00:00I'm wondering how long it took you to get through all of these interviews.
00:03There's a lot of standouts for me, but I'm wondering if one particular conversation
00:07stood out to you that kind of solidifies what people make of the individual that is J.D. Vance.
00:14Yeah, well, thanks for having me. It was a fascinating journey. I spent about six months
00:19on this piece on J.D. Vance, trying to unravel the mystery of who he is. We don't really know
00:26to this point. I went to Yale Law School where he spent his formative years. And, you know,
00:32at first nobody wanted to talk to me. The subject is politically radioactive. But I got my big break
00:39in the form of an interview with Amy Chua, better known as the Tiger Mother, for that sensational
00:47book she wrote back in the day about tough love parenting. Well, she was a Yale Law professor
00:52when J.D. Vance landed there. She took him under his wing and really helped to create
00:59his trajectory. There would have been no hillbilly elegy without her. She also befriended a young
01:08girl, daughter of Indian immigrants, who always sat in the front row of her contracts class.
01:14Her name was Usha. She was far and away the breakout star of that class.
01:20That stood out to me a lot, people saying how brilliant she was, even comparatively. Like,
01:25she was the star.
01:27Yeah. So the answer to your question is that the most interesting interview for sure
01:32was with Amy Chua, who, of course, very rarely talks about J.D. Vance, but opened up to me.
01:39You know, I'm very curious how important Yale was to the formation of who J.D. Vance is today. So
01:44he
01:44was in the military. We know a lot about his upbringing because of the memoir that he wrote,
01:48that David Shua was so instrumental in getting to publishers and getting out there and promoting,
01:52certainly, when that book came out. How did he find navigating the place, this storied American
01:57institution, obviously a place where folks from decidedly different backgrounds than J.D. Vance's
02:03have been and thrived in the past. Was it a place that welcomed him, where he felt welcomed while he
02:07was a student there? The answer is he navigated it with great difficulty. He, by all accounts,
02:14was a lost soul at Yale Law School. Had no idea what he wanted to do. Didn't want to be
02:20a lawyer. He knew
02:21that much. So he was looking, casting about for some kind of purpose in life. He'd been an atheist in
02:30Iraq, where he was a public affairs officer for the Marines, came back bitterly opposed to that war.
02:39And, of course, that informed his belief in no forever wars. He was against Trump's pointless
02:48war of choice in Iran until he decided to be for it, as we all know. That's another story we'll
02:55get to.
02:57I did want to ask you a little bit about those shifting tides, because you mentioned his conversion
03:01to Catholicism. You also have his kind of conversion to Republicanism. And you write about, in the 2016
03:07race, I mean, he loathed Donald Trump. And you report that he was on a mission. He even reached
03:12out to the Clinton campaign, saying, I hate Hillary, but I hate Trump more. Trump can't win. He can't
03:18win. Hillary's going to lose, but she doesn't have to. How did he go from there to where he is
03:23now?
03:24Yeah, really amazing, previously unreported story that I stumbled across. Vance, particularly
03:31considering what Vance was saying at the time during the election of 2016, he said he couldn't bring
03:37himself to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. And yet, behind the scenes, he was reaching
03:44out to the Clinton campaign, trying to, giving advice to, on how Hillary could win. He said to
03:52an intermediary, I hate Hillary Clinton, but I hate Trump more. He cannot win. Hillary is going to lose,
04:00but she doesn't have to. You need to get her out of Miami and stop hanging around with Beyonce and
04:06get
04:06her to the Midwestern states. Six weeks before the election, I report, and nobody's denied this,
04:12that he reached out to Jake Sullivan, Clinton's top aide. They had a conversation in which Vance
04:19said, you got to fix this deplorables thing, her unforced error about Trump supporters, you may
04:25remember. And she's got to focus. It's a pretty amazing story. Jake Sullivan, of course, with ties to
04:33Yale Law School. So that's very much the locus of this entire universe. I asked you how he was able
04:39to comport himself, how he found Yale Law School. How about upon the publication of this book when he
04:43became a real darling to folks who had a background very different from his own? I remember covering
04:48the Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley, summer camp for billionaires, right after that book
04:54came out and J.D. Vance was in attendance, embraced by that crowd of plutocrats. Yeah, I was a producer
05:00on a Sunday show at a different network at the time. And we had him on and everybody was coming
05:03in to meet him because they were so excited to meet him. He had that kind of wider embrace. And
05:07I guess
05:08I look at that moment as one in which he could have gone one of two ways. Yes, he went
05:11down this path,
05:12obviously, of embracing Trumpism. But was it equally likely he could have gone down the other path?
05:17He was getting into venture capital. He was, again, wined and dined by a lot of oligarchs and plutocrats.
05:24It could have gone a different way, Chris, could it have? Well, he went down that path for quite a
05:28while
05:28until he did that sharp U-turn in 2020 when Peter Thiel came along with $16 million for the PAC
05:38when Vance was running for Senator of Ohio. And that was when Vance went to see Trump and the two
05:49of
05:49them headed off despite everything. You know, I tell the story about how he met Tucker Carlson,
05:56his good pal. They were, you know, they were fellow conservative firebrands. But, you know,
06:06and Carlson is a fascinating part of this story. He, they became good friends and they met ironically
06:14at a so-called CEO summit. And Carlson said to me, I'm embarrassed to tell you where we met.
06:22And at that point, you know, I think that Carlson says that Vance just became disgusted with these
06:31plutocrats. But at the same time, look, it was, he, he clearly, clearly needed Peter Thiel's help to
06:40win in Ohio and Trump's endorsement and he got it. So it's, it was a head spinning ideological pivot
06:48from never Trumper who referred, who said he could be America's Hitler to Trump acolyte. And now
06:57maybe his heir apparent. Speaking of never Trumpers, when you look at the 2028 race,
07:04he's positioning himself against another never Trumper who has since come into the fold. And
07:09that's Marco Rubio. Is Vance the favorite or is he in an awkward position and too tied to the pop,
07:17the possibly popular, excuse me, possibly unpopular policies. There we go. We got it out of this
07:23president, including the war in Iran, which you already referenced is kind of coming about on.
07:27Yeah. Well, look, I think Vance is in the pole position. There's no doubt about that. But don't,
07:37you know, I wouldn't take anything to the bank at this point. I mean, this is, I think, and I
07:41wrote
07:41an op-ed on my sub stack. I hope everybody will go to my sub stack and check it out.
07:47In which I say
07:50that the headline is why J.D. Vance can't win in 2028. The obstacles could be
07:58insurmountable, beginning with this heavy baggage of Trump's record that he has to carry.
08:03But look, Marco Rubio is the favorite of the traditional GOP. He's certainly the favorite
08:09of all the donors. He's certainly the favorite of the Israeli lobby. So he's got a lot of advantages.
08:17And there is, of course, the wild card, which may be the biggest potential threat to Vance
08:24of all. And that is the president himself. Because the moment J.D. Vance starts to get
08:31attention and traction and running ads and having rallies, guess who's not going to want that
08:39to share that spotlight. A very prominent White House correspondent who's been following Trump
08:45for years said to me on background, that's the moment when Trump will destroy him. It's inevitable.
08:53You highlight this in stark relief. Great anecdote here. As a frequent White House guest points out,
08:58these days, special visitors to the Oval Office get a specially emblazoned hat that keeps them in a
09:03closet between the private dining room and the Oval Office. They don't say Trump Vance. They say
09:07Trump 2028. Chris, you have done so much great reporting on this White House. Christina asking
09:13about the process of reporting this. And you talked about kind of the radioactivity of stories. You
09:17did such a wonderful profile of Susie Wiles and the rest of the team there within the White House that
09:22caused such a stir. So you have a particular skill or facility for that. I'm curious what you make,
09:27as you've observed it, of the relationship between Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. What have we learned
09:32about the way, yes, he's kind of comported himself ideologically, but kind of made himself
09:35somebody who can be a complement to this unique president? I think it's complicated. I think
09:42that Trump, on the one hand, feels that J.D. has been useful to him. He's certainly, J.D. has
09:50been
09:50pretty loyal. I mean, as I alluded to before, not easy to go from a guy who was all about
10:01opposing forever war as to being chief cheerleader for Trump's pointless war of choice in Iran.
10:08That's above and beyond the call of duty. But Vance has gone there. On the other hand,
10:15I'm told by people who are in a position to know that Trump loves to just needle him and torture
10:24him
10:25behind closed doors. He will say to people who come through the Oval, you guys stuck me with this guy,
10:32didn't you? You know, I mean, that kind of thing. So we'll see how it all ends. But if I
10:41were J.D. Vance,
10:42there's a cautionary figure and his name is Mike Pence. I would be careful.
10:50Before we let you go, since you have been in and around covering this White House for quite some
10:54time, we have an announcement from the president that he's going to ban MSNBC, CNN, and Politico
11:00from the White House. It's unclear if he's talking about the pool, if he's talking about the small
11:04pool. Talk about the relationship between this president and the press. Because at one point,
11:08he does talk more to the press than we ever heard from President Biden. But he also wants the press
11:14to
11:14only cover him in a certain way. How does that work? And do you think this is enforceable, his latest
11:19decree? Well, it's absurd, of course. And it's part of Trump's, you know, distorted reality. He lives on
11:28another planet in which he thinks that the press should be cheerleaders. You know, that's not planet
11:37Earth. It's planet Trump. So I think that the reality is that this is likely bluster. And it won't
11:48happen. But even if he should evict CNN and Politico and MSNOW, you know, it's, they're not going to be
11:57missing all that much, frankly. And they'll continue to report. I've, you know, nobody's welcomed me
12:05into the Oval since my piece on Susie Wilde. So I just, I would say just go, keep at it.
12:13Keep at it. Lessons there from Chris Whipple there, contributing editor,
12:15contributing writer for Vanity Fair. His latest piece is on J.D. Vance. Vance and his storied
12:21career there at Yale Law School.
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