AILSA CHANG, HOST:
When President Biden heard that Donald Trump had picked J.D. Vance to be his running mate, he called the Ohio senator a, quote, "clone of Trump." Listen to Vance's remarks a couple of years after the 2020 election.
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J D VANCE: Was the election in 2020 free and fair? Was it above board? And the - my answer is no. I really don't think that it was.
CHANG: But when Vance first gained national attention, he was one of Trump's loudest critics.
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J D VANCE: I can't stomach Trump. I think that he's noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.
CHANG: That's J.D. Vance back in 2016 on NPR's Fresh Air when Trump mounted his first run for the presidency. We wanted to dig a little deeper into Vance's political path. So we called up someone who knew him. David Frum - he's a senior editor for The Atlantic. Vance wrote for a website that Frum ran from 2009 to 2012. Frumforum.com was dedicated to imagining a new, more inclusive Republican Party. Welcome, David Frum.
DAVID FRUM: Thank you.
CHANG: So you wrote a piece back in 2022 in The Atlantic, which was called "The J.D. Vance I Knew." If you had to sum up who that J.D. Vance was, how would you sum him up?
FRUM: Well, in the early 2000s, J.D. Vance - who is not then yet famous, not then yet the author of "Hillbilly Elegy," not then yet even a Yale law student - back then, he was in a movement shared by many of us who were looking for a way forward to a more moderate and modern conservatism after the financial crisis and after the Iraq War. He had been a veteran of the Marine Corps. He was - back then, he was a strong advocate of national defense. Back then, he was a believer in American world leadership, very much the opposite of what he is now. He was also groping his way forward to a new kind of politics. And he was recognized by everyone as an emerging political talent. And everyone who knew him understood this was someone who was on his way to being somebody important. He had this extraordinary personal story. And a lot of us hoped that he would be the leader of modern and moderate Republicanism.
CHANG: You mentioned "Hillbilly Elegy." This is the 2016 memoir, which, in a way, functioned as well as sort of a social commentary on the white working class. Could you talk a little bit about the reception of the book at the time and what that said about Vance?
FRUM: The reception of the book was euphoric. But not euphoria from the people J.D. Vance was writing about. The book was taken up by professional America, liberal America, political America, looking for an explanation of the Trump phenomenon, but also one that was sympathetic and not too upsetting. And that's what J.D. Vance offered was a story about what had just happened in American politics in a way that was palatable and didn't raise some of the really dark fears that we've had to contend with since Trump became president, since the January 6 attack and attempt to overthrow an election.
CHANG: Well, let's remind people during the 2016 election, J.D. Vance characterized himself as a never-Trump guy, right? Like, he has...
FRUM: Yes.
CHANG: ...Called Trump - and I'm using his words - reprehensible, an idiot, suggesting even once that Trump might be, quote, "America's Hitler." And then in the last few years, Vance has established himself as a Trump loyalist. How do you explain why Vance or how Vance has evolved from what he was in 2016 to being Trump's running mate today?
FRUM: Well, let me just start with a personal theory. I think conscious hypocrisy is a very rare behavior in human beings. I don't think the human mind is organized to consistently say one thing and believe another. What we say and what we believe will, one way or another, come into harmony. Either we bring our words into line with our thoughts, or we bring our thoughts into line with our words.
So I'm not suggesting that J.D. Vance doesn't believe what he says today. I'm just saying that doesn't necessarily have much connection with what he said yesterday, and it's not a sure predictor of what he will say tomorrow. And the dissent I would make from the Biden campaign when they call him a clone of Trump is I don't think that's true. And I don't think if I were Donald Trump, I would count on that. J.D. Vance will be a Trump loyalist as long as Trump is powerful. If Trump falters, the loyalty may vanish very rapidly.
CHANG: How connected do you think Vance and Trump are to the people they will have to persuade to vote for them in November?
FRUM: I think Donald Trump does have this kind of deep connection to people who are very different from him, this flamboyant New York expert in commercial fraud who wears makeup and the strange new - and Brioni suits and ties that are too long and flies around in a jet and is the embodiment of 1980s success - that he could become this repository of the hopes of so many people who are so different from him. I don't think J.D. Vance is quite that. You know, one of the things that's very strange, there was a - when he was nominated or when he was selected, there was great euphoria in the cryptocurrency press that an advocate of cryptocurrency, which J.D. Vance is, had got onto the presidential ticket. You think, how is it helpful to the people about who he wrote in "Hillbilly Elegy" to make it easier for the cryptocurrency industry to prey on them?
CHANG: Right. What do you make of that?
FRUM: It's a very American story that people come from one place and move to another place, and they take on the characteristics. You start in Ohio. You go to Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley offers you things that Ohio cannot offer. And so you adapt to Silicon Valley. I think that his turn from the foreign policy I knew when I knew him to his now being the voice of opposition to aiding Ukraine and other U.S. - embattled U.S. allies to voting against the package that was not only for Ukraine but also for Taiwan and for Israel. I think that reflects a lot more the values of the people who are funding his operations, the value of his new friends, the value of the people who have put him on his way than it does people in Ohio, who, I imagine, probably have the same views that they did in the Reagan time and the George W. Bush time that American credit is important, that America's word matters, and America's cause is just, and its allies should be protected.
CHANG: So do you think, ultimately, it's ambition that drives J.D. Vance? It's ambition that defines J.D. Vance?
FRUM: I think that's true of a lot of people in politics. But the question when I've had a chance to interview politicians, I always ask them is, what is the issue over which you'd be willing to lose? If you had to give up your career, what is it that would make you give up your career?
CHANG: Right.
FRUM: And as ambitious as people are, they usually do have some line, something they won't do.
CHANG: Do you think J.D. Vance has a line?
FRUM: I think he walked across it. I think he told us in advance what it was. It was Donald Trump, and he walked across it.
CHANG: David Frum is a senior editor at The Atlantic. Thank you so much for speaking with us today.
FRUM: Thank you.
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