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J. D. Vance

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Vance puckering up in 2021
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Starting arguments over Thanksgiving dinner
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What percentage of the American population has @RealDonaldTrump sexually assaulted?
—J. D. Vance, 2016[1]
I react viscerally to this idea that I am a member of the elite, even though it’s objectively true.
—J. D. Vance, 2018[2]
His intentional distancing from his earlier views shows that he is fully cognizant of what a gigantic fraud he's become. … His ambition is fueled by the money of others who would never deign to live in the Midwest. And like other populist charlatans, he has convinced himself that he should be anointed to lead the rubes out of their misery.
—Tom Nichols, The Atlantic in 2021[3]
To say that Vance’s attempts at bonhomie are wooden is to insult oaks and maples, as shown by his awkward visit to a Minnesota diner over the weekend.
—Eugene Robinson[4]

James David "J.D." Vance (1984–), born James Donald Bowman, is a venture capitalist, author, chameleon politician, and a Republican currently serving as the junior Senator from Ohio. He was selected as Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 Presidential election.[5] Later a self-described "elite", he grew up in poverty, which he escaped in part by serving in the US military.[2] There, he saw no "real fighting" according to himself, but worked in public affairs, e.g. touring bases and photographing troops.[6]

After graduating from Yale University (given much financial aid[7]) with a Juris Doctor degree in 2016, he worked for Peter Thiel[note 1] as a "vulture capitalist" at Thiel's Mithril Capital Management from 2016–2017.[9] Beginning in December 2017, he oversaw the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund with former AOL CEO Steve Case, receiving funding from big-name investors like Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio, the Kochs and the Waltons.[10] In 2020, Vance co-founded Narya Capital, which received heavy funding from Eric Schmidt, Marc Andreessen, and Peter Thiel.[11]

Peter Thiel boosted Vance's 2021–2022 Senate campaign with lots of money,[11][12] via a super PAC.[13] Said super PAC published "vulnerability analyses" about their candidate,[13] which they graciously deleted after reporters discovered them.[14] Those news reports summarizing and quoting its contents still exist: weak spots identified by the PAC, many of which focused on contradictions between his words and his past, included Vance's old posts praising Bill and Hillary Clinton, previously boasting that he was "eating sushi and getting wasted", his living in "an opulent $1.4 million mansion", his work for a law firm that lobbied for an opioid manufacturer and represented large mainland-Chinese companies, his flubbed "Our Ohio Renewal" nonprofit, the clerk work for Supreme Court justices Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts by his wife whom Vance met at Yale Law School, and his owing parts of his career to the "Big Tech" heads he rhetorically criticizes like Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Eric Schmidt (Google), and of course Peter Thiel.[13][15]

Vance originally became famous in 2016 for his book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, written at the encouragement of Amy Chua.[16] After, he founded a nonprofit pitched as an effort to combat opioid addiction and overdoses in Ohio; the group spent more on management salaries than such efforts,[17] hired an "addiction specialist" employed by a group funded by a major opioid manufacturer,[18] spent money on political consultation (former employees later accused Vance of creating the group to launch his political career), and fizzled out.[19] When Vance was elected Senator, he voted against an anti-opioid bill he co-sponsored, because he strongly opposed aid to Ukraine in the package deal.[20]

Vance has some rather... interesting influences. He is a fan of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones[21] and friends with neo-monarchist Mencius Moldbug, who he cites as an influence.[22][23] Online, Vance follows nudist Bronze Age Pervert (BAP),[24] whose eugenicism about regenerating the "Aryan" race through a "LebensbornWikipedia program" smacks of neo-Nazism[25][26] despite BAP's partial Jewish ancestry.[27] Vance follows others in BAP's sphere like Raw Egg Nationalist,[24] who insulted people for not being "Aryan",[28] and dubiously claimed to be a bodybuilder swallowing up to eighteen raw eggs a day with raw milk.[29][30] Vance seems to take some diet advice from this realm of influencers.[24]

Vance supports intentionally decreasing the value of the US dollar,[31][32] and is very interested in birth rates among the "ruling classes".[33] He has invoked conspiracy theories about George Soros, a potentially antisemitic insinuation.[34][35] At the 2024 Republican National Convention, Trump officially nominated Vance as his running mate, the next step in his transition from Never Trumper to his potential Vice President.[11] People who pushed for Vance to be Trump's running mate behind the scenes included the Heritage Foundation (who lead Project 2025),[36] Peter Thiel,[37] Elon Musk,[37] David Sacks,[37] Tucker Carlson,[37] and Donald Trump Jr., who stated Vance has a "very high chance" of being elected President in 2028.[11] However, polls conducted have shown that Vance is the most unpopular VP pick in years, outdoing even Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin (who at least had a significant amount of support and popularity).[38]

Controversies surrounding his book[edit]

He seemed almost embarrassed by his sudden celebrity. He wasn’t. My office shelves are full of these "books that miraculously explain our political moment" from over the years — Don't Think of an Elephant!, God’s Politics, The Radical Center — and I’ve come to understand that their success is never an accident. Show me a book that captures the post-election zeitgeist of a worried intelligentsia, and I’ll show you a shrewd, ambitious author who sensed an opening and steered right into it. If the Pentagon could engineer a fame-seeking missile, it would look a lot like Hillbilly Elegy.
—Matt Bai[39]

Hillbilly Elegy describes his lifestyle while growing up in the Cincinnati, Ohio suburbs (elevation 742 feet), which is obviously the most hillbilly place one can grow up.[40] It was very successful when it came out, especially in media circles, but even then there were warning signs of the lunacy that was to come. Vance's portrayal of the working class is couched in rugged individualism,[41] expressing that they're ultimately to blame for their own difficulties in life, that they have "the feeling that our choices don’t matter," and suggests that they "buy giant TVs and iPads" instead of working to better themselves.[42] A particularly prescient article in Jacobin by Bob Hutton views the book as a part of a tradition of elitist victim blaming such as in the boot-straps theme of the works of Horatio Alger and the infamous The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.[43][note 2] Despite his posturing about his special insights into the reasons why Trump won white working-class voters, he really just repeated the same old conservative mantra that poor people are lazy, and he provided hints of the wingnuttery that was to come.

Our Ohio Renewal[edit]

After publishing his book, which mentioned his family's personal struggles with opioid drugs (including death),[44] he started a nonprofit (Our Ohio Renewal, OOR) claiming to fight opioid abuse in Ohio, which spent more on management salaries than its stated goal then fizzled out of existence. A spokesperson for another group, Ohio Opioid Education Alliance, said she never heard of Vance's group.[17] Our Ohio Renewal did, however, manage to hire "addiction specialist", who was employed by AEI, a group in turn funded by Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin (an opioid drug).[18] Vance himself was formerly employed by a law firm that lobbied on behalf of that same company, Purdue Pharma;[45][13] Purdue ultimately planned to plead guilty to criminal charges regarding its production of the opioid.[46]

The New York Times wrote that Our Ohio Renewal ultimately left behind just "a pair of op-eds and two tweets"; former employees of the group accused Vance of creating it simply to launch his political career, including by hiring political consultants through the nonprofit which was — remember — intended to help combat opioid addiction.[19] After his election as a US Senator, he voted against an anti-fentanyl (another opioid drug) bill that he himself co-sponsored (the FEND Off Fentanyl Act), because he prioritized opposing aid to Ukraine.[20] In 2022, Vance insinuated President Joe Biden could be "intentionally" complicit in fentanyl trafficking because it would "kill a bunch of MAGA voters". He added: "It's like Joe Biden wants to punish the people who didn't vote for him and opening up the floodgates to the border is one way to do it."[44] (Fentanyl is mostly smuggled into the US by the country's own citizens, including those hired by cartels specifically because they attract less scrutiny than migrants do.[47])

Lunacy in his 2022 Senate run[edit]

The first warning sign in J.D. Vance's run for Senate that he was going to be veering very, very far into wingnut territory with a sudden swerve from being a critic of former-President Trump.[48] He switched from his earlier establishment conservativism (though he still retains the support of many of them) to a new right-wing populism in a competition with his fellow wingnut former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel.[49]

Among the various actions that he has taken in his race to the right was his reference to "degenerate liberals".[3] Vance's elitism reemerged in his comments about giving proxy votes to parents for their children, in which he insulted "the childless left" and in particular Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as "childless cat ladies" whose childfree status was interfering with "a healthy ruling class".[50][51] That a GOP candidate feels the need to say nonsense like this reflects the continuing popularity of The Bell Curve-like thought in the party. It is left up to the reader what to think about these comments. (Billionaire Peter Thiel apparently thought his bid for Congress was worth donating to.[52][23])

During his run, he revealed on a far-right podcast with Jack Murphy, he revealed his more extreme views:[53][54]

  • Millions of government workers should be fired regardless of the law, comparing it to post-World War II de-Nazification, or the purge of Baathists following the downfall of Saddam Hussein, referring to it as "de-wokeification"
  • He compared the current United States to the late republican period of Rome before it became an Empire, indicating that he believes that Democrats are evil, and anti-democratic actions need to be taken to stop them so that we can have Emperor Trump. It's no wonder since apparently Curtis Yarvin of the Neoreactionary Movement apparently got his ear.[55]
  • He tweeted "Now everyone admits the vaccines don’t prevent transmission, it’s time to end these dehumanizing mandates."[56]

Ultimately, he was able to win, as Ohio has become much redder over the years. However, it was a bit of a pyrrhic victory, as his opponent Tim Ryan was able to inspire Democratic turnout to the point that Democrats won a few house races that they shouldn't have even been competitive in. By comparison, Ohio's Republican governor Mike DeWine was reelected by a margin of over 25% in the same night that Vance only won by around 6%, and Rob Portman won the seat by almost 21% of the vote in 2016.[57]

Vance agreed with a conservative talk radio host that there wasn't a climate crisis, continuing with "And even if there was a climate crisis, I don’t know how the way to solve it is to buy more Chinese-manufactured electric vehicles. The whole EV thing is a scam, right?"[58][59]

Influences[edit]

According to Ian Ward in Politico, Vance has had seven influences that shaped his worldview:[60]

Anti-abortion extremism[edit]

See the main article on this topic: Anti-abortion
Vance (left) in his 2003 high school yearbook. Was he preparing to inspect his first pregnancy tests?

Vance is so extreme on abortion that he cosigned a letter with his some of other Congressional colleagues to the Justice Department demanding that they enforce The Comstock Act,[61][62] an act which prohibited not only sending contraceptives across state lines, but also made illegal the sending of contraceptive or abortion information across state lines. The law was never repealed by Congress but was effectively nullified by the Supreme Court ruling on Griswold v. Connecticut.

Fascism[edit]

See the main article on this topic: Fascism

Vance, along with some other MAGA leaders, wrote an endorsement for the book written by noted fascist Jack Posobiec titled Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them)Wikipedia[63] The title would seem to be an only slightly-veiled reference to Nazi Germany's term for people deemed as undesirable by the regime, Untermensch (or "subhuman").[64][65] Vance's book endorsement states:[66]

In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.

The evolution of a stooge[edit]

We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people, and I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer those people SOMETHING (and hell, maybe even expand our appeal to working-class black people in the process) or a demagogue would. We are now at that point. Trump is the fruit of the party's collective neglect.
—Vance in 2016[67]
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) or that he's America's Hitler. How's that for discouraging?
—Vance in 2016[67]
I think Trump is going to run again in 2024. I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'
—Vance in October 2021, openly advocating a coup[68][69]
All you do is kiss my ass to get my support.
—Trump to Vance in front of an audience at a Vance campaign rally in October 2022[70]
I can’t say from experience how you’re supposed to know when you’ve officially become part of an organized crime family, but if you feel it necessary for your professional advancement to show up at a courthouse and pay respect to a patriarch charged with fraudulent payments to a porn star, chances are you check all the boxes.
—Matt Bai on Vance being Trump's mouthpiece outside Trump's criminal trial in May 2024[39]

July 2024: Trump's running mate for a second (or third) term as the POTUS

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. Peter Thiel co-founded PayPal, and later founded the CIA-backed Palantir Technologies,Wikipedia a data analytics and surveillance company.[8]
  2. Chua was his mentor at Yale, and advised him to write the book.[16]

References[edit]

  1. Alex Isenstadt (May 3, 2022). "A mole hunt, a secret website and Peter Thiel’s big risk: How J.D. Vance won his primary". Politico.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Shawn Donnan (February 2, 2018). "Hillbilly elegist JD Vance: 'The people calling the shots really screwed up'". The Financial Times.
  3. 3.0 3.1 Tom Nichols (July 14, 2021). "The Moral Collapse of J. D. Vance". The Atlantic, via archive.today. (Original link).
  4. No, really, Republicans are getting weirder: The GOP needs to convince voters that Donald Trump and JD Vance are regular guys, and, manifestly, they are not. by Eugene Robinson (July 29, 2024 at 3:36 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post.
  5. Steinhauser, Paul; Gillespie, Brandon (July 15, 2024). "Trump announces Ohio Sen JD Vance as his 2024 running mate". 
  6. Svetlana Shkolnikova (July 16, 2024). "Vance credits service in Marine Corps for teaching him 'how to live like an adult'". Stars and Stripes.
  7. J. D. Vance (June 29, 2016). "As A Poor Kid From The Rust Belt, Yale Law School Brought Me Face-to-face With Radical Inequality". HuffPost.
  8. Matthew Goldstein and Ryan Mac (May 18, 2023). "Peter Thiel Is Latest Billionaire Said to Have Met With Jeffrey Epstein". The New York Times.
  9. J.D. Vance’s journey from San Francisco ‘Never Trumper’ to VP pick by Joe Garofoli & Shira Stein (July 15, 2024) San Francisco Chronicle.
  10. Richard Feloni (February 6, 2018). "High-profile investors like Jeff Bezos, Ray Dalio, and Meg Whitman are flocking to a $150 million fund nurturing startups in overlooked American cities". Business Insider.
  11. 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Tabby Kinder, George Hammond, and Alex Rogers (July 17, 2024). "How Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley funded the sudden rise of JD Vance". The Financial Times.
  12. Caleb Ecarma (August 30, 2021). "J.D. Vance’s Rust Belt Rhetoric Gets a Reality Check". Vanity Fair.
  13. 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Ryan Lizza and Rachael Bade (May 5, 2022). "POLITICO Playbook: The book J.D. Vance doesn’t want you to read". Politico.
  14. "This item was deleted". Dropbox. This URL is linked to from the Politico article about the analyses. Other files in the folder still exist.
  15. Liz Skalka (May 5, 2022). "11 Things We Learned From The J.D. Vance Oppo Dump". HuffPost.
  16. 16.0 16.1 Kwan Wei Kevin Tan (July 16, 2024). "Meet the woman who helped boost JD Vance from Ohio obscurity to 'Hillbilly Elegy' superstardom". Business Insider.
  17. 17.0 17.1 Adam Wren and Meghan Morris (August 31, 2021). "We found tax records showing 'Hillbilly Elegy' author JD Vance's anti-opioid nonprofit faltered". Business Insider.
  18. 18.0 18.1 Julie Carr Smyth (August 18, 2022). "Vance’s anti-drug charity enlisted doctor echoing Big Pharma". The Associated Press.
  19. 19.0 19.1 David A. Fahrenthold (October 8, 2022). "J.D. Vance’s First Attempt to Renew Ohio Crumbled Quickly". The New York Times.
  20. 20.0 20.1 Marty Schladen (July 17, 2024). "For Ohio US Sen. JD Vance, is not backing Ukraine more important than the fight against fentanyl?". Ohio Capital Journal.
  21. Andy Kroll and Nick Surgey (July 16, 2024). "In Private Speech, J.D. Vance Said the 'Devil Is Real' and Praised Alex Jones as a Truth-Teller". ProPublica.
  22. George Michael (July 27, 2022). "An antidemocratic philosophy called 'neoreaction' is creeping into GOP politics. The Conversation.
  23. 23.0 23.1 James Pogue (May 2022). "Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets". Vanity Fair. Quote: "J.D. Vance, running for the Republican nomination in Ohio, and Blake Masters in Arizona. Thiel has given more than $10 million to super PACs supporting the men's candidacies, and both are personally close to him. Vance is a former employee of Thiel's Mithril Capital ... These three—Thiel, Vance, Masters—are all friends with Curtis Yarvin, a 48-year-old ex-programmer and blogger who has done more than anyone to articulate the world historical critique and popularize the key terms of the New Right."
  24. 24.0 24.1 24.2 Ali Breland (July 17, 2024). "Silicon Valley Got Their Guy". The Atlantic. Quote: "Vance is steeped in the discourse of the online right. On X, he follows niche but popular anonymous posters such as Bronze Age Pervert, Raw Egg Nationalist, and Lomez, who have either expressed racist beliefs or, in the lattermost’s case, released books by racists through his publishing house. Although people follow accounts on X for a number of reasons, what’s more telling is that Vance is reportedly friends with Curtis Yarvin, an anti-egalitarian monarchist blogger who is an influential figure among the intellectual online right. Vance says that he doesn’t cook with seed oils, a cause du jour of the online right, whose influencers say they cause obesity."
  25. Jack Butler (January 18, 2024). "Bronze Age Meltdown". National Review.
  26. Jack Butler (February 10, 2023). "How 'Bronze Age Pervert' Seduced Right-Wing Thought Leaders". The Daily Beast.
  27. Costin Alamariu (September 12, 2023). "Journalists at major American publications seem interested in me, an obscure reader of Plato. Gratuitously they claim things about my background. Here is my DNA." Twitter, via archive.today.
  28. RAW EGG NATIONALIST (January 6, 2024). "You will never be a real A10 Aryan." Twitter, via archive.today.
  29. Gregory Davis (June 20, 2024). "Egg-sposed: We Reveal The Identity Of Far Right Bodybuilder 'The Raw Egg Nationalist'". Hope not Hate.
  30. RAW EGG NATIONALIST (April 3, 2020). "250ml of raw milk, as much cream as you like (up to the same volume as the milk), a generous helping of maple syrup and up to six eggs. I was taking three of these a day until the latter troubles intervened." Twitter, via archive.today.
  31. Alan Rappeport (July 16, 2024). "Trump-Vance Administration Could Herald New Era for Dollar". The New York Times.
  32. Eamonn Sheridan (July 15, 2024). "Trump running mate Vance a supporter of US dollar devaluation - 'make it easier to export'". Forexlive.
  33. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/26/ohio-senate-candidate-jd-vance
  34. Weinstein: Vance's antisemitic, racist abortion comment 'dangerous' by Courtney Byrnes (Posted Sep 23, 2022 at 2:55 PM Updated Sep 29, 2022 at 9:43 AM) Cleveland Jewish News.
  35. Republicans invoke Soros to steer narrative on Trump probe by Ali Swenson (March 22, 2023) AP News.
  36. Nicholas Riccardi (July 17, 2024). "Outside RNC, conservative group defends its Project 2025 guidebook as Democrats ramp up critiques". The Associated Press.
  37. 37.0 37.1 37.2 37.3 Hasan Chowdhury, Beatrice Nolan, and Noah Sheidlower (July 16, 2024). "Peter Thiel plays kingmaker again as Trump picks JD Vance for veep". Business Insider.
  38. Trouble for Trump as Vance declared 'most unpopular VP pick in the history of polling' | Joe Twyman YouTube
  39. 39.0 39.1 J.D. Vance wasn’t just some hillbilly after all: His journey from author to Trumpist senator is a fable for the GOP’s devolution. by Matt Bai (May 17, 2024 at 7:45 a.m. EDT) The Washington Post.
  40. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jd-vance/hillbilly-elegy/
  41. David DeWitt (July 18, 2024). "As a fellow Ohioan, I have some concerns about U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance". Louisiana Illuminator.
  42. https://www.salon.com/2017/03/11/hillbilly-sellout-the-politics-of-j-d-vances-hillbilly-elegy-are-already-being-used-to-gut-the-working-poor/
  43. https://jacobinmag.com/2016/10/hillbilly-elegy-review-jd-vance-national-review-white-working-class-appalachia/
  44. 44.0 44.1 Lev Facher and Sarah Owermohle (July 18, 2024). "JD Vance’s rhetoric, and record, on the opioid epidemic". STAT News.
  45. Amy Eskind (August 29, 2022). "'Hillbilly Elegy' Author J.D. Vance Risks Losing Republicans a Senate Seat in Ohio This Year". People.
  46. Natalie Sherman (October 21, 2020). "Purdue Pharma to plead guilty in $8bn opioid settlement". BBC News.
  47. Fiona Harrigan (October 17, 2022). "Don't Blame Migrants and 'Open Borders' for Fentanyl Entering the Country". Reason.
  48. https://time.com/6078483/j-d-vance-interview-trump/
  49. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/07/29/jd-vance-senate-election-rob-portman-ohio-501384/
  50. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/26/ohio-senate-candidate-jd-vance
  51. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/aoc-jd-vance-cat-ladies-b1894081.html
  52. Ryan Mac and Lisa Lerer (February 14, 2022). "The Right’s Would-Be Kingmaker". The New York Times.
  53. J.D. Vance largely avoids pivot to center in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race after culture-war heavy Republican primary by Andrew J. Tobias (Sep. 04, 2022, 5:30 a.m.) The Cleveland Plain Dealer.
  54. JD Vance - JML #070 (Sep 20, 2021) Jack Murphy Live (archived from July 10, 2022).
  55. How reactionary is MAGA? Try the first century B.C. by Dana Milbank (September 7, 2022 at 6:28 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post.
  56. An important story. Now that everyone admits the vaccines don’t prevent transmission, it’s time to end these dehumanizing mandates. by J. D. Vance (2:38 PM · Oct 19, 2022) Twitter (archived from 20 Oct 2022 19:19:02 UTC).
  57. Ohio election results, The New York Times
  58. Ohio Senate Candidate JD Vance on the Crumbling Economy (July 28, 2022) The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.
  59. Climate at the 2022 midterms: Where Senate candidates stand and what’s at stake by Ethan Freedman (08 November 2022 11:30 GMT) Independent.
  60. The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview: Post-liberals, “crunchy cons” and monarchists. by Ian Ward (07/18/2024) Politico.
  61. letter to The Honorable Merrick B. Garland from James Lankford et al. (January 25, 2023) via DocumentCloud.
  62. Vance urged DOJ to enforce Comstock Act, crack down on abortion pills: The Ohio senator and other GOP lawmakers conveyed their call for abortion restrictions to Attorney General Merrick Garland in a January 2023 letter. by Dan Diamond & Meryl Kornfield (July 17, 2024 at 7:21 p.m. EDT) The Washington Post.
  63. Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) by Jack Posobiec & Joshua Lisec (2024) War Room Books.
  64. These People are Nazis by John Ganz (Aug 06, 2024) Unpopular Front
  65. The Weird Authoritarian Book Blurbed by JD Vance by Michelle Goldberg (Aug. 5, 2024, 7:00 p.m. ET) The New York Times.
  66. Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) by Jack Posobiec & Joshua Lisec (2024) Amazon (archived from July 9, 2024).
  67. 67.0 67.1 Trump-Endorsed Candidate JD Vance Once Said Trump Might Be ‘America’s Hitler’ by Cameron Joseph (April 18, 2022, 2:54pm) Vice.
  68. J.D. Vance Is a Dangerous Authoritarian, Jonathan Chait, Intelligencer 2 May 2022
  69. Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets: They’re not MAGA. They’re not QAnon. Curtis Yarvin and the rising right are crafting a different strain of conservative politics. By James Pogue (April 20, 2022) Vanity Fair. This original published source of the quote refers to the date as circa Halloween 2021.
  70. Trump Took J.D. Vance's Dignity, Then Tim Ryan Erased it from the Historical Record by Charles P. Pierce (Oct 11, 2022) Esquire.