'Ride the tiger’: JD Vance accused of turning on himself to please Trump

Vice President JD Vance has emerged as one of the only high-ranking Republican officials refusing to condemn the Young Republicans scandal, in which several Republican operatives were discovered making racist and even pro-Nazi proclamations in group chats. While the scandal has led to condemnation even from some MAGA figures and the disbandment of some state GOP groups, Vance has proclaimed these were just "kids" telling edgy jokes — even though these operatives are between 18 and 40 years old — and that the real disgrace was the journalists who reported on the leaked messages.

There might be a reason why Vance is so desperate to stake out this position, wrote Ed Kilgore for New York Magazine's The Intelligencer: to make up for all the years he was outside the fold of the Trump movement.

"J.D. Vance has two particular reasons to make loyalty his middle name. First, he has a short career in politics that was preceded by some of the nastiest remarks any Republican has ever uttered about Donald Trump, particularly during the mogul’s rise to power in 2016. Back then, Vance called Trump 'America’s Hitler'; a 'moral disaster'; a 'villainous, doucey celeb'; a 'total fraud'; an 'idiot'; and 'unfit for our nation’s highest office.' These comments have been forgiven but not forgotten," wrote Kilgore.

For another thing, he noted, Vance is painfully aware that his predecessor, Mike Pence, saw his career in the GOP crumble to pieces after he refused to participate in Trump's plan to steal the 2020 election — and doesn't intend to go out the same way.

There are other factors in all of this behind the scenes, however, said Kilgore.

Another thing to consider is that "it’s Vance’s very close personal friendship with Donald Trump Jr. that has solidified his position in MAGA-land and made him the obvious heir to Junior’s dad in what very much remains a cult of personality," he wrote. "So even the slightest relaxation of his pose as the Trumpiest of them all would be a double insult to father and son. Thus, there is nothing the 47th president can say or do that he won’t defend, often eagerly and profanely, up to and including Trump’s more notorious lies, ranging from the stolen election of 2020 to the pet-eating migrants of the 2024 campaign."

At the end of the day, Kilgore concluded, Vance has transformed from the elite cosmopolitan Trump Country translator he once presented himself as, into "an angry apostle of red-against-blue America offering the pure Trump gospel in complete sentences. He may have passed the point of no return. But he can’t relax now; he must ride the tiger like the rest of us until at least 2029."