What's Wrong with J.D. Vance?

Know Your Enemy

In this episode, your co-hosts take a harrowing journey into the life, mind, and times of J.D. Vance, the Republican senator from Ohio and current vice-presidential pick of Donald Trump. You probably were introduced to Vance as the author of Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 memoir that attempts to explain the plight of the "white working class" in places like Kentucky and Ohio, and now know him as the deranged post-liberal purveyor of insults to single women, lies about Joe Biden targeting MAGA voters with fentanyl to thin their ranks, and deranged comments about the 2020 election and Jan. 6. In short, how did Vance become so weird—and menacing? We try to answer that question by starting with a close reading of Hillbilly Elegy, and then take listeners from the end of that book through the transformations that made Vance Trump's toadie-in-chief.

Sources:

J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016)

— "How I Joined the Resistance: On Mamaw and Becoming Catholic," The Lamp, April 1, 2020

Glenn Kessler, "J.D. Vance’s Claim That Biden is Targeting ‘MAGA voters’ with Fentanyl," Washington Post, May 11, 2022

Colby Itkowitz, Beth Reinhard and Clara Ence Morse, "In Vance, Trump Finds a Kindred Spirit on Election Denial and Jan. 6," Washington Post, July 17, 2024

Ian Ward, "The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview," Politico, July 18, 2024

Simon Van Zuylan-Wood, “The Radicalization of J.D. Vance,” Washington Post, Jan 4, 2022

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