JD Vance Is Finished

The Three Hours You Missed That Sunk His Career

Today at work, I was washing dishes and said “Hey, I wonder what’s up with JD Vance.” So I listened to his appearance on Joe Rogan, and, while spending hours scrubbing ketchup stains in scalding water, quickly realized that Vance’s interview would be the most painful part of my day.

The best thing I can say about Vance is that he got thinner: Ozempic, maybe? My distinguished co-author once told me that whenever his then-girlfriend got mad at him, he would shave his beard, thereby creating some cosmetic distance from his alleged transgression. This was apparently Vance’s strategy, and he did not share in said co-author’s success

Joe Rogan will go down as a legendary figure in American media; through his powerhouse long-form podcast, he fundamentally changed how we consume and distribute information. And while he’s clearly sharp, he’s not exactly an intellectual heavyweight. Yet, over the course of the interview, he laid waste to JD Vance.

This interview was, to a lesser degree, the GOP’s Joe-Biden-2024-debate moment. Vance is in an administration whose popularity is, shall we say, questionable. But if you’re a Republican strategist, you might have had some hope for Vance: that he might pivot from Trump’s recent catastrophes and mobilize the populist base while establishing mainstream credibility through his clean-cut Midwestern manners. Like him or not, Vance was generally considered smart.

But this interview torpedoed all that. Rogan is known for being a gentle interviewer–in fact, he’s been heavily criticized for this. Moreover, he’s generally amenable to guests’ ideas; he’s happy to indulge in uncontroversial chatter, which usually revolves around MMA, steak, and animal impressions. And so if you’re JD Vance–the vice president of the man who Rogan himself voted for–you should be in friendly territory.

But Vance could not convince Rogan of a single thing. Around the 45 minute mark, Vance decides that it’s a good idea to ask Rogan what he thinks is the most ludicrous position of the Republican Party, and Rogan cites the Texas law to have the Ten Commandments displayed in public school classrooms. Vance has three easy ways out of this: 1) “It’s purely out of historical importance for the United States,” 2) “Is it such a crazy thing to hang a piece of paper that says ‘Thou shalt not kill?”’ and 3) “It’s up to the states.” Vance chooses 4), where he says, and this is a direct quote: “It’s not like they’re putting the Ten Commandments in front of these kids and saying you have to read this and write it 500 times a day.” He repeatedly advances some half-baked argument, has it swiftly parried by Rogan (Joe Rogan, Fear Factor host, MMA commentator, bear enthusiast), and is forced to backtrack. It was a sad day for Yale Law.

This is the kind of issue which appeared in West Wing, and somehow Religious Right arguments from the mind of Aaron Sorkin–arguments which were introduced for the sole purpose of being demolished by the show’s heroes–would have been way better than what Vance said. If you cannot beat the accusations of being a Bible-Thumper in 2026, you will not become president.

And the hits kept coming. Vance mentioned that he “Poured his heart and soul” into the Iran negotiations, which does not bode well for the state of his heart and soul. He stated that Trump made his decision to attack Iran independently of Israel, which directly contradicts Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He assured us that Trump was not involved in Epstein’s wrongdoing, dude (He actually said “Dude”). And, to round it off, he proposed a theory about aliens which Joe Rogan swiftly rejected. Joe Rogan rejecting your alien theory is like Joey Chestnut vociferously declining a hotdog.

What we’ve watched is essentially a scene where a father mows the lawn and his son pushes his toy mower and makes sputtering noises with his mouth: aww, that’s cute! He thinks he’s just like Dad! It’s clear that Vance has tried to imitate Trump’s somewhat sporadic interview style. But Trump’s antics, erratic as they may be, have their own implicit sort of logic which led him to the greatest political comeback of recent memory. But Vance simply does not possess this talent.

We’re watching the JD Vance psychodrama reach its third act in real time. Vance clawed his way out of desperate poverty, earned a prestigious degree and top-notch job, and was then faced with the difficult job of reconciling the two. On one hand, he’ll never forget the desperation, the stigma, and the feeling of being out-of-place in an unrecognizable world. But on the other hand, he feels the allure of Thielworld’s money, prestige, and connections. So is he a populist, common-sense man of the people? Or is he a shrewd political operator with tech and technocracy sympathies? The end result, it seems, is that he is not much of anything: he criticizes intervention but defends the Iran War, he uses liberal-arts phraseology to defend the working class, and he cannot even get Joe Rogan to consider that angels might actually be aliens.

When Trump destroyed the GOP of yesteryear, it meant that politicians no longer had to wait in line. They could kiss the ring and rapidly rise to political prominence. Yet key to Trump’s longevity is that he ultimately cannibalizes everyone who cozies up to him, thereby destroying the careers of any potential competitors. Vance’s predecessor made this bargain, and he was treated to chants of “Hang Mike Pence.” Vance made a deal with the devil, and now he’s lost his soul.

JD Vance has decided to shoulder the litany of failures of this past term–ICE, Epstein, tariffs, and now Iran. And he has neither the will nor the ability to break from Trump. The one chance he had was to go on platforms like Rogan, distance himself from Trump, sound shrewd and eloquent, and altogether position himself as a reasonable alternative to the current term. And he failed.

I hope he really did find religion. Come primary season, he’s gonna need divine intervention if he hopes to ever return to the White House.