I don’t think even having buddies like this is enough to disqualify Vance from polite DC, bipartisan society.
J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for Senate in Ohio, is typically described as the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy, a venture capitalist, and a Never Trumper who came to embrace Donald Trump. But that snapshot doesn’t do justice to Vance, a reactionary extremist who yearns to destroy what he calls the “American leadership class” and to implement an extensive and possibly illegal program to cleanse US society of liberal influence. He compares this project to the de-Nazification of Germany following World War II. Last September, Vance outlined this message of revolutionary conservatism on a podcast hosted by a rightwing activist and self-styled masculinity champion who once declared, “Feminists need rape.” During the interview, Vance called for returning Trump to the White House in 2024 so Trump could fire every top and mid-level federal government employee to “deconstruct the administrative state,” and he noted that Trump should even defy the law, if necessary, to mount such a purge.