Trump Doubled Down on Authoritarianism by Selecting J.D. Vance
The Ohio senator doesn't want to limit government power. He wants to use it against his political enemies.
In September 2021, Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance—then still a long shot candidate for the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio—made an appearance on Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight. In a crisp white button-down and navy blazer, no tie, he laid out a proposal to use the powers of the federal government to punish private universities and nonprofits for promoting "radical left-wing ideology."
"Why are we allowing the companies that are destroying this country to receive tax preferences?" he asked. "Why don't we seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets, and give it to the people who've had their lives destroyed by their radical open-borders agenda?"
The questions were part of Vance's effort to endear himself to former President Donald Trump in the only way that seemed available to him at the time: by launching a culture-war offensive against progressives, rule of law be damned. His bet paid off this summer when Trump chose Vance—now a first-term senator from Ohio—as his vice presidential running mate.
Vance was initially a fierce critic of Trump, tweeting in 2016 that the then–presidential candidate "makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible." Responding to the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged about his ability to grab women "by the pussy," Vance lamented: "Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man."
He would delete those tweets, and others critical of the 45th president, while bidding for Trump's endorsement in the 2022 primary. His bid succeeded, and the endorsement helped him secure the GOP nomination and later the Senate seat.
Vance's "America First" economic and foreign policy leanings are assumed to appeal to blue-collar voters in the swing states that have determined the victor in the last two presidential elections. In a post announcing Vance's selection on Truth Social, Trump explicitly declared that his running mate would be "strongly focused on…the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond."
Vance, a U.S. Marine turned venture capitalist, has a troubling history of articulating illiberal views about the use of government power. He argued on the Senate campaign trail that conservatives should "seize the administrative state" and use it "for our own purposes." He then floated the idea that a Republican president could simply ignore court rulings he doesn't like.
Like any good authoritarian, Vance has also fostered enmity toward disfavored subsets of the population—in his case, leftists and members of the coastal elite. In 2021, he told The American Conservative that his supporters "hate the right people." When Reason followed up, a campaign spokesperson reiterated that Vance "strongly believes that the political, financial and Big Tech elites…deserve nothing but our scorn and hatred."
