414 - Sen. JD Vance

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Tim Dillon Show – Episode 414 with Senator J.D. Vance

Title: The Tim Dillon Show
Host: Tim Dillon
Guest: Senator J.D. Vance
Episode: 414
Description: Tim Dillon, comedian and tour guide, dives into a candid conversation with Senator J.D. Vance. They explore a range of topics from campaign strategies and foreign policy to domestic issues like immigration and economic policies, all infused with Tim's signature humor and sharp commentary.

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1. Introduction and Campaign Trail Insights (00:00 - 02:02)

Tim Dillon welcomes Senator J.D. Vance, highlighting their similar backgrounds and accomplishments. They discuss the intensity and excitement of Vance's Senate campaign, emphasizing the extensive travel and the adrenaline-filled experience of meeting diverse crowds across the country.

Notable Quote:

• J.D. Vance: "It's honestly just the craziest experience of my life... the energy level is off the charts right now, which is one of the reasons why I think that we're gonna win." [01:00]

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2. Balancing Public Life and Family (02:03 - 05:31)

Vance shares how he manages his demanding campaign schedule while raising three young children, thanks to significant family support. He recounts a humorous interaction where his son, a young Trump enthusiast, inadvertently becomes part of political banter.

Notable Quotes:

• J.D. Vance: "Sometimes we have to make this kind of a family affair... my son, he's seven... He's really into Trump, even though he's never met him." [02:03]
• Vance on Don Jr.: "My son just, like, deadpans, definitely the real Donald Trump." [02:19]

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3. Perceptions from the Campaign Trail (05:31 - 12:23)

Tim inquires about any shifts in Vance's perceptions while traveling. Vance reflects on a paradigm shift from policy-focused frustration to a more optimistic view of the country, inspired by genuine interactions with supporters facing hardships.

Notable Quote:

• J.D. Vance: "I talk about cities... you've got to... I also realized... there's a generosity of spirit out there that... we can also be, I think, more hopeful about the country." [04:24]

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4. Critique of Current Political Leadership (12:23 - 22:55)

The discussion turns to the broader political landscape, with Vance criticizing Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden's policies. He contrasts their approaches with the more engaging and enjoyable Trump rallies, highlighting perceived insincerity in Democratic leadership.

Notable Quotes:

• J.D. Vance: "The fake joy of the Kamala Harris rallies versus, like, we're actually having fun." [07:02]
• Vance on Biden: "They're still collecting multi hundred thousand dollar a year salaries... It's a very insane thing I've seen in politics." [14:17]

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5. Foreign Policy and Military Engagements (22:55 - 44:08)

Vance delves into his views on U.S. foreign policy, advocating for reduced military intervention and smarter diplomacy. He discusses the Abraham Accords, the potential threats from Iran and China, and the need for NATO allies to take greater responsibility for their own security.

Notable Quotes:

• J.D. Vance: "We can't be the policeman of Europe... We should empower people to police their own regions of the world." [44:07]
• Vance on China and Taiwan: "Our interest is in peace... We have to engage in smart diplomacy from time to time." [45:34]

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6. Immigration and Economic Policies (44:08 - 63:32)

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on immigration, with Vance advocating for stricter border controls and deportations, especially targeting violent criminals. He criticizes the current immigration policies for undermining the American workforce and fueling economic disparities.

Notable Quotes:

• J.D. Vance: "If you're not willing to deport the people who came here illegally, especially those who came here over the last few years, then you're not going to have a border." [53:46]
• Vance on Labor Market: "Millions of people are willing to work under the table... they don't want somebody taking away their jobs." [56:09]

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7. The Impact of Globalization and Real Estate (63:32 - 81:38)

Vance critiques globalization, arguing that it benefits the wealthy while harming the middle and lower classes in developed countries. He highlights issues like foreign ownership of real estate driving up costs and diminishing local cultures, using examples from cities like New York and London.

Notable Quotes:

• J.D. Vance: "American citizenship cannot just be a bunch of people who like, work and make financial transactions with one another. You don't go and fight wars because like the guy down the street makes a lot of money trading derivatives on Wall Street." [60:09]
• On Foreign Asset Purchases: "We should basically ban foreign asset purchases of American land." [81:38]

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8. Education and Social Issues (81:38 - 89:43)

The conversation shifts to education and social policies, where Vance criticizes the emphasis on identity politics and gender studies at the expense of core subjects like math and science. He expresses concern over policies that he believes disrupt traditional family structures and societal norms.

Notable Quotes:

• J.D. Vance: "If you really enflame the racial consciousness of people... that's just gonna fundamentally lead to strife." [39:17]
• Vance on Gender Transition: "Kids have permanent sexual dysfunction... you need evidence before you really do something else." [33:13]

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9. Election Integrity and Media Influence (89:43 - 87:00)

Vance criticizes the intelligence community and media for manipulating information, particularly regarding the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. He argues that such actions threaten the democratic process by controlling election narratives and undermining voter trust.

Notable Quotes:

• J.D. Vance: "They conspired with big tech to literally control the flow of information in the days and weeks before an election... a way bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump making a joke that you don't like." [50:16]
• On Accountability: "Nobody accepting responsibility for failure... you can't fix the problem." [28:54]

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10. Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts (87:00 - End)

In the closing segment, Tim Dillon poses questions about preventing tech censorship and handling foreign policy challenges. Vance emphasizes breaking up monopolistic tech companies to prevent censorship and reiterates his stance on smart diplomacy and economic reforms to strengthen the middle class.

Notable Quotes:

• J.D. Vance: "These companies have to be separated... they became too monopolistic and now they tell Americans what they can or can't say." [86:16]
• On Strengthening the Middle Class: "The only way to build a sustainable middle class is to have a viable manufacturing economy." [83:25]

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Conclusion

Episode 414 of "The Tim Dillon Show" with Senator J.D. Vance offers a comprehensive dive into pressing political and social issues from the perspective of a rising Republican figure. Vance articulates a vision focused on stronger border controls, reduced foreign intervention, economic reforms to bolster the middle class, and addressing the perceived failures of current Democratic leadership. Tim Dillon's blend of humor and incisive questioning ensures a lively and engaging discussion, making complex topics accessible to a broad audience.

Transcript

[Tim Dillon]

Senator, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. We're similar age, we have similar accomplishments, and that's like the same people, actually.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah.

[Tim Dillon]

No, it's good to have you here. You wrote a book. I pretended to. You're running for vice president. I have a podcast, so. But no, thank you so much. I appreciate it. How has it been running at the pace you're running? Introducing yourself to the public, how has that felt with a family and a life?

[J.D. Vance]

Sure, sure. Well, yeah, thank you for doing this. First of all, thank you to rearrange your schedule. And I appreciate it.

[Tim Dillon]

It wasn't that tough.

[J.D. Vance]

It's honestly just the craziest experience of my life. Right. Because I ran for Senate once before in my life a couple years ago. We won, obviously, or I wouldn't be here. You drive around the state of Ohio and the back of a used Subaru because that's what your staff is driving. And it's really cool because you see the whole state.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

This thing, you see the whole country. Right, right. And like, we had some of my closest buddies from high school join us on the campaign trail a couple of days ago. And it's, we go to Dallas, we go to Arizona, we go to Nevada, we go back to Washington, we go back to Ohio. Like, in two and a half days, we're in all these places. So it's just really cool to see the country. I mean, obviously, like, in some ways it's exhausting, but in other ways, it's like the most energizing thing that you're doing. Because I'm one of these people, I, like, feed off the crowd and I feed off the people that I meet. And. And so the energy level is off the charts right now, which is one of the reasons why I think that we're gonna win. And so, like, yeah, you don't sleep as much maybe as I'd like to, but then on the other hand, you're just like, so high on adrenaline that I feel like I could do this for a lot longer.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

The good thing, I mean, so we have three little kids. Right. We have a seven year old, a four year old and a two year old. And we've been able, with a lot of family help, to just make this kind of a family affair. So for Trump's big rally in Madison Square Garden in a couple days, my cousin is going to fly up with our kids and then me and my wife are going to go up and so we'll like, hang out in New York together.

[Tim Dillon]

Amazing.

[J.D. Vance]

But then also do this rally at Madison Square Garden. Like, my son, he's. He's. He's seven. He's the oldest. And it's very funny because he's, like, really into Trump, even though he's never met him.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

And so he's like, when am I going to meet President Trump? And the answer is at this rally at Madison Square Garden. But do you know Don Jr. At all?

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Okay, sure. Don's a really good dude. He's one of my closest friends in politics. Well, he met my son at an event in Charlotte a couple weeks ago, and Don was like, you know, hey, who do you think is better looking, me or my dad? And my son just, like, deadpans, definitely the real Donald Trump. So I call President Trump and I tell him that, and he's like, that's good to hear.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah. Your son's now in the cabinet. He's being vetted for the Secretary of State.

[J.D. Vance]

Exactly. Right.

[Tim Dillon]

Um, wait, so you're traveling around the country, and I'm sure you're meeting a lot of people.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah.

[Tim Dillon]

What about it? Has anything. Any perception that you had changed when you were out there? Because as a comedian. Yeah, I've gone around the country not as much, but a good amount. And you see things, and you do have a little paradigm shift, and you go 20 or 30 minutes out of any major city, you do see more poverty than you would think.

[J.D. Vance]

Yep.

[Tim Dillon]

You do see areas that have been kind of abandoned or forgotten.

[J.D. Vance]

Sure.

[Tim Dillon]

In many of our cities, you see drug addiction, a lot of homelessness, a lot of kind of vacant spaces. In the downtown area, you don't feel great about it. And then there are areas that are beautiful, and there are areas where you could see people are trying to hold on and conserve the community that they have.

[J.D. Vance]

Sure.

[Tim Dillon]

But there's a lot of areas that, you know, you see that are struggling. And is that more evident when you're traveling around?

[J.D. Vance]

I think it is, because you talk to people a lot more. I mean, one of the paradigm shifts that I've had is, you know, four months ago, I'd been a senator for two years. I was, like, very frustrated with the policies of Kamala Harris and of Joe Biden. Right. I'm sort of pissed off about that. Well, the thing that I think that sometimes leads into is you kind of get this tunnel vision about, like, policy and not about the people who are actually affected by it.

[Kamala Harris]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

And it also, I think, honestly, being out there has made me more fundamentally optimistic about our country. Right. Cause you're right. There is a Lot of poverty, and there's a lot of problems in our cities. And I'll talk about that in a second. But like, you also, you know, I met this woman, really affected me about a month or so ago. And usually what we'll do is we'll do these rallies, but then we'll, like, you know, do photos with volunteers and just people who are helping out the campaign in some form or another before we do these rallies. And this woman comes up to me, and she's like, I can't afford groceries. You know, I've been, like, working my whole life. Things are really tough. She tells me that for, like, 20, 30 seconds. And then she spends three minutes talking about how she says a prayer every single night for me, my wife, and our three kids by name. She's memorized the names of my children, a guy she's never met, so that she can pray for their safety. And you're like, okay, there's a generosity of spirit out there that, yeah, we can be pissed off about the policies of Kamala Harris, and we should be, frankly, because she's a disaster. But we can also be, I think, more hopeful about the country. And that's like a paradigm shift that I've had. And the second thing that I realized is you talk about cities, right? So obviously, you're usually flying into a city, even if you're not as that.

[Tim Dillon]

Woman who can't afford the groceries. Seen any of the dancing at the rallies? Because to be. No, no. To be honest.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah.

[Tim Dillon]

It is not nothing. The dancing is going on. There is a lot of good dancing. And if she were to perhaps see that, she could stop kind of being ungrateful and kind of.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. You know, I don't think this.

[Tim Dillon]

Or heard about Tim Wallace's time in China. That's interesting that he's in China. That's good, I think.

[J.D. Vance]

I don't. I don't know that. I don't know that Kamala Harris dancing at the rallies makes this woman feel better about not being able to afford groceries. Right. And it. Dude, there is just the thing that's different about the Trump rallies versus the Kamala Harris rallies is the fake joy of the Kamala Harris rallies versus, like, we're actually having fun. I mean, people say, like, the media says, all these Trump rallies are so dark. And then you watch a Trump rally for 90 minutes and 30 minutes of it. This is the way in which running for vice president is kind of like being a standup comedian. 30 minutes is being funny as hell because he has a great Sense of humor. And you realize people actually are having a good time. Yeah. They're pissed off about the policies, but. Of Kamala Harris. But they're actually really having fun, and we're having fun out there.

[Tim Dillon]

I. When I watch her rallies, I'm a terrible actor. And I was just in one of the worst films ever made, Joker 2. Well, that's a commonality.

[J.D. Vance]

You have a Kamala Harris.

[Tim Dillon]

Well, you see the people, they're both.

[J.D. Vance]

Really bad at acting.

[Tim Dillon]

Rallies, and they'll be kind of happy. And then the face drops, they go back to this immediately. And you. You go, oh, yeah, Something's. Something feels off. Something's not authentic about it.

[J.D. Vance]

You know, that's definitely true. I've tried to, like, put my finger on what it is about Kamala Harris. Like, the very fraudulent laugh that I find so off putting.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

And it's like the laugh of somebody who just made you really uncomfortable, but then tries to overcorrect by saying, oh, I'm just going to laugh at it. And then that's somehow going to make it better that I just, like, you know, stepped on your foot or, like, ran into your car. Right. That's like the laugh of the Kamala Harris.

[Tim Dillon]

It's like the concept.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. We're bankrupt. To the company, all shapes and sizes are problems.

[Tim Dillon]

Open the border and flood it.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. Well, it reminds me, like, you know, I think I've caused one car accident in my life. I was, like, 16, and, you know, it was late, it was dark. You know, it was really, like, it had been raining. And so I like. It was like a fender bender, you know, ran into this elderly couple probably going 5 miles per hour. And then I get out of the car, and I'm like, ha ha ha. You know, like, trying. Oh, it's okay, guys. We're all fine. That's the Kamala Harris laugh.

[Tim Dillon]

Come on.

[J.D. Vance]

To me, it's the laugh of somebo. It just ran into your car, and it's trying to make it.

[Tim Dillon]

Also, when a. When a reporter asks her a question, it's a substitute teacher giving you homework, and the class is going, you don't want this.

[J.D. Vance]

Oh, no.

[Tim Dillon]

Why are you doing it? You don't want to do it. We don't want you to do it. Play the video. Let's not do it.

[J.D. Vance]

That's right. Let's. Let's just watch where the red fern grows rather than read the book for four years.

[Tim Dillon]

She was not a vocal vice president.

[J.D. Vance]

That's right.

[Tim Dillon]

You know, we barely heard from Biden. We didn't really hear from Kamala. Biden had a very tough debate performance. He was replaced in a way that's. I don't. I mean, I. I liken it to somebody knocking on his door.

[J.D. Vance]

A threat on a threat to democracy.

[Tim Dillon]

Right. Maybe just to throw 2am they knock on his door and he has a sleeping cap on, and he opens it with a candle, and it's Pelosi and Obama, I think this is what I imagine happens. And he opens it up and then they go, you're out. And she'll invoke the 25th. And then Kamala's right behind him, laughing like the joker. And now she's the nominee. Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. That's basically how I imagine it, too. It's. Man. And I honestly think Biden is pissed off about it.

[Tim Dillon]

He seems like there are all of.

[J.D. Vance]

These weird little ways he's wearing. Trump helps us. He wears a Trump hat at the firefighter event. He does this thing where, you know, a couple weeks ago, she was starting one of her big rallies, and he decides to have a press conference 30 seconds into it. Right. So they're all watching Joe Biden and not Kamala Harris. Or he'll say something nice here and there about Donald Trump.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

It would not shock me if Joe Biden votes for Donald Trump.

[Tim Dillon]

I like that he's kind of. He's ornery.

[J.D. Vance]

I do, too.

[Tim Dillon]

He's showing his teeth a little bit and he's having fun. He's not running anymore, and he's an older guy, but he's having fun. He's putting on the Trump hat. He's getting into little fights with people at the rallies.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah, that's right. Well, you know, President Trump said at the Al Smith dinner, he was like, when I was running in this guy, I really hated him. Now I kind of like him.

[Tim Dillon]

No, And I kind of feel like.

[J.D. Vance]

That about Biden because, yeah, the policies have been disastrous. But he has these flashes of honesty about Kamala Harris. And man, the. Okay, you talked about. We gotta go back to something. You talked about Kamala Harris as, like, getting an assignment from the media, from school.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

There are all kinds of weird high school vibes running through the Kamala Harris campaign. Right. So the biggest one is, did you see this rally that she did with Liz Cheney a couple of days ago? Right.

[Tim Dillon]

No, but I love Dick Cheney and the whole Cheney family. And to me, when I think about democracy, I personally think about Dick Cheney. He's a figure from my childhood that I love and respect. Some of the greatest years of My life. Iraq. Abu Ghraib. Dick Cheney. Shout out to Dick Cheney and Liz.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. If you really care about human rights and democracy, Dick Cheney. Nobody better guy. Definitely. So they do this a bit with Liz. Yeah, I thought maybe you were saying that. Cause you didn't want to have a drone land on your house, but all shapes and sizes, okay, so they're doing this event and Kamala Harris gives the affect of a vice president who's just called like the troublesome kid into her office. Right. It's like, you know, you shouldn't be laughing at Donald Trump, Right. You shouldn't think that he's funny. And, man, the joy is gone when you have somebody wagging their finger at the American people, telling them not to laugh. When somebody makes a joke. Like, what the hell are you talking about? Their whole campaign, man, their whole campaign has become so dull and so boring. But I think it's because of what you said. They're not having fun anymore. Right.

[Tim Dillon]

But it's. A lot of people are warning that this will be the final election and there will be no more democracy if you and Trump are elected, there'll be no more democracy. It'll be the final election. And these are like, these are good people. This is Goldman Sachs. This is the Cheney family. This is, you know, a lot of defense contractors.

[J.D. Vance]

So the people with the best interests of the American people at heart.

[Tim Dillon]

Absolutely.

[J.D. Vance]

The people who really keep the American social.

[Tim Dillon]

How do you respond to that when, you know, when you're. You have a multiethnic family and they go, you and Donald Trump are racist and hate different kinds of people because you've criticized having an open border.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. I mean, I can't help but roll my eyes at it at this point. And there was probably a time, honestly six, seven years ago, where I really cared. You know, when my book came out, I really cared what the media said about me. I just don't care anymore. Because they're so obviously full of shit. Right. Like, actually if you look, I mean, even just you talk to, like, working in middle class Latino voters, they hate the open border even more than, like my family from rural Ohio and Kentucky, because they don't like having their wages undercut when the cartels are doing business in their communities. It's the Latinos that are actually the most pissed off about it. So I just kind of roll my eyes at it. I think that you have to have a certain sense of humor about American politics. And it's easy to do when you're running against Kamala Harris and you're running with Donald Trump because as much as he obviously, I mean, look, I think they've done more to him than any presidential candidate in my lifetime. He still actually has an amazing sense of humor about the whole thing. And oftentimes I call him, obviously every day at this point, talking about the campaign, but he always ends up cracking a joke. And I think it's in part because he knows that's what's good for me in that moment, is we gotta laugh about some of this stuff or we're gonna go crazy.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah, there is. Now we're in octo. We've got about two weeks left. So now every single day, there's some article coming out in a publication that Donald Trump said something Hitlerian or about Hitler or about like. So it does seem to me that the hysteria is at a fever pitch.

[J.D. Vance]

It really is.

[Tim Dillon]

What do you think about John Kelly, who did come out and say Trump is a fascist and this is fascism and all of that?

[J.D. Vance]

Well, first of all, the amount of stock the media puts in a disgruntled ex employee. I mean, John Kelly was fired, right? And look, you know, he served his country, but he was fired. And he's pissed off about Trump over that.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

And if you talk to the people who were in the room when Trump allegedly said these things that he said, even like Mike Pence's former chief of staff are saying, it's totally made up. It's a total lie. But here's the really interesting thing, right? Three, four years ago, the media were all calling John Kelly an evil racist for helping to promote Donald Trump's border policies. And now it shows how thin this is. Right? Like Dick Cheney, who I legitimately think is the single worst vice president easily of my lifetime. Right, but effective. Well, no, I mean in the effective at, like, destroying the country. That's what I meant. And maybe that's why he's endorsing Kamala Harris. Finally, somebody's come along who's been even worse than I have is Kamala Harris. But the fact that the media now pretends that he's like some hero of human rights, the guy was a disaster. I mean, we invaded Iraq, we invaded the 20 year quagmire in Afghanistan. All of these Americans who lost their lives, who lost their limbs, that was because of very stupid leadership. And now we're gonna forget about it because the media hates Donald Trump. It's the most insane thing I've seen in politics. Okay, Threat to democracy. I figured out what a threat to democracy is, is when the American People vote for somebody the media doesn't like. Right, right. And that's not like, definitionally, that's not a threat to democracy. That's a fulfillment of democracy. That even though the media lies hysterically about Trump, the American people still want, like, to be able to afford groceries and housing.

[Tim Dillon]

The worldview, whether we call it Cold War liberalism or however we want to frame the worldview, that America is an empire and must continue to be one at all costs, with running up trillions of dollars worth of debt, getting involved in foreign conflicts anywhere from the Ukraine or the Middle east, there are people now saying we need to invade Iran and that if America steps back on the world stage, that it's a power vacuum that's going to be filled by China, by Russia, and that America should continue to pay for the defense of all of these European countries and that America should kind of shoulder that burden. And my generation, we saw Iraq, we saw Afghanistan. We've also seen lots of our friends go away to fight those wars and come back and not have mental health care and not have support from the government. We don't feel safer because we invaded Iraq. We don't feel safer because we spent 20 years in Afghanistan. I don't know what we spent 20 years doing. But all the people. But, you know, the 10 richest counties in America are in Virginia. And there's something interesting about that fact that all of those people are dependent upon America constantly having enemies.

[J.D. Vance]

And not like Virginia, coal country. Right. No, the collar counties are in.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah. Around D.C. and all of these people have an investment in the United States of America continually going to war. And those are the people who seem to be speaking out the loudest.

[J.D. Vance]

Exactly.

[Tim Dillon]

Against your candidacy and Trump's candidacy.

[J.D. Vance]

Exactly.

[Tim Dillon]

Because you threaten something, a power structure that has been in place for a very long time. You know, this has been spoken about by, you know, the military industrial complex. Eisenhower famously spoke about it. I believe it's fdr. Maybe it was tr. Somebody said a financial element in the government has owned it since the days of Andrew Jackson. Meaning there are agendas that other people have now. Is that why we're seeing people like Dick Cheney and people like Kamala Harris where you would think they don't have much in common on the same side? Is it because that positioning is so important and integral to the amount of money being made? And are you guys the greatest enemy of both of those factions of those parties?

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah, that's how I think about it. So I think there are three issues where for 40 years, Republicans and Democrats have Basically fundamentally agreed. And I'll list them an issue of importance to that. You know, call it the uniparty, call it the conventional wisdom. Number one is foreign policy. That we should basically stick our nose in every foreign conflict. And that doesn't mean we should never get involved, of course, but by and large, most of the wars that we've fought over the last 40 years have been a total disaster for the American people and frankly for a lot of the countries we've been fighting. And so foreign policy is the first and most important issue to that consensus. The second most important issue is trade, right? Massive investment in what I would call shipping our industrial base to countries like China and Mexico, which has eviscerated the American middle class, but it's made a lot of bankers rich. And then the third thing is immigration, right? The idea that you should have effectively unlimited borders checked only by the political will, right? Every political party has tried to make it easier to bring more and more people into the United States of America. Now the interesting thing is that on all three of those issues on immigration, trade and foreign policy, the American people have consistently been out of step with their leadership and they keep on not actually having an alternative. Like who has been the candidate of free trade is not good for the American middle class? Who's been the candidate of we've got to check our immigration system? Who's been the candidate of stopping the stupid wars? Basically nobody in 40 years, with the lone exception of my running mate of Donald J. Trump. Okay? So that's where we are. And you're right, that's why Kamala Harris and Dick Cheney, and that's why all these people hate him. I think it's interesting, Tim, to think about the motivations here because two years ago I would have said it's all financial, right? Dick Cheney, he's getting rich from these wars. Kamala Harris's donors are getting rich from these wars. And that's like the only reason why they're supporting them. For what it's worth, I do think there's an element of truth to that. Right. Eisenhower warned about this. The military industrial complex has its own self fulfilling momentum. But I think there's a second thing that I've picked up on and a lot of my Senate colleagues disagree with me on foreign policy. They're very good people. There's like this psychological Post World War II, you called it cold war liberalism, where these guys remember when America could do anything, we were like the agents of peace in some cases, in some cases we weren't. But we could just fix the world purely through American will. And they grew up in that world. And they're having psychological difficulty accommodating to a world where China has gotten more powerful in part because of their policies, Russia has gotten more powerful in part because of their policies. And we can't just dictate everything. We can't tell everybody how to behave anymore. Because sometimes what happens is we'll try to tell another country what to do and they'll say this, right? And that's very, very hard for these guys to wake up to the reality that we're in. You know, we were in what was called a unipolar world, right? America was the only superpower.

[Tim Dillon]

We were for a while.

[J.D. Vance]

We were for a long time.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Now we're still the lone superpower, but other countries are catching up. And I think the way to preserve our own influence, but more importantly to preserve the prosperity of our own people, is to recognize the reality that we're living in. A lot of people can't. I mean, like, you know, they go back to, you know, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall, right? Ronald Reagan's big moment, or, you know, George H.W. bush. I mean, it was like a blip on the radar for us to completely crush Saddam Hussein and kick him out of Kuwait, right? They want to go back to the glory days when America could do everything and be all things. They got to wake up to the world of resource constraints. And frankly, the reason why we're not as powerful in relative terms as we were 30 years ago is because they screwed up. Right? That's where the trade and immigration issue comes back, is they want to pursue a foreign policy that was built on the back of smart trade and smart immigration policy. They hollowed out the American middle class. They destroyed the industrial base of our country. Crazy statistic. China. We're still the biggest economy in the world. China is 32% of global manufacturing GDP. Okay? We're 18% of global manufacturing GDP. So even though we're still by far the biggest economy in the world, China makes nearly twice as many manufactured goods as we do. That is the engine of real economic prosperity, is manufacturing. These guys want us to fight wars like it's 1954. It's not 1954. And thanks in large part to them.

[Tim Dillon]

How do you change that? How do you shift that? That's very difficult, right, because you have. You have a lot of unelected people. We have 19 intelligence agencies. I think I. I think it's around.

[J.D. Vance]

That sounds.

[Tim Dillon]

I think it's about 19, which I don't think is a lot. I don't think it's enough personally, but it's. There's 19 of them.

[J.D. Vance]

Or, you know, I think we had 22 intelligence agencies. That's actually when we really have figured out this all.

[Tim Dillon]

That's who. Because everybody's worried that you and Trump are going to fire some of those people. And that's what I think most Americans are worried about. I think most people are worried about the CIA and government employees. My parents are worried about the Central Intelligence Agency and if they're making enough money. This is what my grandmother worries about. What do you say to people that are worried about people at the nsa? No. And the dia, the Directorate of Intelligence people. Forget about that one. It's a little room in the bigger one.

[J.D. Vance]

Look, I want to speak from the heart here to my fellow Americans who are really worried that a CIA bureaucrat making $190,000 a year might have to find a job in the private sector. I recognize that is the biggest crisis facing my fellow Americans. Not that they can't afford groceries and housing, of course. Right. So people can eat less. Honestly.

[Tim Dillon]

So that Homeland Security can be a little bigger.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. Home. So that homeless.

[Tim Dillon]

Knowing that my neighbors are getting spied on. I like it. I like people getting on lists.

[J.D. Vance]

Well, it's actually really, you know, a win win. Right. Something I'll say in Kamala Harris's defense is, yes, she's made it harder for Americans to afford housing, but that's been in the service so the CIA can more easily spy on her fellow American. Right. So again, this is, this is where you're a big. Sometimes there's trade offs and sometimes you're.

[Tim Dillon]

A big critic of online censorship. Don't you realize it's good for people? Don't you realize it's to not be.

[J.D. Vance]

Able to speak their mind?

[Tim Dillon]

You know, people don't even know what they want to say half the time. Why not have a service that use like an AI, where you speak into it and it rearranges it so it gets what you mean?

[J.D. Vance]

I. Look, I, I'm actually, I, I would be okay if we just censored Kamala Harris, right? I think she would be okay with that, too. I think she'd be better in the polls if she just didn't say anything. That was, of course, the.

[Tim Dillon]

Have you met her? She's probably fun.

[J.D. Vance]

I've, I've.

[Tim Dillon]

She's fun.

[J.D. Vance]

You know who's fun?

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

You know, I bet it's fun. And I like this is a rare moment of partisanship. No, no, no.

[Tim Dillon]

Okay.

[J.D. Vance]

Hunter Biden.

[Tim Dillon]

Well, of course I would. With all due respect to you, I would vote for him over anyone in the race. Just because if we're going to end this thing, let's do it quick. Let's do it in six months.

[J.D. Vance]

Oh, man. My cousin is like a hardcore Republican, and she's like, you know what I can't get behind you guys on is the anti Hunter Biden stuff.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Like that guy.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

I guarantee he's fun. He's a fun guy to hang out with. Right. I don't know about. I've met Kamala Harris once. I honestly don't know.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah. If she's fine.

[J.D. Vance]

There's too much of a school marm thing going on. I just don't. I don't think that that would necessarily.

[Tim Dillon]

So how do you deal? You have all these. You have a bunch.

[J.D. Vance]

Kamala Harris is the person who, when you tell a really funny joke.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

She, like, says, well, that was. That was, like, kind of offensive.

[Tim Dillon]

Right?

[J.D. Vance]

Right.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah.

[Tim Dillon]

Then I look at her and I go, but you're a genius. And then she likes me again. Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Hunter Biden. If you say. If you tell a really offensive joke, he laughs his ass off and says, let's do another show.

[Tim Dillon]

Let's do it again.

[Kamala Harris]

Let's light the house on fire.

[Tim Dillon]

So how do you deal with this? You get into office now, people are all mad about Project 2025. People don't like it because it's a Heritage foundation. Wrote a whole thing saying that you're going to dismantle the entire federal government. And you know, this.

[J.D. Vance]

This is the craziest thing to me. So Project 2020. So heritage is a nonprofit with no affiliation with the Trump campaign. That's right. They wrote a 900 page document. Okay. If you take any 900 page document that exists anywhere in the world, I'm gonna find something that I hate about it and something that I like about it. Right, right. So they've tried to pick up every little thing that is unpopular and say, this is Trump's agenda. It has nothing to do with Trump. But to your point, like, yeah, Donald Trump and I really do want to make the federal bureaucracy smaller. We think there are way too many bureaucrats collecting a check. We think that's bad for Americans because they have to pay those people's salaries. But most importantly, it's bad for Americans. Sometimes they're doing things like spying on their fellow citizens, which is fundamentally bad. Okay, so here's a crazy Story. And I just learned more about this in the past couple days. There was a Wall Street Journal story about how like the Chinese had hacked into the Verizon and AT&T networks. Okay. You probably didn't see the story. It didn't make a whole lot of waves. My understanding is that part of the infrastructure that they hacked into was built on top of surveillance systems that were implemented in 2001. Patriot act style stuff. So we're worried about the civil libertarian element of that, and rightfully so. I don't want American citizens to be spied on. But the more important in some ways is we're creating a back door in our own technology networks that our enemies are now using. That's crazy. Right? And again, no one is going to accept responsibility for it. No one's going to say, oh, we screwed up, let's do something different. This is the biggest problem I have, like all policy disagreements aside, the refusal of people to take responsibility and say, you know what, I screwed up.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

Okay. That is the biggest thing that's messed up about American government politics. Like, look, I had a lot of friends. I mean, I was 18 years old. What the hell did I know? I supported the Iraq war when I was 18 years old.

[Tim Dillon]

Me too.

[J.D. Vance]

I feel bad about, about that.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Like I, I genuinely feel bad that as a high school senior in Middletown, Ohio who then enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Like, I did my part, I feel bad about it.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

There were people in Washington I stopped short of that.

[Tim Dillon]

I was, I supported it in backyards.

[Kamala Harris]

Yelling, watching a lot of Fox, but I stopped, quite sure.

[J.D. Vance]

Look, man, we, yeah, we all have.

[Kamala Harris]

We all do our own serve in.

[J.D. Vance]

Our, in our own roles.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

We all have a part to play. But the guys who pushed it, yeah, they're still collecting multi hundred thousand dollar a year salaries.

[Tim Dillon]

They're on msnbc.

[J.D. Vance]

They're all msnbc. They still have influence and they've never said we screwed up. Like that is the thing that bothers me the Most about Washington D.C. is nobody accepting responsibility for failure. Because if you can't do that, you can't fix the problem.

[Tim Dillon]

Well, now it seems to be that we're shoehorning domestic issues into foreign policy. Meaning that you can no longer sell a war by saying we're there to democratize a country or we are there to preemptively invade a country before they attack us. But we can say we are there so that drag queens in whatever in Russia can have more of a say.

[J.D. Vance]

Well, you asked why we were in Afghanistan for 20 years. It's like because they really, the Afghanis really need to learn about gender studies and the important of the non binary gender approach that we have in the United States of America. You think I'm kidding? Your tax dollars, my tax dollars were funding programs in a country where a lot of people didn't have running water. Were funding programs to teach people that there were non binary genders out there.

[Tim Dillon]

That I do agree with because it is fun and I do want to.

[Kamala Harris]

See someone with a Kalistikov.

[J.D. Vance]

I'm sure it was really standing in.

[Tim Dillon]

The rubble and then someone explaining that to them, to me is fun and that I support that.

[J.D. Vance]

I'm sure the Taliban had a lot of fun learning about 87 genders. That's probably true.

[Tim Dillon]

Why can't a 7 year old consent to a life altering medical surgery? Is it because you guys are fascist? I don't understand. Like why wouldn't you allow an 8 year old to fully transition?

[J.D. Vance]

Not only that, but they want us to use tax dollars to try to force other countries to follow this ridiculous pathway.

[Tim Dillon]

Yes.

[J.D. Vance]

Which by the way, like I know a little bit about your politics. I know you're like pretty libertarian. Like this is actually something I agreed with the old guard left about that we should be, whether it's in defense or whether it's in medical industry, we should be worried about when a profit motivated entity tries to manipulate government policy. And right now we have pharma companies making billions of dollars off of cross sex hormones for children. And nobody on the left is like, huh, that's kind of weird that the very people who are getting rich off of this are also lobbying the American Medical association and the US government to force this on American citizens.

[Tim Dillon]

It should have, I think it should have stopped the show. Glee was great. Everyone was singing and everyone was happy. No, it truly was. And like people weren't, it wasn't so contentious. But then it got to a point where somebody like me, who's been a gay out of the closet person for 15 years, I'm going, why in God's name would a 5 year old, a 7 year old, a 12 year old, a 14 year old, be taking puberty, blocking hormones, be transitioning, be making leave kids alone, leave people alone. It's very simple. A lot of gay people feel that way. There are trans people that feel that way. There are people all over the spectrum that feel that way. None of them are ever listened to. Yes, it is the most extreme, loudest voices in that movement that are listened to only.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah, well, what really radicalized me on this issue was I was actually talking to a friend who, you know, like, really disagrees with my views on transgender politics. And I mean, frankly, like kind of rejected our friendship because I came out against this. I came out in support of banning gender transition for minors during my Senate campaign. And like, what really radicalized actually is during that conversation, she said something to me that I was like, wait a second, is this real? She said the hormonal therapy for minors is totally reversible. Right. So the way they sell this is it just delays puberty. But then if you've, you know, you stop taking the drugs, everything resumes as normal. That is totally and profoundly false.

[Tim Dillon]

It can't be true.

[J.D. Vance]

There's no way that when I heard it, I was like, that sounds totally effing crazy. Yeah, it turns out, let's say that was crazy.

[Tim Dillon]

Also not a great policy.

[J.D. Vance]

Exactly.

[Tim Dillon]

Even if it was true, probably not good.

[J.D. Vance]

Even if it was probably not good because like, you know, you don't want 30 year olds going through puberty. Right. But like, even if it was true, problem. But it's not true. Like kids have permanent sexual dysfunction. Permanent, like serious health problems. It's terrible when they take this stuff which is totally predictable. Like again, one of the lifelong or like the humanity long lessons we should take is that when we intervene in things in unexpected ways, whether it's a war or trying to interrupt a biological process, we very often screw up. Right. You need evidence before you really do something else.

[Tim Dillon]

I don't know how we got in this country too. Why can't a 9 year old girl have. Have a beard? I don't know where from Glee everyone's saying was gay enough, perhaps too gay. And then it got. It went to a place but like happy.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah, it was. Yeah. So, okay, okay. I have actually heard this and I, you know, I'm, I'm not a gay guy, but I've heard this from gay friends of mine.

[Tim Dillon]

Man, that. Damn it, we would have. You want to talk about virality? I'm talking about going viral.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah, that would have made some, some headlines.

[Kamala Harris]

Do you think you know who will win the presidential election or how many seats the Democrats Republicans will win in the House or Senate? Well, there's finally a legal way to bet on the outcome of these elections via a platform called Kalshi. Kalshi is the first legal exchange where you can bet on any event, including but not limited to elections.

[Tim Dillon]

Kalshi went to court and won legal approval for election betting for the first.

[Kamala Harris]

Time in over 100 years. They have markets on who will win the presidential election, who will control the House and Senate, who will win swing states and more. Kalshi is already being used by over hundreds of thousands of people and has facilitated over 1 billion worth of trades. Let's take an example. Right now Trump and Kamala are trading at about 5050 meaning if you place a bet on either, you will double your money.

[Tim Dillon]

If you're.

[Kamala Harris]

If you end up winning, that's pretty good. So put your money where your mouth is and sign up using college.com Tim I love this site. I love chance, I love speculation. I make a lot of predictions. A lot of them come out true. I'm using this site to make lots of money and I think you should too. I think I know things. I think I have the inside track. Do you? So put your money where your mouth is and sign up using Kalchi.com TM and get $20 bonus when you deposit $100 using their mobile app. Election day is coming up on November 5th. 30% of registered voters don't turn out to vote and only 20% of people under 30 voted in the last election. There's a website, sendthevote.org Tim that makes registering to vote easy. It's nonpartisan, meaning they don't care who you're voting for. They just want to ensure that you can vote. Head to sendthevote.org Tim and they'll help you sign up, register and check if you're all set. You can also text Tim 233022 to learn more. That's Tim 233022 do not be another no show statistic because I'll tell you right now, voting is a right that people have died for and you should do it. And you can go to this website, sendthevote.org jim and it makes registering to vote easy because you know what wasn't easy? The Civil War, the Revolutionary War, or any of the wars. One, two Spanish American. It doesn't. The point is this. The Korean War, I don't know if that impacted voting. But here's the thing. Voting is cool. It's what the cool kids are doing.

[J.D. Vance]

But I've talked to this about gay friends who feel like very personally affronted about this because they feel like if they were, you know, a gay kid and they were 14 years old and maybe they're confused. Like by the way, like a lot of teenagers, even a lot of non gay teenagers are confused because being a teenager is like inherently confusing.

[Tim Dillon]

That's right.

[J.D. Vance]

But they're worried about, like, would somebody have had them transition?

[Tim Dillon]

Of course, yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

In some ways it's like the new. It's like the pharmaceutical answer to conversion therapy, right? Is, oh, no, no, no, no. You know, you're not gay, you're a totally different gender. No, the other thing I don't get about this, man, like, the inconsistency here is crazy where it's. They want to simultaneously tell me that the gendered binary binary is screwed up, that male and female is way too simple, that there's all this crap in the middle. But like, when you have a person go on cross sex hormones, they put on super petite dresses and high heels and they act like the most stereotypical version of a girl, a male transitioning to female. It's like, okay, well, wait a second. Is the gendered stereotypical binary bad or is it actually good? Because every time somebody takes these hormones, they start acting like Dylan Mulvaney.

[Tim Dillon]

No, what happens, I think when we've allowed the debate to be defined by a very extreme portion who. It's not about logic. It's about people throwing tantrums and people going, you have to agree with me. I'm going to compel you to agree with me. Absolutely. Kids should be left alone. My parents were boomers. I was ignored. I was left alone to do, you know, whatever. And you know, perhaps that's not great, but we shouldn't be telling you turned out okay. I turned out fine.

[Kamala Harris]

You know, now I'm not the vice.

[Tim Dillon]

President, you know what I mean? But you know, I have a Rolls.

[Kamala Harris]

Royce, so here's, you know, but the.

[J.D. Vance]

Thing is, I think you're winning in that trade off. I can't even drive anymore, thanks to the Secret Service.

[Tim Dillon]

It's going to get blown up soon. It's going to be. But, but I'll tell you this, I don't see why we're telling kids about critical race theory or gender theory. Why are we, why are we not educating people in math, in reading and science? Why are we, why are we indoctrinating children? And I don't know too many people who are for that. If you meet people in the real world, none of them go, that's correct. Five year olds should learn about identity politics. And nobody's for that.

[J.D. Vance]

No, nobody is.

[Tim Dillon]

Very few people are.

[J.D. Vance]

And this one I actually feel very personally passionate about because this affects my family. Right?

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

And my wife and I talk about this all the time. So. Her parents, born and raised in South India, they moved to San Diego a couple years before she was born. So she's born and raised in San Diego, right? Okay, so she is Indian American, but she's like the most assimilated. Like, she's an American, right? Fundamentally, she's an American. And we talk about, like, okay, we were able to fall in love in part because we grew up in the 90s where everybody was like, yeah, okay, it's not perfect. Obviously there's still racism out there, but like, you know, judge people based on who they are, not on these like immutable characteristics on their skin color. Just, just judge people based on whether you have similar values, et cetera, et cetera, Right? And because of that, we met, fell in love, we had a family like my family. Like my family's always been welcome to her and vice versa. And my mom actually put this in a very interesting way that like, you know, the more that she's noticed this in the last few years, that people are obsessed that we have mixed race children, right? And are they brown, are they white, are they Indian, are they American? And my mom's just like, well, they're our babies, right? That's who they are. They're our babies. I think that if you really enflame the racial consciousness of people, if they fundamentally think of themselves not as human beings or as Americans, but as members of a racial group, that's just gonna fundamentally lead to strife, right? Like you want to, in some ways, like you want to emphasize the commonality that we have as fellow citizens. You don't want to say, okay, you're black, so this means this thing about you and that thing about you and you're white. So this means something totally different. And I just, that obviously to me, just common sense would lead to conflict. And again, I'm not saying it was perfect, but if you look at both black and white Americans, they say that race relations are worse now than they were 20 years ago. So we've ran this experiment of hyper identity politics, focused racial consciousness, right? Of constantly emphasizing, if you're black, you're oppressed, if you're white, you're an oppressor, if you're black, you're colonized, if you're white, you're the colonizer. We've run this experiment now for 20 years. It's bullshit, it didn't work. It's made people hate each other. Let's get back to just trying to emphasize that we're all human beings, we're all Americans 1000%.

[Tim Dillon]

Now let's talk about a topic slightly less controversial. Israel because no one seems to have any issues with anything they do, which I like, because some countries, people get angry at. Obviously, what happens on October 7th is a nightmare. Then you have a response to that, which was also a nightmare. You have a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. You have displacement of people. You have a looming, potentially larger war in the Middle east with Iran. You're the vice president. How does the Trump administration handle what could be a massive, you know, Mideast war? You know, after everything, obviously, we just talked about, about, like, getting America back on track and figuring out how to allocate resources to people in this country. How do we handle that?

[J.D. Vance]

Well, I mean, a couple of principles, right? So obviously, you know, Israel has the right to defend itself, but America's interest is sometimes going to be distinct. Like, sometimes we're going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes we're going to have distinct interests. And our interest, I think, very much is in not going to war with Iran. Right, right. It would be huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country. And it's interesting to me when the October 7 thing happened, and like, you know, we have a couple of dear friends who live in Israel. Actually, one of my wife's very good friends she grew up with married an Israeli guy. Like, you know, we're, like, worried about our friends. And in the reaction to it, what I noticed is that American, you know, American pro Israel people or people who fashioned themselves as pro Israel were actually much more militaristic than the Israelis who were living in Israel. Right. The Israelis were like, okay, Hamas just attacked us. We're going to go really screw Hamas up. And of course, yeah, there's a humanitarian side of that, and we want to try to minimize civilian casualties. But. But like, you had Americans saying, oh, this is really. I mean, you know, this attack happened on Putin's birthday, right? So we need to go to war against Russia, and obviously the Iranians funded part of this, so we need to go to war with Iran. We just have to be smarter, right? We have to be smarter. Now, I don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. And I think we should be, like, very strongly encouraging the Iranians and using all, you know, all the influence that we have to encourage them to not have a nuclear weapon. I think nuclear proliferation is just a bad idea. Enough people have nukes, and the more people that have nukes, I think the greater the risk of nuclear war. But we just have to be smart about it. And I actually think that, like, what this ultimately looks like, what if they.

[Tim Dillon]

Promised not to use it. Like, if you just had one, a fake one, something like that.

[J.D. Vance]

Fake one, fine. They can have a fake one. Something to look at, not a real one.

[Tim Dillon]

Kind of enjoy.

[J.D. Vance]

I mean. Okay, here's the way I think about it. So this is, again, where smart diplomacy really matters. And something that Trump didn't get enough credit for is the Abraham Accords. Okay, what is the Abraham Accords? Fundamentally, it's Israel entering into a alliance. Right. Even though they kind of hate each other. Israel entering into an alliance with Gulf Arab states.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

Now, why would they do that since they hate each other? Because they both have a shared enemy in Iran. Right. And again, I'm not saying we stick ourselves into the Middle east and start a war here, but, like, we recognize, okay, Israelis, Gulf Arab states don't like Iran. So let the Israelis and the Gulf Arab states provide the counterbalance to Iran. America doesn't have to constantly police every region of the world. We should empower people to police their own regions of the world. Right? And I. And one, we would save a lot of money. Two, we'd save a lot of focus. But unfortunately, I think Harris, she's got this weird thing where I actually think she kind of likes war. Maybe she feel like. She feels like a tough guy about it. I don't know why it is, but they've actually pursued. Even though they say they want to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, they pursue the pathway that maximizes those casualties. They say that they're pro Israel. They've pursued the pathway that has prolonged the war as long as possible, which is bad for Israel. And they seem to be sort of sleepwalking us into war with Iran. It's like the dumbest of all possible worlds.

[Tim Dillon]

Is there a way to avoid a conflict between China and Taiwan?

[J.D. Vance]

I hope so, man. I really do, because it would be catastrophic. It would be. My whole argument with Russia and Ukraine is, yeah, okay, Russia shouldn't have invaded Ukraine, but a lot of innocent people were getting killed. Our interest is in peace. But part of that is motivated by my view that Ukraine is not nearly as important to us as other regions of the world. Right. Just putting my cards on the table. Taiwan makes so much of the computer chips, which is such a driver of all economic growth, that if the Chinese took over Taiwan, it would be really bad for us. That's what I think. My hope is that the Chinese recognize that it would be so costly to invade Taiwan, that it's just not worth it. Right? And I think our policy, Donald Trump's policy of yes, we're competitors with China, but we're also going to engage in smart diplomacy from time to time. Is the way to prevent, prevent China from invading Taiwan. What I really worry about actually is so we win in a couple weeks. And I do think we're going to win. I really worry the next couple of months. Do the Chinese try to do something? Because if there was ever a time when America was at its weakest, it's with Joe Biden sort of asleep at the wheel. Kamala Harris licking her wounds from an election loss. And if they really want it, maybe they try to make a play for it in the next couple of months. I hope they don't. But we can't really control what they do.

[Tim Dillon]

It is an interesting time right now because we are two weeks out. And this episode will come out Saturday from this, this Saturday, tomorrow. A momentous election. We had an assassination attempt on Donald Trump's life. Are couple, A couple of them crazy. It's crazy. Are you satisfied with the accountability on the first attempt?

[J.D. Vance]

No, I'm not. And look, my understanding is that, frankly, the Trump campaign had requested additional resources, and those resource requests were very often denied. And what the Biden folks, what the Harris folks have been saying as well, some of those requests were granted. Yes, some of them were, but not all of them. Right. And so I think there was very serious oversight on that side of it. I mean, look, obviously somebody screwed up because the guy was 120 yards away. Are you a shooter? No. Okay. So, so, I mean, I, I'm, I'm, you know, I, I served in the Marines. I'm a pretty good shot within it.

[Tim Dillon]

I've gone to fields.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah.

[Tim Dillon]

I've gone to, like, open fields and kind of walked around like a, kind of like a fair. I've never climbed on a roof and shot someone. Yeah, not the President.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. No, I mean, I didn't fly driving. I mean, like a sportsman, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I was asking if you had a confirmed kill. Yeah. But the thing is, if you are a sportsman or you are a person who goes to range and shoots 120 yards with an AR15 is a pot shot. I mean, I could literally hit a silver dollar from 125 yards with an AR15. And. Okay, so somebody clearly screwed up. Right. And obviously I've gotten to know the Secret Service over the last three months. The guys on my detail, universally super professional, good guys. But it's not the guys on the ground who are protecting the President. It's all the people who are Canvassing the side around him. It's the leadership that refused to grant resources. And I actually think it's a huge scandal. Why isn't Congress, Why isn't the Harris administration being more forthcoming about what happened? They seem to be in cover your ass mode when the American people just need to actually learn some details about how a guy got so close to the president. United States.

[Tim Dillon]

I mean, listen, obviously there's a lot of people in the intelligence community that are incredible patriots who are grateful for what they do and they've kept America.

[J.D. Vance]

Safe, but some of them aren't.

[Tim Dillon]

Some of them aren't. And my question is, when you have social media companies agree to censor a story about Hunter Biden's laptop, and because it is supposedly Russian disinformation, that request is signed onto by top members of the intelligence community, the current and former, and they are spreading the narrative that it is a Russian hoax of a story. Is that election interference by members of the intelligence community. What does that say about the democratic process in this country? These are the people that are lecturing constantly about democracy and how important it is and what a threat you are and President Trump to democracy. There's no accountability. Have they said sorry? I mean, has anyone, you know, like.

[J.D. Vance]

They haven't said sorry. None of them have lost their security clearance. Right. Despite participating in a massive hoax. And look, I firmly believe, and I've seen independent analysis that suggests this, that if the American people had known the full truth about the Hunter Biden laptop because it implicated Joe Biden himself in potentially criminal, but at least corrupt wrongdoing. Right? So I think it would have shifted the election. I think Donald Trump would be the President of the United States right now. And, you know, this is always why I get into it with the media, and they say, oh, there's no evidence that this thing and this thing happened. Well, there might not be any evidence that, like Dominion hacked the voting machines, but there's sure as hell evidence that our intelligence community conspired with big tech to literally control the flow of information in the days and weeks before an election, that's a way bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump making a joke that you don't like. And yet we don't talk about that. And while we're on the subject of threats to democracy, the craziest thing that happened in the Trump administration, in my view, in terms of threat to democracy is, and there was a New York Times story about this, that the leading generals in our country were lying to Donald Trump about troop redeployments. In Syria so that they could say that we were drawing troop levels down, but in reality we weren't. Right. They were staggering how they did the redeployment deployments to hide from the commander in chief what they were actually doing with the military. Like the most fundamental principle going back to George Washington is civilian control of the military. The elected president is the commander in chief. You had generals in particular Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, lying to Donald Trump. That's a threat to democracy. Not when Donald Trump, like, makes a joke at a rally.

[Tim Dillon]

Who are these people working for if not the President of the United States?

[J.D. Vance]

Well, they're working for the permanent bureaucracy. People call it the deep state. Like, what the deep state is, is just when you have an organization that becomes self perpetuating. These people have military contracts, they have corporate board seats. That all becomes part of who they're really serving. And again, people are good at lying to themselves. Do I think that Mark Milley woke up every day saying, oh, I'm, I'm serving the military industrial complex and I can't wait to get my Raytheon board seat? No, he wasn't thinking that way. He was thinking that true democracy was the opposite of whatever Donald Trump wanted to happen. But in reality, Mark Milley doesn't determine what democracy is. The American people determine that. And so when the American people make a decision, you have to respect that decision, even if you don't like the guy that they ultimately elected. But I really, this is like the psychological trick that's been played on people like Dick Cheney and Kamala Harris. And I think they're all, you know, they all participate in it, but they're all honestly kind of victims of it too, is that they've convinced themselves that the real threat to American democracy, it's not when, like the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman disobeys the elected president. It's when the elected president does something they don't like. I think that psychological trick is at the heart of a lot of our problems.

[Tim Dillon]

Is it going to be difficult to secure a border and to deport people who are here illegally, some of whom may have committed crimes? Obviously there's been instances of people who've been murdered by people that are here illegally. How does that work? Are you able to do that? Does that, Is that, you know, possible? And what would that look like?

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah, so I'm asked this question all the time, and I joked with a reporter who said, well, you know, you can't possibly deport 25 million people, that's too many people. And I said, it's kind of like, you know, you have like a Big Mac and you say, you can't possibly eat that whole thing. It's bigger than your mouth, right? It's like. Well, the way you do it is you take one bite and then a second bite and then a third bite. And that's how I think about deportations here, is you start with the most hardened criminals, about 425,000 violent illegal alien criminals. And we know where most of them are because they've committed crimes, right? So you do law enforcement. You go and get those people, you send them back to where they came from, and that's where you start. But then, yeah, you've got to deport illegal aliens. If you're not willing to deport the people who came here illegally, especially those who came here over the last few years, then you're not going to have a border. And it's just basic law enforcement, right? I mean, people reveal themselves as illegal aliens all the time. You know, they try to apply. Like, there's a lot of Social Security fraud that happens in our country where somebody. And I've had friends where their Social Security number was stolen. That Social Security number was used to get like a driver's license or a work permit or something like that. And then when they go and say, oh, I think my. I think I've had identity fraud committed against me, the Social Security administration will tell them, oh, we have to respect the privacy of the people who defrauded you and stole your Social Security number. Okay, well, when you defraud somebody and steal their Social Security number, deport those people, right? And then the final point is you gotta make it harder for illegal aliens to work in the country in the first place, right? Because then a lot of people will just go back home if they can't. And I think it's really important. Like, I think one of the biggest and most pernicious effects of illegal immigration of Kamala Harris open border is it means that millions and millions of people are willing to work under the table. But that means a lot of Americans aren't getting good jobs because you have illegal aliens who are willing to work for much lower wages.

[Tim Dillon]

Do you worry at all about Aspen, about Palm beach, about Greenwich, Connecticut or Southampton, where I have a home?

[J.D. Vance]

With all due respect, I think it's.

[Tim Dillon]

A little disgusting that you would try to make us pay American workers a wage to do things that other people wouldn't do. It's a little short sighted.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah, I Mean, look, I want to.

[Tim Dillon]

Say the Chamber of Commerce is bringing these people in, clearly because they're humanitarian.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah, that's right.

[Tim Dillon]

And the Koch family, what changed in the Democratic Party? Bernie Sanders was asked about this. He said it is a Koch brothers fantasy to have an open border. Yes, it'll drive down wages for. Bill Clinton said it's a country of laws. That's a little fun. But he said that maybe it was. It was maybe at one time. What changed in the Democratic Party and also a lot of elements of the Republican Party for many, many years. The libertarian pro business wing of the Republican Party is staunchly pro immigration. And they have united with kind of the far left of the Democratic Party, which has become a lot of the Democratic Party. And this idea that any restrictions on immigration are racist, the idea of a border is racist. The idea of a process of which people can come into the country is insane. How did that happen?

[J.D. Vance]

I mean, look, this is so crazy to me where you have people in Aspen that are paying their nanny borderline poverty wages.

[Tim Dillon]

That's right.

[J.D. Vance]

And it's survivable for two reasons. One, because the nanny lives in a crowded apartment with like six other people. Right. And two, because that nanny is receiving welfare benefits from American taxpayers.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

So these people are having their lifestyles subsidized. They're paying their nanny's poverty wages. And their response to it is to say that you're racist if you think this arrangement is bad. Right. The people who are paying the taxes, who are funding the welfare state so that you can have a poverty wage nanny or a poverty wage house cleaner, they're racist.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

And not. They just want a safe country. And they don't want people to come to our country who they have to pay welfare benefits. And most importantly, they don't want somebody taking away their jobs. I think it's the most disgusting thing, man. And look, my heart breaks for the poor people of Aspen and West Hollywood who can't. Who would.

[Tim Dillon]

There's not that much money in my.

[J.D. Vance]

Bel Air and Malibu. Who would have to pay their nannies a livable wage.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

I mean, let's. They're obviously the most important people, but.

[Tim Dillon]

These are jobs Americans won't do. And by that I mean retail, wholesale gardening, childcare, working anywhere. These are jobs Americans, because that's what I was told.

[J.D. Vance]

That's the argument growing up that Americans.

[Tim Dillon]

Will only one job and finance.

[J.D. Vance]

That's right. My favorite is construction. Right. Americans won't build houses. And it's actually a totally reasonable argument. If you Think about it. Because in the 1960s when we had low levels of illegal immigration, there were no homes being built. Right. Mass homelessness in the United States of America in 1964, until we created this housing oasis by bringing in millions of illegal aliens. The real truth, of course, is there are jobs Americans won't do at certain wages.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

And so the solution to that problem is to raise wages for working people, to get more of them into the labor force and not to constantly import this surf class. It's also, man, this is very corrosive to like the idea of American democracy. Right. Small D American democracy. Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Go back to the original founding fathers. They wanted there to be commonality across citizens. Right. They wanted smart people who were paying attention to the issues. They wanted, whether you were a worker or a business owner or a farmer or a farmhand, they wanted some similarity across all American classes. If you have a permanent class of low wage serfs, many of whom don't even speak English, that destroys the citizenship ethos that makes our democracy possible in the first place. These people don't care because they want the cheap labor. I care because I love my country.

[Tim Dillon]

A lot of people look at America more as a financial opportunity.

[J.D. Vance]

Exactly.

[Tim Dillon]

Than a country.

[J.D. Vance]

And it's not, it can't be that. Right. American citizenship cannot just be a bunch of people who like, work and make financial transactions with one another. You don't go and fight wars because like the guy down the street makes a lot of money trading derivatives on Wall Street. Right. You go and fight wars if you have a nation that you believe in and importantly, if you have faith that your leaders are only going to send you to fight a war when they have to.

[Tim Dillon]

And this is not.

[J.D. Vance]

And that's what's been broken.

[Tim Dillon]

Right. This is not only America, it's countries all over the world, all over Europe. Globalization, the benefits of it have been unevenly distributed, to say the least. You have a class of people that are. Many of them own assets and they've seen the value of those assets increase. Many of them are invested in the market and they're incredibly happy with the freedom to move capital around the world.

[J.D. Vance]

Exactly.

[Tim Dillon]

And make lots and lots of money. But the citizens of the countries that they live, their standards of living have been lowered and lowered and lowered. And this is not. It's not only America, it's this financial architecture that seems to be replacing people's cultures, histories and idea of what a nation is.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. And the real economy too. Right. We used to make stuff and now we're trading derivatives and shipping dollars overseas, but also shipping assets overseas, where we used to make that stuff in the United States. I mean, crazy statistic. What do you think the life premium for having a bachelor's degree is in this country? In other words, if you have a bachelor's degree, how much longer do you live than a person without a bachelor's degree?

[Tim Dillon]

Ten years?

[J.D. Vance]

Seven years. Wow, seven years. You live seven years longer for having gone to college in the United States of America. You put this. Well, the way that I would put it is globalization. It's been very good for rich people in rich countries and it's been very good for poor people in poor countries. It's been extraordinarily bad for poor people and middle class people in rich countries. Right. And in some ways, the whole Donald Trump movement is a rebellion against. Okay, well, some people have benefited from this. Like, some people benefited when my steel mill, the steel mill that employed my grandfather for 40 years, when it went from 10,000 jobs to 1800 jobs. Right. But it wasn't the people that I grew up around, and it wasn't our families and it wasn't the moms and dads who got divorced because the dad usually, but sometimes the mom lost a stable middle class wage. I mean, again, Republicans are like, we're supposed to be the party of family and of family values. You know what's really bad for family values? When thousands of people at the drop of a hat lose a good middle class wage. Right, right. That's not good for family values. That destroys families. And again, we can do so much better. But we've got to get away from this failed consensus the last 40 years.

[Tim Dillon]

But isn't it good that Blackrock owns the homes? Because people, I feel like, don't want to own their own home. There's a lot that goes into it. Isn't it better for them to rent? Isn't it better for them to take Ubers and have small little jobs instead of one big one? I think it's. I have friends that do doordash, Uber eats, Uber Lyft. And they rent and they really like it because they can, they can get high a lot. Isn't that a better country than having a family? And aren't people happier like that? Didn't you say you wanted people to have families and then people said you were sick?

[J.D. Vance]

That's right. Yeah. No, they.

[Tim Dillon]

I mean, it seems sick to me. Have you ever had, well, a dream or a podcast or a job delivering food? Isn't that clear?

[J.D. Vance]

Look, clearly the most fulfilling life is to watch Netflix all day and get high all the time. That's right. To be clear, I want to make sure that's clearly the most important. But I think the second most fulfilling life is to have a family and participate in your community, to talk about ideas with your friends and spend time having meals. Obviously it's best to have food delivered to you by yourself and to eat it alone. But it's also really fun to share a meal with friends and family. Right?

[Kamala Harris]

Can be, but go to groundnews.com Tim for a better way to stay informed Based on All the facts get 40% off the ground News Vantage Plan with my link and easily see past media bias and sensationalism. I'm telling you right now, this is a great way to get the facts behind any news story spin. Okay? Out of nearly 150 sources reporting on this, barely any are coming from right wing outlets. So you could take a photo, dig a news story. Trump pledges to prosecute those he considers cheating an election if he wins and then they go okay, wait a minute, let's see. Everybody who is reporting on this is predominantly left wing outlets. What are the right wing outlets saying? Try to get, you know, the facts to this, to that. Right? I think it's very important to always try to stay informed from all the different sources that you can and what Ground News does a great job of is getting you you info from a myriad of different sources, app and website. It allows you it's to see through misleading media narratives, gathers news from around the world and exposes where an outlet has an ideological slant or if they're independently owned or corporate funded. Isn't that nice to know what you are reading and who's writing it and who's funding them? I'm telling you, I think it's a great idea and I feel very good about the fact that services like this exist. I'm telling you, you can better understand the absurdities and contradictions you highlight in political reporting. And this is something that I've done for years and a lot of people do. We look at all the different things and see who owns what and who's saying what and why they're saying it. Go to groundnews.com Tim or scan my QR code for massive 40% off the same Vantage plan I use for unlimited access to all their features. I think Ground News is doing important work and I hope you'll check them out. You can now win up to 100 times your money on prize picks with as little as four Correct Picks Prize Picks is the best way action on Sports in over 30 states including California, Florida, Georgia, Texas, prizepix is the only real money daily fantasy platform with an injury insurance policy so your lineup stay in play even if one of your players gets injured. If your player leaves in the first half and doesn't return, prizepix keeps your lineup live. Prizepix is the best place to get real money sports action. Join over 10 million users and sign up today. Prizepix invented the Flex play, which means you can still cash out if your lineup isn't perfect. You can double your money even if one of your picks doesn't hit. Want to play Prize Picks alongside Drew Ski, Joe, button sugar, Sean O'Malley? You can now find Community plays under the Promos tab of the app to view entries from some of the biggest names in the Prize Picks community. Each week, Prize Picks puts its members first so all withdrawals are fast, safe and secure. When my picks hit, I can get my money in as quick as 15 minutes. Think Justin Jefferson will get more than 83.5 yards next week. Christian McCaffrey run for more than 75 yards. Cook up hot takes with your friends and win real money this football season when you and your crew run your game on Prize Picks. Okay, this week on Prize Picks, I'm looking at the football board and selecting Justin Jefferson for more than 83 receiving yards and Patrick Mahomes for less than 267 passing, Tyree Kill for more than 97 receiving and Susquan Barkley for Saquon Barkley for more than 67 rush yards. I win all the time on this because I'm so good at it. Download the app today and use code T I M to get 50 instantly after you play your first five dollar lineup. Prize picks run your game. Morgan and Morgan is America's largest personal injury law firm. They have over 100 offices nationwide and more than a thousand lawyers. They've recovered over $20 billion for over 500,000 clients. Morgan and Morgan has a proven track record of fighting to get you full and fair compensation. I love Morgan and Morgan. I cannot recommend them enough. Whether you are the victim of something, you're in an accident, you slip, you fall. It's an unsafe work environment. It's an unsafe social environment. Make them pay. You deserve full and fair compensation for whatever has happened to you. If you were ever injured, you can check out Morgan and Morgan. Their fee is free unless they win. Wait a minute. That doesn't even make any sense. They're just working for free unless they win.

[J.D. Vance]

Whoa.

[Kamala Harris]

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[Tim Dillon]

BlackRock, is there a way to calm that down where they're purchasing all and they're driving up the cost of real estate? You walk around New York City, there are buildings that are full of empty apartments because it's money laundering from people overseas that are stashing money and it's raising the cost of living for the entire city.

[J.D. Vance]

That's exactly right. And you know, if, like, I'm actually not a Ron Paul guy, one of my dear friends is a big Ron Paul guy, but, like, I've kind of come around to the Ron Paul argument. I don't fully agree with it, but the criticism of the Federal Reserve that makes the most sense to me is that it gives massive corporations a lower cost of money than the average American. Right. So part of the reason BlackRock has been able to buy all these homes is you ask, well, what is blackrock borrowing at? Right. What rate are they borrowing at? Because the average American right now, I think the average mortgage interest rate is somewhere around 7% right now. Okay. BlackRock's borrowing at like 1.5, 2.5%. Right. So if they're paying a much lower cost for debt than the average American, then they have a huge advantage. They buy up all the homes, they jack up all the costs. And again, going back to the Jeffersonian idea of Americans as owners and as citizens in their own country, well, what happens when BlackRock owns your home and say, they say you're not allowed to own a firearm because we own this home. You don't own this home. Okay. There goes the Second Amendment. What if they say, well, for all residents in our places, we don't want you to put up yard signs for certain political candidates. Well, there goes the First Amendment. There's a connection, there's a very deep connection between the idea of American citizenship, the full idea, and the liberties that actually make American society such a cool place to live. And if we turn everybody into renters, we're going to destroy that. I mean, I think that, like, here's.

[Tim Dillon]

Where you're wrong, though. People really like these shows where people buy $20 million homes. Like selling Sunset Most. Isn't that as Good as owning a home, because there's 30 shows about people buying mansions and people get to watch them so you don't have to cut grass. You can watch somebody else buy a house. But that is what's happening, by the way.

[J.D. Vance]

You can live in a pod and eat your roasted crickets, but watch other people live by the American tree.

[Tim Dillon]

People do that. There are people watching people buy houses.

[J.D. Vance]

Yes.

[Tim Dillon]

For tens of millions of dollars who they themselves cannot afford their rent.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. It's almost like the shows have the purpose of distracting us from the fact that material living standards in this country have been stagnating for many years.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah. And you address that by perhaps, is it the federal funds rate? Is it?

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah. I mean, what I think is, and I've actually talked to a number of. The President has a very dear friend by the name of Steve Witkoff, who's a very smart guy. He's one of the most successful real estate investors in the world. And Steve has all of these interesting ideas. And it's hysterical because Steve is, I assume, a multibillionaire. He's certainly very rich, but he has all these ideas for how to make it so that ordinary Americans are paying the same amount for debt as the big guys. Right. Because if you're paying 7% and the big guys are paying 2%, ordinary Americans are always going to get screwed. There are a lot of different ways you could do that. I mean, you could just basically statutorily not allow BlackRock to access the federal funds directly. You could do all these things to lower the cost of capital for normal Americans. There's like a lot of ways to address the problem, but it's a problem. And the fact that we're not talking about that, instead we're talking about Donald Trump is a threat to democracy because he said that if people riot after he wins, then we should not allow that. Which is. Of all the criticisms of Donald Trump, the craziest one is, you know, he said at a rally that if people ride after the election, law enforcement should prevent that from happening. And they're like, oh, that's a threat to democracy. It's like, what the hell are you talking about? That's common law, American law enforcement. But it's funny, man. People are more focused on that, the media is more focused on that than on the fact that we have a set of economic policies that are turning like our generation. I mean, I assume you're about my age, like our generation, especially younger, permanent paupers, permanent renters in the country that their parents and grandparents built. And I see these polls that say that young people, you know, usually vote for Democrats, but maybe they're more pro Trump this cycle than they were last cycle. My argument to them is, aren't you sick of politicians talking about fake bullshit instead of the fact that you can't afford a home and that you won't be able to raise a family because you won't be able to afford their health care costs and their housing costs? Like, let's talk about real stuff. Say what you will about Donald Trump. Say what you will about me.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

He talks about real things that affect real people.

[Tim Dillon]

Is the happy medium, them owning a home in the Ukraine. You know what I mean? Because you're making a lot of points that are going to be tough to do.

[J.D. Vance]

Well, look. I mean, look, if. If. If Kamala Harris is president, here's the win. Win again. You know, she's always looking for that.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

If they own a home in Ukraine, they can then be conscripted into her endless war in Ukraine. And so if you're a young American and you'd like to own a very sweet mansion in Ukraine while also fighting a war for a country that's 6,000 miles away, then, yeah, Kamala Harris is your candidate. If you'd like to own a nice home in the United States of America and raise a family, I think Donald Trump is more your flavor. Different shapes, different strokes for different folks. Man, I don't want to judge anybody's preferences.

[Tim Dillon]

No, for sure.

[J.D. Vance]

I just want to give the honest.

[Kamala Harris]

I have a lot of friends that.

[J.D. Vance]

Were very voting for Kamala Harris.

[Tim Dillon]

They're very excited about it. Many of them live in Beverly Hills, and they got the flags and everything, and they got into it, and it's fun to. It's actually fun to have something to be into.

[J.D. Vance]

Well, I actually. Okay, so I saw.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

A couple years ago, Buddy sent me a photo. They had the Black Lives Matter thing. Yeah. In the. In the yard.

[Tim Dillon]

Sure.

[J.D. Vance]

They had the Trans Lives Matter sign in the yard, and then they had the Ukrainian flag.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Hanging up on their. On their porch. And he sent me this photo, and he said, I've just seen it. The liberal holy trinity.

[Tim Dillon]

That's it.

[Kamala Harris]

Yeah.

[Tim Dillon]

Well, that's the.

[J.D. Vance]

It used to be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now it's those three.

[Tim Dillon]

You have it all. Well, we're not allowed to ask why. Why the Ukraine war happened or what we did to potentially create conditions where exactly. I mean, we're not allowed to ask that.

[J.D. Vance]

Did American diplomacy actually create conflict instead of diffusing conflict. In my view, it did.

[Tim Dillon]

And maybe that could, maybe that was the goal. We don't know. I mean that. I don't want to sound like a nut. Well, there are people that, yeah, it's.

[J.D. Vance]

This psychological post war thing of everyone is either Adolf Hitler or Winston Churchill. Right. That's how these people think about it.

[Tim Dillon]

Do you think Vladimir Putin is on a march through Europe? That he's going to knock over Poland? That he's going to knock over. It doesn't seem.

[J.D. Vance]

Of all, of all the absurd arguments.

[Tim Dillon]

I've heard, that is doesn't seem like.

[J.D. Vance]

He can't take half of Ukraine, which was his goal. He can't take half of Ukraine, but somehow he's going to march all the way to Berlin. And by the way, like, if he marches all the way to Berlin, what the hell does that say about Germany? Right. Maybe they should build their own security capacity to prevent it. I mean, you know, maybe they should listen to Les Ramstein and actually drive the military. That's worthwhile. Though I will say Ramstein has this crazy song from 2004. I think you know what I'm talking about.

[Tim Dillon]

I think I do.

[J.D. Vance]

We're all living in America. That is actually a really interesting criticism of globalization. So to the Ramstein fans out there, I apologize for criticizing.

[Kamala Harris]

No.

[Tim Dillon]

And NATO, do you think that we redefine our relationship with NATO?

[J.D. Vance]

Well, yeah, I mean, I think that what we have, what President Trump has said about NATO is, look, we're not going pull out of NATO, but NATO needs to be a true alliance, a true partner and not basically just another welfare client of the United States of America. I mean, okay, how. Guess how many mechanized brigades. I won't force you to actually guess how many mechanized brigades Germany could field. Right now Germany is the fourth largest economy in the world. They could field between 0 and 1 mechanized brigades.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

If that is your country's military, you're not a partner of the United States in any security sense. You're a welfare client of the United States. And I would like Germany. I love Germany, by the way. I think it's a great country. I think great people, good beer. They should be doing more to look after their own security.

[Tim Dillon]

Well, ironically, they rely on cheap Russian gas and oil and the United States military.

[J.D. Vance]

That's exactly.

[Tim Dillon]

So it's asking NATO countries to fund more of their own defense is the direction that you want to go in.

[J.D. Vance]

Well, I think they have to fund more of their own defense. They have to take more ownership over their own security and again, I just. I don't want America to be the policeman of the world. We can't be the policeman of Europe, the policemen of the Middle East. I want more of these allies to behave like allies, to take more ownership over their own security and to make their own decisions. I mean, look, if I was a European country, in some ways, I would feel kind of pathetic. Like, you know, they always called Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the uk, Bush's poodle. It was probably being too nice to Tony Blair to call him Bush's poodle. Because these guys, they don't even have their own countries anymore. They just do whatever the United States tells them to do.

[Tim Dillon]

I mean, well, London has also just become a vertical money laundering scheme.

[J.D. Vance]

Well, that's it.

[Tim Dillon]

It's everyone from all over the world. And New York, and this is happening to all these great cities is that people that live there are being driven out.

[J.D. Vance]

Exactly.

[Tim Dillon]

And you have billionaires and centimillionaires going in and buying up all this real estate, not contributing to the culture of the city at all. And in London's case, they have Russian oligarchs throwing people out of windows, which that is good, I think is fine. You know, I think it's fine because. No, they're not. It's not random, JD. It's not like, are we talking first.

[J.D. Vance]

Floor windows or like 10 floor windows? Okay, well, it's people that were involved.

[Tim Dillon]

They knew the risk. They knew the risk. But so to me, it's like I look at these great cities and I say, listen, obviously you want people from all over the world to come and appreciate a city. At what point does the purchasing of real estate from foreign nationals become a major problem for not only the cost of living of Americans, but the culture of a city?

[J.D. Vance]

Huge.

[Tim Dillon]

You know what I mean? Like the, you know, it seems insane.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah.

[Tim Dillon]

That nobody, you know, Ron DeSantis came out and proposed doing something about that, but very few politicians have come out and said anything about that issue.

[J.D. Vance]

It's very important. I mean, look, London is effectively the world's only socialist tax haven. Right. It's just crazy. It's a socialist country, socialist government at this point, but they let billionaires from all over shelter their assets in their country. It's a totally bizarre and screwed up way of thinking about your economy. This is sort of what globalization does. Right. This is what I really worry about is like, London doesn't feel fully English to me anymore. Right. New York, of course, is the classic American city. Over time, I think New York will Start to feel less American. Everything becomes flattened and becomes the same. And, like, real diversity actually is like, I'd kind of like to go to a different place and have it be different.

[Tim Dillon]

You want Paris to be Paris?

[J.D. Vance]

Exactly. Yeah. And not have it all, just feel the same. Right, right. That. That is, I think, a diversity that I can get behind.

[Tim Dillon]

People see finance, you know, people see financial migration.

[J.D. Vance]

Yes.

[Tim Dillon]

As an opportunity to go into a country, not respect the laws, the culture, set up a. A profitable business, and then send that money back to another country. It doesn't seem like a sustainable model.

[J.D. Vance]

No. And you have.

[Tim Dillon]

No.

[J.D. Vance]

You have no investment in that country. We want people who have investment in a place to care about, you know? Well, like, if the workers get really pissed. Right. Then maybe I'll have to pay higher taxes. Right. So then we're going to focus on making the workers not pissed. Or if people get really miserable, then they start doing crazy things. They start rioting. Let's make it harder for people to riot. Right. If you don't have that investment in the local community, then I think that that's what this leads to. And to your point. Yeah. I think we should basically ban foreign asset purchases of American land.

[Tim Dillon]

You grew up in an area of Virginia, or it might not have been Virginia.

[J.D. Vance]

Well, so, yeah, born and raised in Ohio.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

But my family's sort of all from the Appalachian part of eastern Kentucky.

[Kamala Harris]

Okay.

[Tim Dillon]

I think of that all as Virginia, but I know that that's not. I know that that's not the case.

[J.D. Vance]

I didn't think very LA way of thinking.

[Kamala Harris]

I didn't think of Ohio.

[Tim Dillon]

I thought Ohio was like great heroin, but fun at, like, music festivals. I didn't think of it. I thought of it like, you know, white rapper vibes.

[J.D. Vance]

In your mind, it's like California, New York, and then just everything.

[Tim Dillon]

And then it's all now Chicago and then fence.

[Kamala Harris]

But that's what it's becoming.

[Tim Dillon]

We got to stop it from becoming that right now. What were the lessons that you learned? Because your book Hillbilly Elevated Hit was a bestseller. It's a movie as well. What did you. What were your takeaways? Because I know people that loved the book disagreed with some of your takeaways. Of course, these people probably know better than you because they live in Santa Monica.

[Kamala Harris]

But what.

[Tim Dillon]

Because. And they go, I don't think he's right about that.

[J.D. Vance]

The real Appalachia's in Santa Monica.

[Tim Dillon]

What?

[Kamala Harris]

Well, by the way, it is if.

[Tim Dillon]

I'll take you there. And it doesn't look that different.

[Kamala Harris]

Newsom's turned it into that.

[Tim Dillon]

What were your takeaways? Because you're not the, I mean, the fact that you were able to, you know, go to Yale Law School.

[J.D. Vance]

Sure.

[Tim Dillon]

You know, mount a successful Senate campaign. You're sitting here running for vice president. You come out of an area where circumstances for a lot of people are dire.

[J.D. Vance]

Yeah.

[Tim Dillon]

And it's a deindustrialized area. There are, there's drug problems. What are the takeaways in your book when you look at the things that plague that area and then how to restore it?

[J.D. Vance]

Sure. Well, it's, I'd say separating categories. Right. There's the personal takeaway and there's like the policy takeaway. Right. Because at some level, if you're just a person growing up in a community that's been deindustrialized, left behind, you kind of have to deal with the hand that you were dealt. And that's like what really the book was about is like, you know, what do you do now that this thing has already happened? And for me, you know, the biggest thing that I took away from my youth is, you know, one have a sense of gratitude. Even though we didn't have a whole lot, I tried to be grateful for my grandparents for sacrificing for me because that prevented me from being resentful and seeing myself as a victim. Right. When I graduated from high school, I was a pretty resentful kid. I definitely saw myself as, oh, everybody else has more than I do. And that seeing yourself as a victim, I think is like a really, really destructive thing for a person. But then there's like a policy takeaway from it, which is why are we dealing so many shitty hands to people to begin with? Right. Like my job as a vice president is different from my job as an 18 year old kid who just wanted to live a good life.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

My job as vice president is to make sure that as many kids in our country as possible have a pretty good starting hand as opposed to a really crappy one. And I think the only way to do that, if you look historically, if you look at just our own country, the only way to build a sustainable middle class is to have a viable manufacturing economy. Because think about this. If you're a lawyer, okay, you're litigating, you're doing corporate deals. Well, who are you litigating about and who are you doing corporate deals with if there isn't a foundation of the economy? Right. If you're a banker and you're doing trading or you're Doing, you know, sort of capital investment. What are you investing in if not the underlying foundation of the economy? Right. The economy's foundation has to be the real stuff. It's ag. It's manufacturing, it's making things, it's doing things, and then all the other services are built up around the real economy. I think the conceit of Americans, American leaders, I should say, in 2024, is the idea that you can have everybody working in tech and finance and advertising. Well, you can't. What products are you advertising? What technologies are you developing if the underlying real economy isn't strong? What are the bankers investing in if there isn't anything there? And I think that's actually where while. Yes, things have gotten really bad under Kamala Harris leadership, if we go down this pathway another 10 years and our share of manufacturing GDP goes from 18% to 10%, then the lawyers and the bankers are going to realize they don't have good jobs either. And that's when they're actually going to realize that Donald Trump was right all along.

[Tim Dillon]

Right. Two more questions. Yeah, I really appreciate doing this. How do you prevent tech censorship? We've talked about it. It's a huge problem. I mean, I know it's a tough thing to have an exact answer for, but what are some thoughts?

[J.D. Vance]

So very simply, and this is like, not a traditional Republican answer, but the Google antitrust lawsuit that's moving through the courts right now was actually started under Donald Trump's administration.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

I think you have to break these companies up. I think they're too big. They become monopolists. They've become too powerful. And frankly, they became too powerful thanks to government privileges. Right. These aren't like natural monopolies that just came up out of the free market. They were handed special favors by the government. They used that power to become monopolists, and now they tell Americans what they can or can't say. I don't think there's actually a way to solve it. Like, if Google is so big, it's extremely hard to be able to, like, ensure that Google doesn't engage in censorship. I just think these companies have to be separated.

[Tim Dillon]

So break up the companies.

[J.D. Vance]

Yes.

[Tim Dillon]

So the last question is the toughest one. For the last five years, I have done Christian missionary work in Africa with Governor Walsh, and literally, we have not seen.

[J.D. Vance]

I thought you were serious. For the first couple seconds, I was like, where the hell is this going serious?

[Tim Dillon]

Me and Governor Walls have been in Africa converting people, feeding them. And the fact that we've never seen you There. And we've both been there. And he'll tell you as well. He'll tell you as well. He seems like a fun guy. He seems like a fun guy. Was he fun at the debate? Was he fun? He seems fun. I like making things up.

[J.D. Vance]

I mean, fun is one way to say it.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

You know, he. Honestly, at the debate, I felt bad, man.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

Because. All right, so my wife.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

One of her great, you know, character attributes, but also one of her flaws is that she cannot be dishonest with me. Right. Like, if I screwed something up, she won't be like, oh, yeah, you did great. She'll say it. Right. So I come off the debate stage, and her face is lit up.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

Like, she's so happy.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

And then I look over at Glenn Waltz, and Glenn Waltz looked like she just showed up to a funeral.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

And I was like, oh, shit. This went really well for me, and this went really poorly for him.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

I. Look, I honestly think. My honest assessment is that he's probably a pretty nice guy.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

I don't know him well. He's probably a pretty nice guy. Do I think that he should be vice president? No.

[Tim Dillon]

No. It's a tundra.

[J.D. Vance]

But aside. Aside from policy differences, I just don't think the guy has the depth to be president. Like, I hate to sound like, you know, President Trump always says this. You want your leaders to be smart.

[Tim Dillon]

Right.

[J.D. Vance]

You want them to actually care about the stuff that they're doing in government. When I hear Tim Walsh, but especially, oh, Lord, when I hear Kamala Harris talk, I think to myself, she has no idea what the hell she thinks. And that is scarier than me disagreeing with her on any policy issue. Right. But, you know, look, I'm thrilled to hear that Tim Wallace did missionary work in Africa. Yes. You know. You know, you guys are both great humanitarians, I think. Did you serve with them in Iraq?

[Tim Dillon]

Well, actually, in the Ukraine. As soon as that happened, we went over and fought valiantly for a year, and then.

[J.D. Vance]

And then he went and marched in Tiananmen Square.

[Tim Dillon]

Yeah.

[J.D. Vance]

You know, that's. I mean, that's. That's the thing about Tim Walls. He's. He's the Forrest Gump of politics. Right. Every time something big has happened in world history, Tim Walsh has been there to observe and just to see it up close.

[Tim Dillon]

And by the way, whatever. And your attacks on.

[Kamala Harris]

Your baseless attacks on Kamala Harris, if.

[Tim Dillon]

She doesn't know something, I feel good as an American knowing that Dick Cheney will tell her. J.D. vance thank you very much.

[J.D. Vance]

Thanks man. Thank you for doing this.

[Tim Dillon]

Appreciate it. Thank you Bob.

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