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J. D. Vance's Bargain With the Devil (David Frum & George Packer, The Atlantic - podcast & transcript)
48-minute podcast and full transcript at
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/05/the-david-frum-show-vances-bargain-with-the-devil/682954/
Packer: ...That’s the thing that frightens me about Vance, is not only what he’s doing now—and perhaps he is having a hand in the purging of those internationalist Republicans who are the last of that dying breed in the Trump administration—but what he’s willing to do, because he does seem willing to do or say a great deal that you would never have anticipated 10 years ago or even five years ago. And whether or not we should be judging him morally, he is constantly invoking morality in what he does and invoking his Catholicism in what he does.
He was in Rome just twice in the last few weeks, the first time as the last foreign leader to see Pope Francis before he died and then one of the first foreign leaders to sit down with Pope Leo. So there’s a kind of moral story that he wants to tell, which is the story of the return of the oppressed. And those oppressed are not just any oppressed—they’re his oppressed. But [it’s] to justify, as I said earlier, almost any policy, any cruelty, any violation of, whether it’s the Constitution, the law, or just decency, including sending, first, noncitizens and then possibly citizens to foreign gulags. So that’s all of that somehow in the name of making this class of Americans the center of our life.
Again, once you’ve decided that that’s your mission, then there really isn’t much of a limit, because you have a moral justification in your own mind. And I do think the administration—I mean, Trump, was already there, so it’s not as though Vance is pushing Trump in this direction. Vance has aligned himself with this direction and has said essentially to Trump and to the country, In four years, in three years, I will be the reincarnation. I will be the next installment of this brutal, narrow vision of what America is—this bully, great power, this Russia of the West that simply does what’s in its interest and has no friends, no allies, and is just looking out for the next deal.
And that means that we will be looking at more of it in the indefinite future from the Republican side because Vance is the heir apparent, and there he will allow no daylight between himself and Trump.
-snip-
He was in Rome just twice in the last few weeks, the first time as the last foreign leader to see Pope Francis before he died and then one of the first foreign leaders to sit down with Pope Leo. So there’s a kind of moral story that he wants to tell, which is the story of the return of the oppressed. And those oppressed are not just any oppressed—they’re his oppressed. But [it’s] to justify, as I said earlier, almost any policy, any cruelty, any violation of, whether it’s the Constitution, the law, or just decency, including sending, first, noncitizens and then possibly citizens to foreign gulags. So that’s all of that somehow in the name of making this class of Americans the center of our life.
Again, once you’ve decided that that’s your mission, then there really isn’t much of a limit, because you have a moral justification in your own mind. And I do think the administration—I mean, Trump, was already there, so it’s not as though Vance is pushing Trump in this direction. Vance has aligned himself with this direction and has said essentially to Trump and to the country, In four years, in three years, I will be the reincarnation. I will be the next installment of this brutal, narrow vision of what America is—this bully, great power, this Russia of the West that simply does what’s in its interest and has no friends, no allies, and is just looking out for the next deal.
And that means that we will be looking at more of it in the indefinite future from the Republican side because Vance is the heir apparent, and there he will allow no daylight between himself and Trump.
-snip-