How JD Vance sees the world

The argument in the White House tore the US alliance with Ukraine, shaved European leaders and highlighted the JD Vance’s key role in Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Vice -President came on the global scene – so what drives his worldview?

Vnes the first major foreign speech at the Munich Security Conference in mid -February caught many unexpectedly.

Instead of focusing on the war that raged in Ukraine, the US Vice President only briefly mentioned the bloodiest European conflict after World War II.

Instead, he used his debut on the international stage to close the US allies regarding immigration and free speech, believing that the European institution was anti -democratic. He accused them of ignoring the will in his people and questioned what common values ​​they really unite with the United States to defend.

“If you are afraid of your own voters, nothing can do for you, nor that you can do for the American people,” he warned.

It was a bold and perhaps an unexpected way to get acquainted with the world – angry European allies. But a few days later, he returned to the news, in the center of the brilliant series with the President of Ukraine Loladimir Zelensky, whom he accused of ungrateful.

For those who studied the rise of Vnes, these two episodes were not surprised.

The vice-president presented the intellectual wing of the conservative movement, which expresses the expression of contism and, in particular, how its America is the first mantra used outside. In his works and interviews, Vnes expressed an ideology that in his mind joins the points between American workers, global elites and the role of the United States in the wide world.

Last year, on the way of the company with Donald Trump, Vnes spent most of his time, sharply criticizing the Democrats – the usual attackers who traditionally be brought to his associates – and sparring with journalists.

And while the non -standard and unconventional role of Elon Musk in the Trump administration initially obscured him that the Munich speech and the Oval Service raised the profile of Deputy Trump.

It also led to questions about the wrapped ideological journey, which he made during the conservative movement – and what he really believes now.

“He is a much more pragmatist than ideologues,” said James Orr, associate professor at the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge and a friend whom Vnes called his “British Sherpay.”

“He is capable of formulating what is, not in American interests,” Orr said. “And American interest is not an interest in some abstract utopia or a matrix of proposals and ideas, but by the American people.”

Vens has repeatedly returned to this “America first” – or perhaps “Americans of the first” – the topic in speeches, drawing the border between what it is shaking like in a Washington overseas, and the struggle of the American working class.

For example, at the Republican National Convention last summer, he lamented how in small cities all over the American work were sent abroad, and children were sent to war. “And he attacked President Joe Biden at the time, saying:” He was the champion of every political initiative in half a century to make America weaker. “

But Vens is also one who, after a tough upbringing in the Ohio family with Akolchav roots and sudden glory at the back of the Best sellers’ memoir, Hillbilly ELEGY, has tried many different views.

Not only was he a former “never tram”, which in 2016 called the US president “back” and “idiot”, but also his book complicates great guilt for the difficult position of the poor rural areas for the choice made by people.

Most recently, he moved the guilt to the elite – a group he is defined as Democrats, ordinary Republicans, liberals, corporate leaders, globalists and scientists.

In the speeches, Vnes regularly states that “America is not just an idea … America is a nation.”

He combines this statement with the anecdote about the eternal cemetery of his family in Kentucky, where he says he and his wife and their children will be buried once, arguing that family and homeland are more important than some traditional America’s ideas.

According to Vens, the priority of the Trump administration should improve life for Americans who have been in the country for generations, and yet there is little huge wealth of the country.

Rod Nine, Conservative American Writer, who is also a member of the vice president, stated that Vens thinking arises because “moderate Republicans Normie … have not offered anything to stop the so-called wars, and they also offer anything ordinary Americans, how it comes from, and Fentalila. “

“Donald Trump he received a red bill,” said the Nine BBC Radio 4 this week.

The “red-directed” is an online slang to suddenly wake up to the allegedly hidden truth, as shown in Matrix movies. Usually it is used by those on the Internet, who believe they have special access to reality, and that people with liberal, central and institutions are non -critical thinkers.

And Vens-Vice-President, who is more than his chief seems extremely connected to online culture. It is passionate about X users, often jumps directly into arguments rather than uses it as many politicians do it as a platform for ads.

His performances at the right-wing Fringe podcast, while he tried to support the run in the Senate, provided feeds for his opponents, as well as provocative trolly comments, such as the United States was in charge of “child-costs”.

Married to the daughter of Indian immigrants, he dismissed and was rejected by alt-right members, even when he repeats some of their views. However, it has friends and allies at the top of the Silicon Valley, and some of its lesser -known corners.

After graduating from the Yale Law Faculty, he was brought to the world of venture capital by the influential conservative silicone valley of Peter Til, who later financed his company in the US Senate.

He referred to people such as blogger Kurtis Yarvin, a key guru in an “una -raided” movement that dreams of fantasy about technologically with the help of hyperopitalist societies, led by powerful monarchs.

His acquaintance with the internet fringe was even more demonstrated when he spread false rumors that immigrants were eating pets and accusations of corruption Ukrainian – which the BBC was traced to Moscow.

“He’s kind of a stew in this online world,” said Katie Young, the writer for the conservative, anti-tramp media The Bulwark.

At the same time, said Young, his anecdote about the family cemeteries and the Motherland, assumes another political tendency – an “disturbing Nativism”.

“It worries some people and it’s right,” she said. “The part of the American heritage is that we are a nation of immigrants. (Former Republican president) Ronald Reagan told about it, one of the distinctive things in this country is that everyone can come here from any part of the world and become an American.”

The thinking of “Americans of the first” Vnes is clearly disseminated by a question of war in Ukraine. When he was a senator, he was often critical of America’s participation in the war and huge sums spent on him, reminded former Senate Josh Hawley colleague, Republican from Missouri.

“His position was very similar to what now … that the conflict should end,” Houley BBC said. “It must end in such a way that the US safety is maximum as possible, and it must end in such a way as to force our European allies to take a great responsibility.”

Vnes regularly accused Biden administration of being more interested in Ukraine than to stop illegal immigration. Writing in 2022, during his campaign in the Senate and after the Russian invasion, he said: “I will be cursed if I’m going to prioritize the eastern border of Ukraine now that our own southern border is covered by human tsunami illegal migrants.”

His views escaped during this dramatic argument with President Zelensky in the Oval Cabinet. Vnes accused Zelensky of lack of respect, sending politicians to a “propaganda tour” for Ukraine and that he was insufficiently grateful for his assistance in the United States.

“Offer some words of gratitude for the United States of America and the president who is trying to save your country,” he told Ukrainian.

The argument has left European leaders seeking to defend Zelensky, as well as trying to maintain negotiations on a possible peace deal.

Vnes then caused extensive indignation from the Allies when it poured contempt for the idea of ​​security guarantees in the form of troops “from a random country that has not waged a war over 30 or 40.”

He later denied that he was talking about the UK or France, only two European countries who publicly declared their readiness to send peacekeepers to Ukraine.

But the readiness of the vice president will come on the allies’ fingers, which reflect the worldview, which, he said, is little time to “moralism about” this country is good “,” this country is bad “.

“This does not mean that you have to have a complete moral blind place, but it means that you must be honest in the countries you are dealing with, and there is a complete inability to do it with most of our foreign policy in this country,” he said last year at the New York Times.

His tone has shifted from the two years he spent in the US Senate before taking Trump. Democrat Cora Booker remembered Vens as “very pragmatic and thoughtful”.

“That’s why some of these things surprise me,” Booker said at the BBC.

Others find the same shutdown.

David Fruum, who is now a writer for the Atlantic magazine, said that Vnes’ views changed significantly since he first instructed the former Maritime Infantry, which at the time visited the University of Ohio, writing on his conservative policy website more than 15 years ago.

“He was by no means a cultural warrior he is today,” Frum said.

Fruum, former author of George’s speaker in Bush, who is an unwavering critic of Trump, called Vnes’ view of Russia “ideological enthusiasm.”

In Munich, when he talked about freedom of speech, he referred to the affairs related to conservatives and Christians in Western countries, but avoided mentioning sharp oppression of Russia for expression.

But he and his defenders view the situation through another lens.

“It is impossible to say that Russia is not a threat, it is just to say that Europe and the UK have much worse problems at home,” Drehaer said.

According to Vens, the rapid end of the conflict in Ukraine is not only about stopping up to billions of dollars that spend thousands of miles.

He said that for the US and his friends there are more problems than Ukraine, namely the threat of China, which he called “our most significant competitor … over the next 20 or 30 years.”

Vens’ views on Ukraine and his willingness publicly aired on the dramatic moment in the early days of Trump’s second presidential term.

But he also offered a vivid illustration to the ideology of the vice president, his fame in the Trump administration and how he views America’s place in the world.

With Rachel Luker and Anthony Swurcher reports in Washington and Lily Jamali in San Francisco