JD Vance Was So Good, It May Drive Trump Crazy

The junior senator from Ohio won the debate. But who did he win it for? (Hint: Not his boss.)

(Composite by Hannah Yoest / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

A few thoughts on Tuesday’s VP debate.

Tim Walz was . . . fine. His performance rated somewhere between lovable lunkhead and compelling nice guy. Your mileage may vary. He had one or two very bad moments (Eye-Ran; his China trip), a few very good moments (on energy, on abortion, on the 2020 election, and while quoting Matthew 25:40), and a whole lot of nice-sounding, forgettable debate talk.¹

But this was the JD Vance Show.

Vance had a near-perfect debate. Unlike his performance at the Republican National Convention, when he had to give a speech in an arena packed with living, breathing human beings, he was entirely at ease in a room with just cameras and a couple of journalists. The man was in his element.

He succeeded in not only appearing comfortable but in projecting an entirely normal political persona. This was not the Vance who appears on MAGA podcasts: He did not talk about childless cat ladies or use the phrase “postmenopausal women.” He did not mention America’s “late Republican period” or the “wild” things he believes are necessary to combat it.²

Instead, the JD Vance on display was almost like a smoother, 2016-vintage Marco Rubio.

---

---

Check out some of the positions Vance took during the course of the debate:

• That because Trump is crazy and unpredictable, other countries fear him—which is why Trump is good for foreign policy.

• That climate change is real and protectionism is the best way to combat it.

• That when he said mean things about Trump in the past, it was because the media had lied to him about Trump.

• That Trump governed in a bipartisan manner and “got things done.”

• That Trump saved Obamacare.

• That America has an “epidemic of gun violence.”

• That Republicans need to “earn people’s trust back” on abortion.

• That Trump isn’t a threat to democracy because he did voluntarily leave the White House on January 20, 2021.

• That America needs (1) change and (2) a president who’s done this all before.

I know how that reads on the page, but you’ll have to trust me: He made it all sound reasonable.³

In fact, Vance was so good that I wonder if this debate might become a case of catastrophic success. Because tomorrow a whole bunch of people in Conservatism Inc. are going to be talking about how Vance is the post-Trump savior they’ve been waiting for.

I wonder what Donald Trump will think about that?

---

That’s the question I kept coming back to, all night long.

Vance had mostly nice things to say about Tim Walz. He wasn’t mean at all. When Walz talked about his son being near a school shooting, Vance expressed his sympathy and said, “Christ have mercy” while shaking his head.

He didn’t say MAGA once. He implied that Obamacare was good, while Trump’s official policy still seems to be that it should be repealed. He accepted the reality of climate change and acknowledged that some unnamed Republicans needed to “earn back” the trust of Americans on the subject of abortion.

He was young and svelte and perfectly deferential to Trump. So perfectly that it felt a little cloyingly. Almost like he was putting the shine on the old man.

I doubt Vance did anything meaningful to help Trump’s electoral prospects. But he absolutely helped his own prospects for 2028, or 2032, or whenever Trump leaves the scene.

Or gets pushed.

---

Two final thoughts.

First: Toward the end of the night, Walz asked Vance point blank whether or not Trump won the 2020 election.

Vance wouldn’t answer.

Why not?

Trump has said—over and over, ad nauseam—that he won the 2020 election. He said it on the debate stage with Kamala Harris.

Why wouldn’t Vance back him up? Why was Vance weaving and slipping to avoid supporting Trump’s version of events?

There’s only one answer: Because he’s more concerned about his own future viability.

---

Second: I wonder if Trump ever thinks about Joe Biden.

You guys know what I think about Biden: That he made a heroic and patriotic decision for the good of his party.

I suspect that if Trump were to think about Biden, he’d regard him as a chump who was pushed aside by a younger, hungrier rival. Who had gotten so old that he wasn’t able to maintain his place at the head of the table.

I say this because if Trump watched JD Vance’s debate performance—and that’s an open question⁴—I suspect that Biden would have been very much on his mind.

1. If you want macro-strategic thinking: I suspect Walz basically fought Vance to a draw and that his personality was appealing to most voters.

If there is a single moment that will be remembered—and there probably won’t be—it’s likely to be Vance avoiding the question of whether or not Trump won 2020.

2. Amazingly, the moderators from CBS did not see fit to ask him about his views on whether or not the president must comply with rulings from the Supreme Court. In case you’ve forgotten, this was Vance just a couple of years ago:

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” he said. “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,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.” . . .

“We are in a late republican period,” Vance said later, evoking the common New Right view of America as Rome awaiting its Caesar. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

3. Provided you have zero understanding about the last eight years of American history.

4. In the middle of the debate, Trump tweeted about Pete Rose, as if he’d just discovered that Charlie Hustle had died.