traditional values range from anti abortion to the good old days when you could, it appears, extrajudicially kill people because you thought they raped someone and throw them in a lake. Right. So there's that kind of sort of traditionalism. Number two, I don't think he's ever been very interested in the Constitution. Oddly, when he was criticizing Donald Trump first time round, he's never been a great one for Democratic theory, liberalism, human rights, constitutional protections.
- [04:56]
Rory Stewart
That's because he Believes it's teal Yavin stuff.
- [04:59]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. So he's an authoritarian. I think it's the second thing. So, number one, he's traditional. Number two, he's an authoritarian. He buys into the kind of monarchist thing. Number three, I think he has this very, very weird thing going on, which is mesmerizing in the Christian right in the US which is the ability to project a Christian passage, which is about care for the poor, about humility, about truth and about integrity onto this figure of Donald Trump with his gold bath taps, his contempt for the poor, his lies. His lies, yeah.
- [05:35]
Rory Stewart
His corruption.
- [05:35]
Alistair Campbell
And he's somehow able to do that.
- [05:37]
Rory Stewart
But how can you do that? I think it is basically ambition. And interesting when we interviewed David Frum and from now, who, of course, from people will know, is very, very, very critical of Trump, but he's also very critical of Vance, I think, in a way even more disappointed, because he sees Vance as somebody who's very intelligent, very driven, got a really good brain, but actually feels that now the shift has been so profound to accommodate Trump, to be alongside Trump, to be the vice president and hopefully set himself up to be president, is that he thinks it shows an absolute lack of character. You said to him, you once described him as having moral flexibility. Were you aware of that early on, that his ambition might drive him to shift from Reaganite conservatism to Trumpism? And David says, no, not at all.
- [06:23]
Alistair Campbell
Not at all.
- [06:23]
C
Quite the contrary. When he wrote his famous book in which he has some nice things to say about me, for which I thank him, when he wrote his famous book, I wrote back that I had just one criticism of it, which is he said in the introduction of the book, he says that the story I tell here, I tell not because I'm an extraordinary person, but because I'm an ordinary person enabled by the promise of America. And I wrote back and said, no, that's not true. You are an extraordinary person. And I understand why you said the contrary, but it's important that you, in your private thinking, understand that what you did is not available to everybody because of your extraordinary drive. But I said this as compliments. Your extraordinary drive and gifts and energy and ability. They are beyond the ordinary. I think we tend to believe that when the good fairies give you some gifts, they give you all of them. And so you think with those gifts would also come integrity and character. I mean, he showed so much character, getting from point A to where I knew him, that you thought that. It never occurred to me that character would be the Defect, actually, that was the deficit quality.
- [07:20]
Rory Stewart
And I think that's a very, very, very powerful statement.
- [07:23]
Alistair Campbell
Well, and part of the reason why none of us saw this coming, why it's such an amazing left field, is the entire brand of JD Vance was supposed to be character. So to go back to his kind of intellectual formation and these Catholic philosophers he quotes, he's very interested in a guy who's currently in Hungary, no accident, hanging out with Viktor Orban, whose intellectual lineage goes back to Alasdair MacIntyre, which is all about virtue, virtue, character. Remember I said that, you know, he'd become a Catholic because he decided what he'd realized is that what matters in life is not success, not promotion, but character. Right. So when somebody has made their entire shtick, character, Christianity, my love of Muslims and immigrants, my abhorrence of Donald Trump, to then turn out that actually the one thing you don't have is character is kind of weird.
- [08:08]
Rory Stewart
It's a problem. But I also.
- [08:10]
Alistair Campbell
Or except it isn't a problem. I mean, that tells you a lot about the sort of modern political world. I mean, how is it actually possible to spend, say, I'm this really serious heavyweight guy who cares about morality and character and Donald Trump is abhorrent and the Antichrist, and then say, actually, I was wrong. Donald Trump's great. And I don't know.
- [08:30]
Rory Stewart
So I suppose you read out some of those statements about the things that he said about Trump when he was not a Trumper, and there's just as many then statements explaining why he didn't think that anymore, including, he's the best president of my lifetime. And this was in defense of Trump's actions on January 6th. So it really is a kind of very, very, very, very big leap.
- [08:52]
Alistair Campbell
Let's just quickly get people up to date on the chronology. So I think we left it with Vance being a bit behind in the polls for the primary. He wins the primary because Trump actually, for the reasons you've talked about, comes strongly out behind him. And at that point, the attacks on him, he needs it, desperately needs it, because the only way of killing his opponent's attacks, which is this doofus, was really rude about your hero, Trump, is to have Trump himself come out and say, I love J.D. vance, which he does in classic Trump style. And so in September 2022, just before the election, he says, JD is kissing my ass. He wants my support so bad. And then he adds, this is a great person who I've really gotten to know. Yeah, he said some bad things about me, but that was before he knew me. And then he fell in love.
- [09:39]
Rory Stewart
It's all about him, isn't it? His relationship. So. And one of the things, you know, as we know, Donald Trump likes to sort of sit and watch television all day long, it seems. He watched some of the debates, right, Vance? Debates in the primaries, yeah. And one of them, he was. He was pressed on this thing. How can you go from that to that? And he says, I got baptized three years ago. I've had three kids since then. A lot's different.
- [10:01]
Alistair Campbell
I said, he's found God. And Trump.
- [10:03]
Rory Stewart
One of the things that's different is I've changed my mind about Donald Trump. He was a great president. At the end of the day, one of the things this race presents is an opportunity. Who actually agrees with Trump on the core issues of trade, immigration, who's willing to fight for an America versus foreign policy? I think it's me. I mean, that's quite an effective piece.
- [10:21]
Alistair Campbell
Of communication, and this will bring us the Senate. But in order to achieve this, he needs to do two things. He needs to, as Trump says so politely, kiss Trump's ass, prove absolute 100% loyalty. But number two, he needs to psychologically get himself into the place of justifying this. And he does. And this is something that Ezra Klein has pointed out when we interviewed him on the podcast on Leading. He does it by choosing to abandon the more thoughtful, Christian, empathetic, tolerant, conservative vision and instead re embrace his hillbilly identity.
- [10:59]
Rory Stewart
He also starts to flirt with conspiracy theories. So listen to this. If you wanted to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland, how better than to target them and their kids with deadly fentanyl? This looks intentional. It's like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn't vote for him. And opening up the floodgates to the border is one way to do it. So he's basically saying that Biden is targeting MAGA voters with fentanyl.
- [11:27]
Alistair Campbell
So this is where this other side of his personality comes through. Not the tolerant, Christian intellectual side, but he's reverting to blame Anger, anger with immigrants. He begins to really get into. As you see, he's beginning to hint that he's in favor of protectionism. We already know he's gone from liberal democracy to authoritarianism. He's gone from free trade to protectionism. But one of the other things he's changing on is America's role in foreign policy in Zelenskyy.
- [11:54]
Rory Stewart
There you go. Thank you so much for listening to that extract from episode three of our miniseries the Real JD Vance. To hear the full convers between me and Rory, along with episodes one and two, just go to therestispolitics.com sign up to the Rest is Politics. Plus you'll get a seven day free trial ad. Free listening new episodes of the series dropping every Friday morning takes you less than two minutes and just a couple of clicks. Just go to therestispolitics.com.