427. The Real JD Vance: Heir to the MAGA Throne (Part 4)

Is JD Vance Trump's most dangerous heir? Would a JD Vance presidency be even more dangerous than Trump 2.0? How historically unusual is it for a Vice President to be so prominent in an administration? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this extract from the fourth episode of their first ever miniseries, available in full right now on The Rest Is Politics Plus. The Rest Is Politics Plus: Join with a FREE TRIAL at therestispolitics.com, for exclusive bonus content including Rory and Alastair’s first ever miniseries The Real JD Vance, early access to Question Time episodes and live show tickets, ad free listening for both TRIP and Leading, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away FREE TRIP+ membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP+ gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit GetFuse.com/Politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] Writers: Callum Hill, Evan Green Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editors: Josh Smith, Adam Thornton Assistant Producers: Evan Green, India Dunkley Producers: Nicole Maslen, Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rory Stewart?

  Are you more or less worried by a Vance presidency or a Trump presidency?

• 0:05Alastair Campbell?

  I think there's a very good chance it could be even worse. When Trump says something, he thinks it is true. Vance knows that he's lying.

• 0:13Rory Stewart?

  Vance, in a 2021 interview, says, "We are effectively run in this country by a bunch of..." Childless cat ladies. "...this Zelensky showdown in the White House. It's not normal to have a vice president sitting in there and interrupting."

• 0:26Alastair Campbell?

  I thought he was utterly disgusting. That was Vance showing, "I will be your attack dog." This is a guy who's had a pretty rough life, pretty rough childhood. And meanwhile, he has a level of ambition that makes him prepared to do or say anything in the moment to get to the next step. And the next step for him is the White House.

• 0:48Rory Stewart?

  Take that lack of virtue, that lack of moral character, and combine it with the economic and military might of the United States, and you should be very, very worried about a J.D. Vance presidency.

• 1:09Alastair Campbell?

  Hi there, it's Alistair here. As you are no doubt aware, we're right in the middle of our first ever miniseries, "The Real J.D. Vance," exclusively on The Rest Is Politics Plus.

• 1:19Rory Stewart?

  And in this week's episode, we cover J.D. Vance's journey so far during Trump's second term, how he became vice president, how unusually prominent he is, his spat with the Pope, the extraordinary scenes with Zelensky and the Oval Office, and how he may well be the lead contender to be the next president of the United States. I mean, so many interesting things, psychologically, historically, politically. So if you'd like to hear the first four episodes in full right now, just head to therestispolitics.com to join The Rest Is Politics Plus with a free trial, where you can enjoy the full Trip Plus experience, including miniseries like this, monthly bonus episodes, completely ad-free listening, and much more. New episodes of the series are dropping every Friday morning on The Rest Is Politics Plus.

• 2:02Rory Stewart?

  That's therestispolitics.com for the full Trip Plus experience.

• 2:07Alastair Campbell?

  And if you'd like a taster, here's a clip from episode four. Hope you enjoy it.

• 2:11Rory Stewart?

  The story basically of the vice presidency is that it's set up with the constitution in a very, very different world, essentially for the runner up to the presidency. The first incumbents, these very distinguished figures, Thomas Jefferson, Adams. Then in the 19th century, it enters a pretty bleak stage where most of the incumbents into the office are quite obscure. And by the early 20th century, the absolute assumption is that this is a total no end job. It's a job that was originally envisaged, being vice president, as presiding over the senate. So a little bit like, maybe, I don't know, in some of the roles, actually, of what we

• 2:56Rory Stewart?

  would call a speaker, not what the Americans would call a speaker, but what we would call a speaker was what they used to do.

• 3:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 3:01Rory Stewart?

  As part of the legislative branch.

• 3:04Rory Stewart?

  And I think you've got a lovely phrase.

• 3:05Alastair Campbell?

  This was a guy called Thomas Marshall. I don't know if any of our listeners and viewers remember Thomas Marshall, but he was President Woodrow Wilson's vice president. And he once said, "Once there were two brothers," he's talking about himself and his brother, "one ran away to sea, the other was elected vice president of the United States, and nothing was heard of either of them again."

• 3:28Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think we can say that about J.D. Vance. He is definitely being heard of. I, of course, it's interesting, the ones that I saw close up. So I saw George Bush Senior.

• 3:40Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 3:41Alastair Campbell?

  Who was a serious vice president to Reagan.

• 3:43Rory Stewart?

  For Reagan, for the two terms, yep.

• 3:45Alastair Campbell?

  We then had Bush Senior becoming president, and Dan Quayle, who was not a serious vice president. We then had, of course, Bill Clinton with Al Gore, who was a very serious vice president and who, frankly, should have become president. We then had Bush Junior, who went down the route of picking somebody as vice president who many people saw as even more serious than the president, that was Dick Cheney. Then we had Obama, Biden.

• 4:12Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 4:12Alastair Campbell?

  So Obama basically going for somebody of real experience because of his youth. And then we had Trump, Pence. And I would argue that Trump, Vance is very different to Trump, Pence.

• 4:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, so just to go back to the history of it, to take on my rest is history role for a second. The story seems to be that After the Second World War, there was very, very scratchy relationships between presidents and vice presidents. So Truman, who was Roosevelt's vice president, was completely excluded from everything. He didn't even know that America had a nuclear bomb when he took over because FDR hadn't even informed him about the Manhattan Program. When Nixon became Eisenhower's vice president, Eisenhower was completely contemptuous of him. Why did you pick him? Well, a lot of this has to do with party management and trying to get him. So when

• 5:02Rory Stewart?

  poor Nixon was running against Kennedy, Eisenhower was asked, what had Nixon done as vice president? And Eisenhower said, well, I can't think of anything. If you give me a week, I might be able to think of something he's done as my vice president. And then Kennedy was completely contemptuous of LBJ and RFK, particularly his brother, treated LBJ terribly. LBJ then becomes president and this bullying continues. His vice president, he refuses to send to Churchill's funeral just to kind of humiliate him. There's a little bit of an attempt with Ford to bring in Rockefeller as his vice president. Yeah, of course, yeah. But Rockefeller is completely sidelined by Rumsfeld and Cheney, the young Rumsfeld and Cheney, who refused to let him do anything. So it changes in seventy six and the academic

• 5:47Rory Stewart?

  story is it's with Carter and Mondale that the modern vice president is formed. And the modern vice president is Carter, and this is just before your story, but just before you come in, it's Reagan, basically says, okay, we're going to have a serious person who's going to be basically my deputy, my advisor, I'm going to give them big policy briefs, I'm going to above all give them an office in the White House right next to me. Before that, they'd all been parked out in the way that Susie Viles parked Musk out in the executive office. Going to have them in the White House, they're going to have a staff, they're going to have a team, and they're going to meet me every week. So they set up weekly meetings with the president and they're going to, they're going to be

• 6:27Rory Stewart?

  our main access to our senators. So the vice presidents would chair these legislative meetings and, and that's the model that you're talking about. Yeah. So with the exception of Dan Quayle, from then on, from seventy six, right the way through to the end of Obama, they're often In many cases, older, more experienced, they know how Washington works, or they know how foreign affairs works. The presidents are often people who've been governors in states, they don't understand Washington and foreign affairs in the same way.

• 6:55Alastair Campbell?

  So that would be, that would be the case with, say, with Reagan and Bush Senior. That Bush Senior has done so many big jobs.

• 6:59Rory Stewart?

  Give them these portfolios. And it's not just that they use them to represent them abroad, it's that, you know, you imagine with Obama and Biden, there will be times when Biden is giving him frank advice on how to get bills through the Senate. You'd imagine with Gore and Clinton, that Gore was given portfolio lead, you're doing the environment for me. And this will lead on to where we are with Vance. Remember of these people that you've mentioned, George Bush Senior, who's Reagan's vice president, becomes the president, right? Al Gore, who's Clinton's, is supposed to become the president. Biden, who's Obama's, becomes the president, right? So a system is set up where an increasing,

• 7:44Rory Stewart?

  and of course, even these people that I said were humiliated since the Second World War, Truman becomes president, LBJ becomes president, Nixon becomes president, right?

• 7:53Alastair Campbell?

  So what is this, do you know the stat? I don't, I don't know, I'm just asking whether you've, reading these books, whether you've discovered what the stat is for the proportion of vice presidents who become president?

• 8:03Rory Stewart?

  LBJ makes that joke. So when LBJ takes the role, and people say, what on earth are you doing? Lyndon Johnson was the master of the Senate, had been the most powerful figure in American presidents. And then he takes this role as vice president, everyone says, this is ridiculous, this is a no end role, it's going nowhere. And he says, being very brutal, I've looked at the stats, and a quarter of us become president because the president's assassinated. And indeed, that turns out to be the case with him.

• 8:28Alastair Campbell?

  You could be fury of New Conspiracy. Maybe it's not New Conspiracy, I don't know.

• 8:33Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, yes. So back, back over to you. So he, he comes in, and what's, let's just start before we get into the details, but what's your sense of what the key part, let, let's say, in the past, these people have been senior experienced senators.

• 8:48Rory Stewart?

  Who there to guide, is that what Vance is providing for Trump or is it something a bit different?

• 8:54Alastair Campbell?

  No, he's not, I don't think he's providing that at all because of course his, his, his, his political career to that point had been fairly short.

• 8:59Rory Stewart?

  Two years, I think.

• 9:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, so no, I don't think it's that. I think, I think what Trump saw in Vance was, well, first of all, let's go back to what we said in the previous parts of the series. Vance is representing some of these very, very powerful people who are funding the Republicans, who are the intellectual powerhouse of the Republicans. Peter Thiel's the one we talked about most, but there are plenty of others. So he's representing part of the kind of money and intellectual base of the, of the Republican Party. But clearly Trump saw something in him. Let's just go to Trump's sort of basic narcissism. He doesn't want somebody to challenge him. Well, the youth kind of gives him that in a way, even though I think Vance could

• 9:39Alastair Campbell?

  end up as a very, very powerful force within the White House. He doesn't have the, it's not like George Bush Senior, who everybody knows, understands the world of intelligence and diplomacy more than Ronald Reagan did. Same you could probably say for Joe Biden, possibly when it came to Obama.

• 9:56Rory Stewart?

  Certainly with Cheney.

• 9:57Alastair Campbell?

  Abid Cheney and Bush Junior, yeah.

• 9:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Alastair Campbell?

  So I think he's got somebody who he basically sees as part of his political operation. He's going to be the, the attack dog. And if you think about one of the, the things that most of our listeners and viewers will remember, one of the first big moments in the vice presidency was, was not Trump going to the Munich Security Council, Security Conference, which is one of the big foreign policy events in the global calendar. He sends Vance.

• 10:23Rory Stewart?

  And, and he had, just a quick sort of history thing there. He, in the first Trump presidency, 2016, he sends Pence.

• 10:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Rory Stewart?

  And I've just been reading the Pence biography and Pence essentially goes to Munich Security Conference and Pence sees this entire role as trying to reassure people.

• 10:38Alastair Campbell?

  It's not going to be as bad as you think.

• 10:40Rory Stewart?

  What, what he goes, yeah, he goes all the way around the world. He does it in Latin America. Everywhere he goes in the world, he, he informally takes people aside and says, don't worry too much about what Trump's saying in public. In practice, it's going to be fine.

• 10:51Alastair Campbell?

  He does, he does to everybody what Kevin McCarthy did to us in Davos. He says, it's all going to be fine. Don't worry.

• 10:55Rory Stewart?

  And that was the traditional way of handling Trump.

• 10:57Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 10:58Rory Stewart?

  But, but tell us about what Vance does.

• 10:59Alastair Campbell?

  Vance, Vance, I was in Germany at the time and Vance goes to, to Munich and delivers a speech that, I think I said at the time, if he just sort of stood up with a bucket of vomit and thrown it at the audience, it would have had pretty much the same effect. He said.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Free speech, I fear, is in retreat. The threat that I worry the most about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.

• 11:30Alastair Campbell?

  And then at the end of the day, he goes off and meets the leaders of the AFD, having snubbed the official government, the far-right party, having snubbed the official government. So it went down like a lead balloon. And yet, fast forward to where we are now, and we have a succession of European leaders. We saw it at NATO, we've seen it in summits, we've seen it in bilaterals, who are essentially... I saw that, you know, if I dare mention the presenter of a lesser podcast in the United Kingdom, Lewis Goodall, for example, said about the NATO summit, that it was like watching a king and all the other leaders from around the world were his courtiers. Now, that may be a bit over the top, but you get the point he's making.

• 12:13Alastair Campbell?

  So the consequence of Vance attacking Europe, humiliating European leaders, essentially wasn't to have those European leaders rise up and say, hey, listen, mate, who do you think you're talking to? It was to play into this sense of Trump is the only figure that we have to think about.

• 12:30Rory Stewart?

  And is he actually doing to Europe what Trump has done to him? So we hope you enjoyed that extract from episode four. To hear the first four episodes in full right now, just go to therestispolitics.com for a free trial today. It's incredibly simple to sign up wherever you listen, and it takes less than two minutes. You'll get every regular and member-only episode of The Rest is Politics and Leading, all in one clean, ad-free feed, plus a bunch of extra benefits like our members' chatroom. Just head to therestispolitics.com to try it for free. See you soon.