J. D. Vance

Thursday 2nd of October 2025

2016 Presidential election Race definitely played a role in the 2016 election. I think race will always play a role in our country. It’s just sort of a constant fact of American life. And definitely some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons. J. D. Vance © 2024 Kwiple.com
2024 Endorsement J. D. Vance says Vote for Trump — I'll do what Mike Pence wouldn't  ★ ★ ★ Kwiplers say If you do, our chant won't be, “Hug J.D.! … Hug J.D.!”  © 2024 Kwiple.com
2024 Presidential election But you know, the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that we have — no one has tried to kill  Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill  Donald Trump in the last couple of months. I’d say that’s pretty strong evidence that the left needs to tone down the rhetoric, and needs to cut this crap out. J. D. Vance, September 16, 2024 [Thomas Matthew Crooks, the first attempted assassin was a registered Republican; Ryan Wesley Routh, the second, was a registered independent who voted for Trump in 2016 but was “disappointed” by him by 2020] © 2024 Kwiple.com
2024 Presidential election I'm telling you: these guys are weird. Tim Walz, 11:27 PM – Jul 23, 2024, on Donald Trump and J. D. Vance © 2024 Kwiple.com
2024 Presidential election Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance, implicitly appeal to a more symbolic notion of representation: however complex and diverse American society might seem to be, its essential form is male, white, and at least culturally Christian. This has always been so in the past, and must always be so in the future. If demography, and therefore democracy, is flowing away from this eternal truth, then democracy must be frozen in time. Fintan O'Toole, New York Review of Books, September 19, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Families American working-class families experience a level of instability unseen elsewhere in the world. Consider, for instance, mom's revolving door of father figures. No other country experiences anything like this. In France, the percentage of children exposed to three or more maternal partners is 0.5 percent—about one in two hundred. The second highest share is 2.6 percent, in Sweden, or about one in forty. In the United States, the figure is a shocking 8.2 percent — about one in twelve — and the figure is even higher in the working class. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com
Families Chaos begets chaos. Instability begets instability. Welcome to family life for the American hillbilly. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com
Income inequality At Yale Law school, I felt like my spaceship had crashed in Oz. People would say with a straight face that a surgeon mother and engineer father were middle-class. In Middletown [Ohio], $160,000 is an unfathomable salary; at Yale Law School, students expect to earn that amount in the first year after law school. Many of them are already worried that it won't be enough. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com
Knowledge He taught me that lack of knowledge and lack of intelligence were not the same. The first could be remedied with a little patience and a lot of hard work. And the latter? “Well, I guess you're up shit creek without a paddle.” J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, on his grandfather © 2016 Kwiple.com
Project 2025 The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems — we are no longer in this situation  and must take a different approach. As Kevin Roberts writes, “It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight  descends and you hear the wolves, you've got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.” We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon. J. D. Vance, foreward to a 2024 book by Kevin Roberts, architect of Project 2025 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Selfie I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is is the family tradition— their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends and family. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie We didn't live a peaceful life in a small nuclear family. We lived a chaotic life in big groups of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins. This was the life I'd been given, and I was a pretty happy kid. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot What Trump is is just another opioid. Donald Trump portrayed by J.D. Vance © 2016 Kwiple.com
Snapshot This is my diplomatic way of saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs. Donald Trump and J. D. Vance portrayed by Liz Cheney © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia. Curtis Yarvin, the political thinker admired by J. D. Vance © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say  If I had been vice president [on Jan. 6, 2021],  I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania,  Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to  have multiple slates of electors, and I think the  U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done. J. D. Vance, auditioning to be Trump's running mate by confirming that he would have violated the Constitution and participated in Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election  [Over 60 courts denied Trump's claims of there being "a lot of problems" in the 2020 election] © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say It's not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term;  it’s whether a child should be allowed to live even though the circumstances of that child's birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. J. D. Vance, talking about abortion in cases of rape or incest © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say No more banana republic stuff from Joe Biden. So long as he goes after his political opponents, I will hold nominations to the Department of “Justice” J. D. Vance, 3:02 PM – Nov 1, 2023 ["hold" = prevent consideration of] [Courts in — so far — four jurisdictions are going after Trump, not Biden] © 2023 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say Since wards are liabilities, there is no business case for retaining them in their present, ambulatory form. Therefore, the most profitable disposition for this dubious form of capital is to  convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses [in San Francisco]. The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass. Curtis Yarvin, the political thinker admired by J. D. Vance © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say This decision is a disgrace to the rule of law and our Constitution. Dems invented a felony to ‘get Trump,’ with the help of a Soros funded prosecutor and a Biden donor Judge, who rigged the entire case to get this outcome. This isn’t justice, it’s election interference. J. D.Vance, May 30, 2024, kvetching beause Trump was unanimously convicted by a jury of his peers of 34 felonies related to election interference during the 2016 presidential election, in what is a transparent attempt to better his chances of becoming Trump's running mate in 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say We’re effectively run in this country, via  the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too. And it’s just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?  J. D. Vance to Tucker Carlson © 2024 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say You have some people in this town saying we need to cut social security and throw our grandparents into poverty. Why? So that one of Zelenskyy’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht? Mike Pence, Mamaw's proud Putinista © 2023 Kwiple.com
Working-class whites Not all of the white working class struggles. I knew even as a child that there were two separate sets of mores and social pressures. My grandparents embodied one type: old-fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking. My mother and, increasingly, the entire neighborhood embodied another: consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com