Eight years ago, J.D. Vance privately confessed his true feelings about Donald Trump. “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful),” he wrote on Facebook, “or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Vance has claimed he was wrong about Trump, and he has no doubt altered his beliefs, as have many other observers. But what changed about his assessment of Trump was not his cynical appraisal. What changed was his premise that the two possibilities — not bad and potentially useful or dangerous fascist — were mutually exclusive. He seems to have concluded, instead, that Trump is an authoritarian demagogue who is also not bad and has proven useful.
And the person Trump has proven most useful to may be Vance himself, who has now secured Trump’s nomination for vice-president and positioned himself as the MAGA movement’s next leader.
Like many Republicans, Vance executed a head-spinning pivot from Trump xcritic to ardent defender. But Vance distinguished himself from the many other young Republicans on the make with the depths of his devotion. He didn’t merely engage in whataboutism to hand-wave away Trump’s sins. Vance endorsed Trump’s claim to have legitimately won the 2020 election. More importantly, he stated outright that Mike Pence did the wrong thing by refusing to cooperate in Trump’s attempt to secure an unelected second term
“If I had been vice-president,” he told ABC News, “I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.”
Trump’s obvious criterion for his vice-presidential selection was to avoid the mistake he made with Pence by choosing an underling who might be willing to sacrifice himself rather than cooperate in a scheme to undermine the Republic. Pence was old enough that he could part with his ambitions and religious enough to worship something greater than pure power.
Vance is devoted not only to Trump, but also to a rising school of postliberal thought on the right that disdains democratic norms on principle. He gained currency in Trump world by winning over far-right activists like Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson, demagogues considered so radical and bigoted that traditional right-wing media wouldn’t touch them.
One especially radical concept in this movement is the premise that because the Republic is disintegrating, right-wing power needs to employ unthinkable methods to retain its political viability. “We are in a late republican period,” Vance told allies two years ago. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”
At another point, Vance advised Trump to purge the civil service and defy any adverse court rulings, quoting Andrew Jackson’s challenge to the entire constitutional order: “And when the courts stop you, stand before the country … and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
In some ways, Vance is the ultimate example of a familiar archetype: the young politician whose ambition eventually overtakes his principle. This theme serves as the plot line for The Candidate, Primary Colors, and many other political narratives, both fictional and nonfictional.
But Vance’s career diverges from the trope in that he has become absorbed not only in his personal rise, but in the will to power that has characterized his entire movement. His career began with a unique analysis of the problems facing the white rural poor but was diverted quickly into an obsession with gaining control of the state and using it to smash their enemies. The entire Vance project has quickly been dissolved into the all-consuming partisan war, rendering all his other ideas dispensable.
After the failed assassination attempt on Trump, Vance again surpassed his rivals in his willingness to blame the Democratic Party. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” he wrote, “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
It is quite a claim from a man who once himself likened Trump to history’s most notorious authoritarian fascist. The difference between Joe Biden and J.D. Vance is that, when Biden labeled Trump a semi-fascist, he meant it as an insult.
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