From Trump Skeptic to Trump’s Heir
In 2016, JD Vance openly called Donald Trump “reprehensible” and described himself as a “never Trump guy.” Five years later, he was advising Trump to fire the civil service and replace it with loyalists. By 2024, he was Trump’s running mate—and soon after, vice president.
What changed was not just political calculation, but a deeper ideological turn.
Constructing a Postliberal Identity
Vance has been labeled a national conservative, right-wing populist, and an heir to the paleoconservatives of the Pat Buchanan era. He embraces the label “postliberal right”—a worldview that sees classical liberalism’s emphasis on individual autonomy and neutral institutions as a failure.
His bookshelf tells the story. He cites Patrick Deneen, Rod Dreher, and Curtis Yarvin as influences—writers who argue that liberal democracy and modern institutions have eroded community, virtue, and cultural cohesion. Catholic social teaching, in his telling, provides a moral and intellectual framework for rebuilding society on firmer, more hierarchical foundations.
An Agenda of Cultural Counterrevolution
In concrete terms, Vance opposes abortion, same-sex marriage, and gun control and has argued for federal criminalization of gender-affirming care for minors. He has suggested that childless adults are more likely to be sociopathic and floated giving parents more voting power than non-parents before later walking that back.
He paints universities as “the enemy” and calls for “de-woke-ification” of institutions, even “if the courts say it is illegal.” He is sharply critical of the Justice Department and the FBI and insists that America’s most powerful institutions have united against the right.
On foreign policy, he opposes continued U.S. military aid to Ukraine and favors a negotiated peace, while offering strong support for Israel in the Gaza war.
Faith, Power, and the New Right
Vance’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in 2019 gave his politics a theological backbone, at least as he tells it. He invokes the traditional concept of ordo amoris—an ordered love that prioritizes one’s own nation—to justify “America First” positions on immigration and foreign policy, despite criticism from Popes Francis and Leo XIV.
His alliances tell another part of the story: backing from Peter Thiel, ties to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and endorsements of books by Kevin Roberts and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec place him squarely in the ecosystem of the assertive New Right.
Takeaway
Vance’s trajectory is not a simple case of political flip-flopping. It’s the story of a man who has chosen a side in a larger revolt against liberal institutions—melding religious conviction, populist rhetoric, and elite-backed power into a vision that aims not to manage the existing order, but to replace it.