Transcript: Zaid Jilani

My interview with the American journalist

J.D. Vance was once a liberal media darling. But in recent weeks, since Donald Trump selected him as his running mate, the Ohio senator has been the subject of almost wall-to-wall negative coverage — in both the liberal press, and on left-leaning social media. But my guest on this week’s program says that Vance is a complex figure, and one we should take a closer look at.

Zaid Jilani is the freelance American journalist behind the Substack newsletter The American Saga. His recent essay for Compact Magazine is “Why the Left Gets J.D. Vance Wrong.”

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can stream the interview for free here.

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TH: It's great to have you on the program today to discuss your essay for Compact Magazine, "Why The Left Gets J.D. Vance Wrong.” I find him to be a really interesting figure, for a lot of reasons, including the media discourse around him. We will get to that. But first, take us back to the 2016 era when you first came across his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about his troubled upbringing. You were at that time working as a reporter at the left-leaning outlet, The Intercept. What were your impressions of Vance back then?

ZJ: I had heard about the book; it was taking the national press by storm. I think a lot of folks were using it as sort of a “how-to manual,” in terms of how to understand the voters who were backing then-candidate Donald Trump. This book happened to come out right around the same time that Trump was winning, and had won the Republican presidential primary. I think a lot of folks were wondering how he was particularly strong with white voters, and later white working-class voters. When the election came and went, we realized that he had really energized particularly rural turnout.

Hillbilly Elegy had really good timing, in that you had a memoir written by someone whose grandparents and parents had Appalachian roots, who was a transplant to the suburbs of Ohio, but who also had a very keen understanding of that culture and also could explain it in a way that was palatable to people who were outside of it. Vance by this point was a graduate of Yale Law School. He had worked as a venture capitalist and lived in more liberal areas of the country, was very well-spoken and educated. I think he was a good interpreter for that group, who just didn't understand the Trump phenomenon.

I picked up the book with that in mind. As I thumbed through it — I remember reading the intro in an airport, where I happened to see a copy — I think a lot of my impression of it was that it was a memoir first. It was a recollection of his childhood and his thoughts on that. But also, it had somewhat of a political or sociological analysis within it as well, where I think Vance expressed this feeling that a lot of the failures he saw among his family in particular, but also to some extent his community, were cultural in nature. There were certain counterproductive beliefs, and attitudes, and behaviours that were leading people to be self-defeating, and not succeed in the way that he wanted to see them succeed.

I don't think he was necessarily scolding them. I think he felt compassion towards them. He loved his family, and his culture, and his communities. But he didn't see them as being able to dig their way out of the hole that they were in, because of these qualities or attributes. To me, it reminded me of how Ben Carson spoke about his community. Ben Carson grew up dirt poor, I believe. [He was born] in Detroit, and he had many of the same things to say about his community. I don't think he disliked his community or anything, but he felt like there were certain counterproductive attitudes, behaviours that were holding them back.

It was a message that normally isn't very palatable to left-leaning people, because they don't really like to hear that about minority communities. But Vance was speaking about white working-class people, white middle-class people, lower middle-class people. So I think maybe it was slightly more palatable coming from him. And also because that's when Trump was entering the scene, and they wanted someone to translate that for them.

TH: It's so interesting. As you chart in the piece, he has undergone this personal and political transformation since that time, from this idea that the cultural forces driving family instability are the problem — to pointing the finger at failed public policy. Vance once denounced Trump, but he is now his running mate. A lot has been made of that. But as you know, he has also moved from this bootstraps libertarian conservatism to advocating for working-class economic populism. Liberal media has painted him as a cynical opportunist, but in your piece, you come to more nuanced conclusions. Walk us through your thinking on his progression.

ZJ: I think anytime you're talking about someone who works in politics — in this case, a very ambitious politician — you have to, of course, account for that as a factor. Trump winning the election in 2016 set the course for the Republican party. I think many Republicans who had a lot of qualms about Trump sucked it up and decided, “He's our party leader now. We can't do a whole lot about it.” There was an attempt to challenge him in 2024, in the Republican presidential primary, and it was unsuccessful. Ultimately, he beat that back fairly easily. 

I think everyone got behind him. Everyone from Brian Kemp through folks like J.D. Vance. Kemp, who is my governor here out in Georgia, had a very antagonistic relationship with Trump over the election, because he told Trump the election was not stolen. [Editors note: After taping this episode, Donald Trump took aim at Georgia Governor Brian Kemp at a rally in Atlanta.]

Now, I think a lot of folks have pointed to a message that J.D. Vance actually wrote to my old college classmate, who was his roommate at Yale. Josh McLaurin, who is a state Democratic lawmaker in Georgia now. Vance told McLaurin in 2016, ahead of the election, that he worried that Trump could be an “American Hitler.” I think that part of the message has been blasted out everywhere — that Vance thought Trump was Hitler and now he's [a candidate for] Vice President. And how could he?

But the other part of the message was equally interesting. He said that he could be that or he could be a sort of Nixon figure, who could almost be useful. I think that Vance, after watching Trump get elected, maybe came to the second conclusion. He wasn't so much America’s Hitler. There was no World War. There was no genocide. But perhaps he was more of a Nixon figure — which isn't the most flattering comparison either. Nixon, of course, was a crooked politician in many ways. But he's also someone who advanced the Republican agenda, effectively at times. 

I think that Vance, in a series of speeches that he started to make after Trump was elected, at various forums, started to say, “Because of Trump, we can actually talk about trade. We can actually talk about immigration.” Things that the Republican party had not adequately addressed. I think, yes, he probably was somewhat politically-motivated to do this, but there were a lot of people in the Republican party who came out to support Trump who really don't support changing Republican policy on, let's say, neoliberalism — the way they were approaching global trade or the way that they were approaching policy towards families and kids and workers. I think Vance wanted to do all that too, and that probably points more to some level of political evolution or conviction among what he was saying and doing. 

Now, do I think that Vance privately thinks Trump is a really great guy and stand-up character? Probably not. I think most Republicans you speak to privately, a lot of them have a lot of qualms about that. But I do think that he maybe does genuinely see Trump as opening up space on policy that would benefit people like his family. I think another way to look at Hillbilly Elegy was that Vance was carrying a lot of trauma from his childhood, based on the behaviour of his family and his community. He let that out in that book, as a memoir first. But after he put all that on the table, I think maybe he was able to take a step back and look at it a little bit more sociologically, a little bit more politically. And say, “Okay, I was upset about people being addicted to all these substances, alcohol, and drugs, and opioids, and over-the-counter stuff and everything — but why is all that stuff there in the first place? Who put that there? Why was a subculture built around it? It wasn't really any one person's doing or fault, right? There might be more of a political explanation for that.”

One thing he did, which I found very interesting, is he hired someone who I consider to be a true believer in this reform Republicanism or populist Republicanism. Jacob Reses, a guy who I got to know when I was still living in D.C. He had worked for Senator Josh Hawley as legislative aide, and then he moved to Vance's office as chief of staff. Actually, there's a very interesting profile written about Jacob which just came out in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency; Jacob is Jewish. They traced back to him being in high school. Even in high school — they pulled a quote from him, I guess it was given to a local paper or something, where he was campaigning against the conditions in some kind of public building. He said something like, “I understand you want to keep taxes low, but if you don't increase taxes, what does it do to all these people who have to live in this terrible environment?” It's an odd argument for someone who is Republican to be making. But it shows that Vance reached out and found this kind of heterodox individual, who had been working for another populist senator, to bring into his office and set the tone. 

I don't think Vance would be doing things like that if he didn't actually have some convictions around this desire to move the party in a different direction. There's plenty of Republicans who suck up to Trump who still are basically Reaganites, right? That's their policy approach and that's their ideological worldview. But I think with Vance, it has actually evolved somewhat. Part of that might be political opportunism. Part of that also may just be convictions that he developed when he looked at this, I think, more politically than he was before. Or more sociologically, more from a public policy standpoint — and not just from his personal feelings about his family and community.

TH: Let's spend a moment digging into what this position represents. I think a lot of people are still not clear on what Vance is arguing for, from a public policy perspective, since this part of it is getting relatively little coverage. You stress that he is a Republican populist, not a democratic socialist. Can you just walk us through the broad strokes of what he is specifically arguing for, in terms of policy?

ZJ: I think when Vance took office in the Senate, what was unique about him was that he showed a little bit more of a willingness — versus your typical Republican senator — to support legislation that would reduce corporate power, that would increase worker power, that would support benefits for families and workers and children. A few examples of that are, for instance, he is working with my senator, Reverend [Raphael] Warnock, one of the two Georgia Senators, on a bill that would reduce insulin prices, right? He's working with Sherrod Brown, his fellow Senator in Ohio on a bill that would regulate the rail industry, following the disaster in East Palestine where there was a train derailment. He's working with Elizabeth Warren on a bill that would claw back some of these bonuses, or executive compensation, given to folks at big banks that are bailed out. 

There's several pieces of legislation like that, where he's taking a very atypical position for a Republican. Where he is willing to work with Democrats on these bills that would reduce corporate power, that would regulate corporate power more.

I think that one area where you maybe haven't seen him be as friendly to the Democratic position would be things that dramatically increase taxes on the very wealthy. Some Democrats support maybe a tax on billionaires, or a wealth tax, or increasing taxes on these higher tax brackets. I think that Vance and also the other Republican populists — Josh Hawley would be one of the biggest examples, he's kind of the lodestar for Republican populist in the congress — I don't really see them supporting legislation like that. In my conversations with the people in that orbit, whether it's people who work for these senators or people in the think tanks that support them, they are still a little bit suspicious of the government itself. They would consider it a little bit like Robinhood to just take from the rich and give to the poor. They don't really resent people for being wealthy, and they don't think it's necessarily unfair to be wealthy. Nor do they necessarily think that if you're poor, that means the money should just be transferred to you.

I think a lot of what they're doing is they're looking at procedural fairness, right? They're saying that the deck is stacked against working-class people, against middle-class people, in many ways. We need new rules of the road to make it more fair, to stop all this exploitation of the poor and of workers. I think a lot of their resentment about immigration is because they view immigration as harming the paycheques of a lot of working people, because it loosens the labour market. I think Josh Hawley in particular came out against ‘Right-to-Work’ late last year, and he's gotten close to the Teamsters, which is a major American union.

I think that supporting something like union power, it does fit in their ideology, because they think that they're giving workers more of a chance to be rewarded for their work. But I think they are still skeptical of this idea of “we just need to increase taxes on the rich and move wealth downward.” I think they still view that as too much like socialism in their minds. That's why even when they're occasionally willing to work with people like Elizabeth Warren, they're occasionally willing to work with people on the left, I don't think that they really are leftists. 

They particularly are not leftists when it comes to social/cultural issues. Vance has been very much a hawk about abortion. I think he's had to tone that down after being picked by Trump, because Trump is not — and now Trump is his boss. I think you'll probably see him toning down some of his other parts of his proposals and ideology. In that area, I don't think there's any overlap at all at this point. I think someone like Vance is a big hawk on immigration. I just don't think there'll be any overlap at all with Democrats on that. Which is one reason why if you're a Democrat, even if you like some of Vance's turns, you're probably not going to like his overall posture. Because I think he's still very much stridently a social/cultural conservative.

TH: What do we make about the reaction in the liberal media to Vance? There's been some kind of strange moments in the last week or so. The Associated Press fact-checking a really bizarre story about Vance having sex with the couch. This ongoing discourse about how “weird” Vance is. What do you make of this turning on Vance?