By Sarah Ashton-Cirillo
JD Vance is more than weird. JD Vance is more than a liar. JD Vance is more than a stain upon the great people of Ohio and the Appalachians. JD Vance is a scourge upon democracy and an immediate and real danger to the United States of America, the US Constitution, and the notions of freedom and liberty.
A quickly forgotten interview of then-Senate candidate Vance from the summer of 2021, which resurfaced here, shows just how far the now-Vice-Presidential candidate Vance is willing to go to purge America of his political enemies, tear down the ideas of the country’s founders, and disregard the potential rulings of the current Supreme Court.
On August 26, 2022, a post I wrote on Twitter/X read in part, “Vance is using the same language regarding those who believe in democracy and liberty as Putin does: De-Nazification.” Much like the original articles and the podcast from which the tweet spawned, the impact of my statement didn’t make much of a dent in the zeitgeist. This was still months before Vance was elected, and many voters and pundits viewed him quizzically if they were paying attention at all, even within his own GOP.
This week, I came across my post again, prompting me to track down the full interview between Vance and Jack Murphy, host of his eponymous podcast and a man who believes that “feminists need rape.” In 2022, the rare column that addressed his remarks to Murphy relied on the audio-only version. Few noticed Murphy had also uploaded the full video version to YouTube in September 2021. Watching Vance’s ease of his body language and mannerisms as he speaks, the reality hits that this man isn’t only dangerous, he is untethered from any concept of the rule of law or what it means to understand the fundamental greatness of the nation for which he serves as an elected official and aspires to represent as its number two office holder.
While most of the conversation between the two would be off-putting to anyone looking for functioning governance instead of tyrannical cosplay, three parts of Vance’s conversation with Murphy stand out. The first is related to his “de-Nazification” comments and the purges that took place in Iraq after the US defeated Saddam Hussein.
When asked by Murphy how to handle a perceived bias by the government workers, Vance began by comparing these federal employees to actual Nazis. He posited that “one model is, you know, what happened after the Nazis lost or what happened to the Iraqis after Saddam Hussein…you know, de-Nazification and de-Bathification. There was this massive recognition that you couldn’t just replace the bad people, the bad Nazis, with the good Germans. There was an entire effort to de-institutionalize that ideology.”
The statements above, delivered so nonchalantly, indicate Ohio’s junior Senator's clear desire to eradicate a cornerstone of America’s functioning government and, by clear implication, force these enemies of his to be re-educated, something for which both Stalin and Mao would applaud Vance.
Next came Vance’s proclamation that if he were “giving (former President Trump) one piece of advice” after getting Trump to fire all the bureaucrats and civil servants, he’d tell the would-be President to stand before the country and announce that he was ignoring any Supreme Court decision on the mass firings, offering this scenario to Trump, “...when the courts stop you, stand before the country…and say the Chief Justice has made his ruling, now come let him enforce it.”
In addition to Vance’s spewing fantasies of imprisoning his fellow Americans and watching as Donald Trump had a face-off with Chief Justice John Roberts, he and Murphy also discussed religion, immigration, and internal Senate politics. A third discussion point merits specific mention alongside the first two.
Late in the episode, Jack Murphy pointedly questioned Vance on his true fealty to Trump. As rumors circulated among the Republican party that the GOP senate nominee had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Murphy went on the offensive. When cornered, Vance admitted he hadn’t voted for his now running mate in the 2016 election and instead wrote in an unnamed candidate’s name.
Vance then acknowledged that his past statements and actions justify people’s lack of trust in him, saying, “...frankly, there are a lot of people, I think, who see what I said in 2016 and say...this guy, we don’t trust him and frankly…it would take me a little bit of time to trust JD Vance, as well.”
In 2021, Vance both showed and told the world who this newest version of himself was. The name changes, the eyeliner, the cross-dressing—none of it matters. But JD Vance says he wants to destroy America’s Constitution while rounding up its citizens and hoping the world can believe his lies long enough for Donald Trump to become the country’s first King.
That idea is beyond weird; it’s dangerous, and that must matter deeply to us all.
