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- [00:02]
A
At dsw, we ask the important questions, like what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay, the right shoes can make or break an rsvp. So own the moment. You've got big plans, and we've got just the shoes at the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today and let us surprise you, Julia.
- [00:31]
B
Who is JD Vance? What does he actually believe?
- [00:35]
C
Who knows, right? That's the million dollar question. Tara.
- [00:38]
B
Senator Vance, in 2016, you called your running mate, Donald Trump unfit for the nation's highest office and you said he could be America's Hitler.
- [00:48]
D
Trump is a really bad candidate and frankly, I think a really bad person.
- [00:52]
B
You're now his running mate and you've shifted many of your policy stances to align with his.
- [00:57]
D
I'm a never Trump guy. I, I never liked him. But I've also been extremely open about the fact that I was wrong about Donald Trump.
- [01:03]
C
I remember people in the Senate telling me they don't know what he believes and that he probably doesn't really believe anything other than believing in his own political ambition.
- [01:13]
B
So are we watching a politician evolve or simply adapt? And how much of this is about the 2028 presidential race? I asked Puck's foreign policy writer Julia Yaffe, who's covered Vance's rise up close, to help me find out. This is the Tara Palmieri Show.
- [01:30]
C
You know, I'm old enough to remember when flip flopping had a negative connotation in this town. Now, people, especially Republicans in D.C. are rewarded for, you know, maximum ideological flexibility, let's just say, and being able to come on board with Donald Trump. In J.D. vance's case, I think he has always had this. I think one particular through line, though, for him that you can trace is this anti interventionist streak. And there's a lot of people like him in Republican politics. They're millennial men who answered the call of duty, as it were, and signed up with the US military in the years after 9, 11, and were deployed repeatedly to the wars to fight in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan. J.D. vance was in the Marines, but he was a public affairs officer who wrote articles and took photographs. And I remember one Republican Senate staffer telling me, you know, there's this feeling of, you know, I saw my friends die in Iraq. We spent trillions of dollars. What was it all for? All this, all this money, all these resources could have been used at home and we didn't achieve anything abroad. So let's stop doing this. Let's, you know, stop listening to the con, the conventional wisdom. Let's stop listening to what Ben Rhodes, Obama's national security speechwriter, called the blob. Because they tend to get us into these useless, endless conflicts. And that seems to be a constant through line in J.D. vance's philosophy. This kind of opposition to Middle east especially, I mean, foreign entanglements, but especially Middle east adventurism. And lo and behold, he is the number two, the first in line for succession to Donald Trump as he wages a war of choice against Iran. That's now back on.
- [03:46]
B
Yeah, as we speak. Just recently, President Trump said, told Congress we're back to war with Iran, giving him 60 days to do whatever he wants before he has to get congressional approval, if he'll even do that. But you're right, I mean, he has completely shifted throughout the years. Even his religious identity. Now he's a Catholic. I mean, who becomes Catholic? We're not really out there trying to convert people. It's kind of like the Jews. Like, we'll take you if you come and we'll, you know, turn you into Catholics. But it's, we're not Jehovah Witnesses out there. And he's written a book about it, Communion. Ironically, he is out there now pushing his book on his book tour, but also having to answer for a war that he clearly does not believe in. One of the hardest parts of my job is trying to present the news as objectively as I can. I always want to know when it's fair to call balls and strikes. That's why I use the sponsor of today's show, Ground News. If you want to try it for yourself, head to ground news.com Tara to get 40% off the unlimited access vantage plan. That's the plan that I use. Take Todd Blanche's confirmation hearing. The New York Post wrote, Thom Tillis reveals the condition Todd Blanche must meet to earn his vote. Politico covered the exact same hearing with this headline, Thom Tillis tells Todd Blanche to meet with Epstein victims or don't expect his support. Same hearing, same senator, different headlines. Ground News's bias comparison feature showed exactly what I saw covering the hearing live. Left leaning outlets like Politico focus on Epstein survivors while right leaning outlets like the New York Post focused on the confirmation politics. Neither headline is necessarily wrong, but if you only read one of them, you not getting the full story. That's exactly why I keep Ground News open while I'M reporting. If you're interested, check it out@ground news.com Tara and you will get 40% off. It helps me understand not just what's being covered, but what's being emphasized and when it's fair to make calls. If you want to see the news from more than one perspective, visit ground news.comtara to get 40% off the unlimited access to Vantage plan and unlock worldwide perspective on today's biggest news stories.
- [06:08]
C
When I spoke to people in the Senate who, who knew J.D. vance in the Senate, they were like, this is wild. We never saw even the least bit of criticism from him of Israel. It was always just completely 100% steadfast, kind of the APAC line. And now you see him pivot and basically take the Charlie Kirk line, which is like, hey, I'm telling you as a friend, like, I've always been a friend of Israel and I'm therefore, you know, unlike Ilhan Omar, unlike lefties who question your right to exist as a Jewish state, I don't. But I'm saying what you're doing is wrong. And therefore my critique is more meaningful because I come from a place of friendship. I think that's, that's a needle he's clearly trying to thread.
- [07:02]
B
Yeah. So where does Israel fit into this new version of America first that J.D. vance has become the face of?
- [07:10]
C
It's unclear. I think Israel has, you know, I think there's, from what I understand, there's kind of a similar kind of splinter, splintering generationally that you see on the Democratic side where the older generation who remembers Israel as this underdog, outmanned, outgunned in the Middle east, founded after the disaster and horror of the Holocaust, and that it needs to be supported at all costs and as kind of like America's Cold War outpost in the Middle east surrounded by these Soviet allies and not satellites, sorry, surrounded by these Soviet all allies. Young people born after nine, 11, don't remember that. And Israel in the last 20 years has been kind of this highly sophisticated, rich, militarily advanced fortress in the Middle east that has walled itself off after the second intifada and is just, has just take, you know, has no left wing anymore, is just kind of a pretty hard right country that has decided that there is no, there's no talking to these people being the Arab nations around them. They only understand force. So we're only going to speak with force. And Israel in the last 30 years has been a military superpower. It is clearly the strongest military in the Middle east, maybe outside of Iran. And so I think young people, younger people, both on the left and the right are like, why are we supporting them? Like, they're right. They can clearly afford this stuff on their own. They're clearly fine. You know, we shouldn't support Ukraine. We should. We shouldn't be bankrolling Ukraine. We shouldn't be bankrolling Israel. We shouldn't be bankrolling anyone. This money is better best spent at home. I will caveat that by saying that, you know, the reason, you know, and I said this when Republicans, when I would say, like, the far right and the far left were opposing aid to Ukraine and saying this money would be better spent here, I always said, like, it's not going to be spent here. And that's because Republicans don't believe it should be spent here. Like, they are philosophically opposed to spending government money or taxpayer money on health care, on child care, on the kinds of, you know, social welfare programs that I think a lot of the populists on both sides of the spectrum advocate for. That stuff's never going to get through. And it's not because of Ukraine or Israel or any other ally we're helping or Saudi Arabia. It's because of Republican opposition philosophically, because they believe that's not the government's role. It's interesting how he pivoted with that and how he tried to pivot it to, hey, Israel got us into this war and they need to sit down and shut up. Because the Israelis were obviously very opposed to the memorandum of understanding. They felt like it gave Iran the store without accomplishing any of the goals of the special military operation or whatever this administration called it. And what really struck me is that is the harsh words that J.D. vance had for Israel specifically on this tour. You know, he said, if it were me, if I were a member of the Israeli cabinet, I would think twice about, you know, criticizing the only friend we have left in this world because the President Trump is basically Israel's only remaining ally. And, I mean, he's right, I think, to some extent. But what struck me is like, if Rashida Tlaib or Ilhan Omar or AOC had, or a Democrat had said any of the things that J.D. vance had said about Israel. Oh, my God. I mean, can you imagine?
- [11:31]
B
Totally, right? Yeah.
- [11:32]
C
And it would be like, let's let calls for censure call, you know, calling them an anti Semite and saying, oh, you know, the Dems love Hamas, as one administration official told me. And as I dug into that, I realized, you know, this is very Clearly JD Vance trying to capitalize on the growing anti Israel sentiment in the US that was quite strong on the left, especially after October 7th and Israel's war of retaliation in Gaza, but has really started up on the right. And the right is interesting because they've always been quite anti Semitic and I had encounters with them early and often, you know, even before Donald Trump became president the first time. And as much as they hate Jews, they also love, loved Israel because it's the kind of ethnostate with a very kind of exclusionary immigration policy that makes right wingers salivate and that they would want for the U.S. but now that there's this sense based on a lot of reporting, that it was Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime Minister of Israel, who got the US into this war with Iran that we have lost, very obviously. Anti Israel sentiment on the right is growing and JD Vance is very clearly trying to tap into that.
- [13:10]
D
You're a country of 9 million people. You can't just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.
- [13:19]
B
You know, one of the comments that really stood out to me in his conversation with the New York Times was, you're a country of 9 million, you can't just kill your way out. And he's speaking of Israel, obviously, and you know, he has claimed that he is one of Israel's strongest defenders, but how does he reconcile those two positions?
- [13:39]
C
You know, I think you saw this position from Charlie Kirk as well. And Charlie Kirk and J.D. vance were essentially best friends. They were very, very close. And shortly before his death, I, I actually wrote about it. I think it was August of last year. So a couple months before Charlie Kirk was assassinated, he was on Megyn Kelly's show saying, hey, what is this with. And this was after, it turns out, after this pro Israel Jewish donor cut off funding to Turning Points USA because, because Charlie wouldn't deplatform Tucker Carlson, who is a bonafide anti Semite. And Charlie Kirk said, you know this, it's really annoying. Like I'm a really good friend of Israel, I love Israel, I've always been so supportive. But what I can't say anything like I'm not to crit, I'm not allowed to criticize them at all. And he was actually hosting these focus groups that I wrote about back at the time, kind of on the sidelines of his Turning Points conferences. And they put out videos of these so you can find them on YouTube where he and Andrew Colvitt, his right hand man, are interviewing mostly young men about what they think about Israel and they're like, yeah, like, sure, Israel's an ally, but if it's America first, it's America first, right? Like, no exceptions.
- [15:14]
B
That was another episode of the Tara Palmieri Show. If it's your first time here, hit that subscribe button. Thanks so much for tuning in. You can, like comment, follow, tell your friends about it. Just by engaging with this content, it is telling more people all about it and what we're doing here and independent journalism without shadowy backers. And you can continue to support me in my mission working for you by becoming a YouTube member. There are many different tiers with exclusive content and access. We're building out a great membership program that you can all take a take part in. If you like to read my journalism, my exclusive content, you can go to the red letter by going to the QR code on the screen or go to tarapaulmieri.com it's another way to get even more great content exclusive. And it's a way to support an independent journalist with no shadowy backers. I want to also thank my guest, Julia Yaffe. She's my former colleague and she wrote an incredible book called Motherland that's won awards. It's a feminist history of modern Russia from revolution to autocracy. She is a amazing journalist. I want to thank James Sussin, my producer Abby Baker, who also produced this. I want to thank Nicole Staple and Dan Rose and my managers and Adam Stewart on the graphics. Got a great team here and I am so appreciative to all of you. See you again soon.