Hillbilly Elegy

I've got to play a little bit of this because I'd love to get your reaction. Here he is. J.D. Vance is a phony. He's fake. I mean, he first says that Donald Trump is like Hitler and now he's acting like he's Lincoln. I mean, the problem with J.D. Vance is he has no conviction, but I guess his running mate has 34. He claims to be from Eastern Kentucky, tries to write a book about it to profit off our people. And then he calls us lazy and this makes me angry, but it especially makes me angry about our people in Eastern Kentucky.

if you haven't watched Hillbilly Elegy or read the book Hillbilly Elegy he understands that it's an intuitive level ...

To understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart.

he claimed he changed his name on his wedding day in 2014. But his legal name change took place in April of 2013, just before he graduated from Yale.

Hillbilly Elegy was a good book. It just was.

Ron Howard made my book into a film.

He's got a life experience, a life story that is remarkably compelling, but this is JD Vance.

His arguments are a little weak, the diet Mountain Dew stuff, the everything's racist. He also made a comment the other day, which is very telling. And it's the point of the whole exercise, why you want JD Vance.

He's not nearly as substantial as you'd think his life experience and his book and the movie made about his book should be.

It's like, you know, President Biden and Kamala Harris overlooked Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin and look at all these like, but it's not going to get any attention because he's written all these things and sell these things in the past that just make him fucking weird.

He's also doing a lot of training wheel stuff. He's like doing interviews with Trump. What a waste of time. I know.

It's also the challenge of the Trump Republican Party trying to rebrand itself as like the workers party, right? Even if you decide to pivot from the tax cuts for the rich and the deregulation agenda and all that bullshit, they are so obsessed with the like weird cultural shit that even if they have an economic populist story to tell, like J.D. Vance ostensibly does and has in Hillbilly Elegy and since then, like it's just going to get lost because they have all these other crazy ideas on cultural issues that are so out of step with mainstream America that that's going to get the attention.

I know he had a bestselling book but not that many people read it.

And that's why that book became a, a, a liberal darling cause it was actually like kind of being honest about the ways these places were supposed to be responsible for what had happened.

And it's, and that's why that book became a, a, a liberal darling cause it was actually like kind of being honest about the ways these places were supposed to be responsible for what had happened.

the question with him has always been like is he the JD Vance from his book that seemed more reasonable yeah which I read at the time I thought was pretty good and I know you're not allowed to say that anymore

Oh, my God, we have to learn everything we possibly can about the middle of America.

they all suddenly turned into fucking anthropologists.

Let's go out and let's find the diner. And let's go. Let's go to the white working class.

They were like salon book clubs about Hillbilly elegy.

He is a Yale educated venture capital executive, Evan McMullin voter whose biggest supporter is a Facebook billionaire running as a populist heir to Trumpism.

the question with him has always been like is he the JD Vance from his book that seemed more reasonable... and it seems like an effort to better understand people's problems and solve them I think he was wrong about all his solutions but the JD Vance that we've all gotten to know since is scary and isolationist in bad ways and just a bad person and a demagogue.

The things that he has done as governor of Minnesota are the same kinds of programs that enabled a young J.D. Vance when he was going by a completely different name to survive while his mother was struggling with drug addiction, like while his grandmother was raising him. And J.D. Vance talks about that in Hillbilly Elegy. Those government programs were the bridge that allowed them to keep going as a family. Why then are you against them now and why are you pillering Tim Walls? Because he did more of that as governor.

JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community. Come on!

Those government programs were the bridge that allowed them to keep going as a family. Why then are you against them now and why are you pillorying Tim Walz? Because he did more of that as governor.

the experience taught me a valuable lesson that I could do it. I could work 20 hour days when I had to, I could speak clearly and confidently with TV cameras shoved in my face.

the experience taught me a valuable lesson that I could do it. I could work 20 hour days when I had to, I could speak clearly and confidently with TV cameras shoved in my face.

I mean, this is what JD Van Schox got in Hillbilly, Elegy, right? The people who are in these small towns and they've basically been told that they have two choices. They can go on welfare or they can leave.

I think that a lot of this started coming out in research years after I graduated. ... I think that's kind of what J.D. talks about in Hillbilly Elegy as well.

I spent some time this weekend...I sat down and I watched Hillbilly elegy I want to get into that because I have to tell you I was deeply moved

I've got the book. I haven't gotten through it yet, but I watched the Netflix movie incredibly well done and It's gonna be a little hard for me

It was hard. It was really hard for me to get through and although. I've always liked you and respected you It's impossible to form an opinion about who you are if you haven't seen that movie and the things you went through with With your mom and your grandmother and your family

It was really a hard movie to watch

There's a scene at the end of hillbilly elegy you with your mom and in the hotel room and the drug It's it's hard to even talk about again because I've been there, and I know that Conversation and I and you know unfortunately I never got the chance to rescue her she she passed then um

Sunday, I had to take it easy. Long story, but no one feeling that great. And I was I was sitting on the couch and feel good today. So I said, I guess I decided to give a watch to Hillbilly Elegy.

It's J.D. Vance's autobiography. Our new vice presidential nominee for the Trump ticket.

If you haven't seen it or read the book. You can knock J.D. Vance for whatever you like policy wise. This guy's backstory having dealt with a family member with addiction. I recently lost. I was having a tough time with the Kleenex, if you know what I mean.

I got to tell you, I don't really care. Sounds like I got to turn in my man card. I was having a tough time with the movie. It's an amazing movie about his backstory, but it really impacted me deep.

Sunday, I had to take it easy. Long story, but no one feeling that great. And I was I was sitting on the couch and feel good today. So I said, I guess I decided to give a watch to Hillbilly Elegy.

It's J.D. Vance's autobiography. Our new vice presidential nominee for the Trump ticket.

If you haven't seen it or read the book. You can knock J.D. Vance for whatever you like policy wise. This guy's backstory having dealt with a family member with addiction. I recently lost.

I was having a tough time with the movie. It's an amazing movie about his backstory, but it really impacted me deep.

I watched JD's movie and based on his book, he'll build the algae by this life story.

And his mom has been sober and clean for 10 years, mom Bev, and thank the Lord for that.

And for all of you out there, not you in my listening audience, but for you establishment fake swampy Republicans, especially the woman out there who is behind the attacks on JD Vance. And you know who you are by the way. And I do too. You're really horrible people.

This is a guy who's been through a lot. I want you to listen to his answer when I address this drug crisis and how much it means to him having a mother who had a substance abuse problem most of her adult life and almost died.

This is the real JD Vance. Don't buy into the liberal bullshit. This is the real JD Vance.

If you haven't seen Hillbilly Elegy, folks in the chat, have you seen it? Go for it. Watch it.

It's an amazing movie about his backstory, but it really impacted me deep.

This guy has a resume like we've never seen before. United States Marine, entrepreneur, lawyer, United States senator from Ohio, and he's only 39.

This guy's backstory, having dealt with a family member with addiction I recently lost...I was having a tough time with the Kleenex, if you know what I mean.

I read his book

I loved the story and then he actually sort of started this thing like never Trump because like he didn't have any information But he was also the guy that didn't just say okay. Well, I'm gonna accept Trump now and roll

He was like I was wrong. I did not think that the brash guy from New York was gonna fight for XYZ I didn't think he was good. Like I was wrong I bought into the media narrative and he became like a champion of the America first of the MAGA cause and and just Articulates it so well, so like we became friendly, but I was like Chris was like, oh this guy I love it. It's a never Trump

I read his book back in like whatever it was early, early teens when it came out. I got this guy's got to be in politics. I loved the story.

But he was also the guy that didn't just say, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I didn't think he was like I was wrong. I bought into the media narrative and he became like a champion of the America first of the MAGA cause and just articulated so well.

His book, Hillbilly Elegy, will change your life if you read it. It's about the hollowing out of middle America.

Even liberals liked the damn book because they were like, wow, the middle class is getting screwed over.

J.D. Vance, who's a Senator right now, wrote a book, Hillbilly Elegy, and he got me rethinking the idea of free trade. It was a real ground shift for me, but it was because I trust, I didn't know him, but I had read about him before and heard him on podcasts, and I had trusted him.

I was absolutely convinced and one day I'm listening to an Econ talk with Russ Roberts great podcast guys a genius and you know different brand of politics and maybe super smart And he was talking about hillbilly elegy JD Vance's great book and the topic came up at some point in there About China and me being an avid free trader I always said like listen if China wants to be the king of rubber dog toys then screw it Let him do it like well build high-end stuff here.

Read his work and hillbilly elegy and all his work and all of his eyes his appearances on media talking about the hollowing out of the American middle class exporting of our jobs overseas the destruction of industrial towns. It's kind of stuff. He's lived his life. That's why I support him It's one thing to talk about it's one thing to grow up in it and know about it because you lived it from personal experience

They viciously attacked him as weird. We which coming from the left and wants to cut your kids balls off.

They viciously attacked him as weird. We which coming from the left and wants to cut your kids balls off.

if you read Hillbilly Elegy, and I've read it a couple of times, if you take seriously what he is struggling with in that book, one of the things he's struggling with is a sense of being othered.

I did. I did years ago. I read it years ago, and I've been rereading it this week.

the author of a Hillbilly Elegy, which is a sort of book on Appalachian whites, which if you read Hillbilly Elegy, it is very much about how that area of the country is responsible for its own problems.

He was encouraged to write that memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, by his law school mentor.

It hit the New York Times bestseller list, and it got taken up as a sort of Rosetta Stone for liberals who are trying to understand the disaffection of middle American blue collar workers.

It was a memoir, so it told his life story. The political kernel of the book was basically that Appalachian Americans and a certain type of blue collar worker suffered from a set of social pathologies, you know, typical tropes or laziness, a lack of personal initiative.

And so the news reporters are calling this guy and they're saying, we want to understand why white people voted for Donald Trump. And J.D. Vance is there to explain at the time what does he think about Donald Trump?

And he says as he watched his liberal friends react to Trump and sort of go a little bit crazy as he sees it over what Trump was doing, it radicalized him against the sort of vision of progressive liberalism that was dominant in those circles.

So he wrote this supposedly populist book, also popular, Hillbilly Elegy, where he really, I hate to say it, like craps on the working class saying, the reason you haven't gone to Yale Law School like me, the reason you're not billionaires like my friend Peter Thiel is that you're lazy, you're shiftless. And it's really kind of ugly in terms of showing so little solidarity for the people he grew up with.

Ron Howard directed a movie based on his book right, I mean he's changed since then, but he has an ability to live in a lot of different worlds and that's a really really, um, a valuable asset for a vice president, J.D. Vance, um, hopefully he's going to be on the show very soon but I've said to the audience from the day we launched, it was literally one of, if not, the most favorite interview I've ever done, it was while I was NBC, it's one of, one of the few very good things that came out of that year, that year plus when I was there and, um, I encourage you to go back and look at the YouTube of it, it's truly worth your 11 minutes, or however long that the piece was, and I don't say this in a sycophantic way, I don't have a girl crush on J.D. Vance, I love only one man and that's my husband, but J.D. Vance is a beautiful person, that's my biggest takeaway, was this is a beautiful man, he has been through a lot and has overcome and has managed to like stay within his own soul, solid, spiritual, connected to his family, very aware of his own failings and the dangers to him given his upbringing, loves his wife, his family, all of his family's nuclear family and the children he has of course with Usha, and I'm rooting for that guy to succeed, I don't really care if it says vice president or a senator, or just as a human, you just the more you learn about him I think the more you like him.

I think it's 100 true, I, I don't think there's anything that's going to diminish the desire of Democrats, if he wins another term to impeach him, I, I think that that's just, but also I think it's funny that I just said about Steve Bannon talking about how much he loves AOC, if you take that, that Don Jr. quote, and you gave it to somebody, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago and you said, who is the person talking about corporate billionaires and warmongers, you would assume it was Noam Chomsky, you would assume it was somebody on the left, I mean, this is why people like Bannon, and why people like Don Jr., uh kind of, you know, respect people on the populist left because it's become, it's become such an overlap, but somebody like J.D. Vance, who I really strongly disagree with on a lot of issues, the one thing you can't take away from him, if you see him, I've seen him dealing with, there was one recent, uh interview he gave to CNN in which they were thought they were going to dunk on him because what, what happens with journalists, when it comes to MAGA types, is that you always assume because you are right and they are wrong, this is from the perspective of the journalist, that it'll be easy right, because you know they just lie and they make things up, J.D. Vance is no dummy, I mean, he's very very skilled at this and I, it was the first person I saw in kind of MAGA universe, so skillfully and artfully, you can win by, you know, as Steve Bannon says in that clip, having a hammer like Matt Boyle, hammer is usually the tool that they use, that would be Vance's uh great advantage.

Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump.

I didn't think he was going to be a good president.

He was a great president.

I think you should, when you, when you're wrong about something, you should change your mind and be honest with people about that fact.

I think he's doing that.

It's not that he loathes his mom, but I can speak to this personally. When you've got someone in your family, who's got a rampaging drug addiction, it, it ruins them and it can ruin your relationship and it can ruin your family at least temporarily. And those scars may not fully ever heal. And so it was actually really damn brave for them to put her out there. And J.D. didn't try to say like, we're all good. We're all good. You know, talking about her, there was a reference in a speech that kind of suggested she's here and you know, it's complicated.

He writes this thing, hillbilly elegy, right. About, about sort of growing up poor and now the people in, but he, but he blames the people for their circumstance. Look, I grew up in poverty. I remember what it feels like to be hungry. I remember what it feels like not to have enough.

He's one of those people that wants people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps when they don't have boots. So he has made it out of Appalachia, but he is blaming those people in Appalachia for the structural problems that keep them there. And I think that is the most despicable thing about him. He wrote a really interesting and smart book about getting on and didn't recognize that he isn't out of poverty. Well, he is bereft. He's bereft of morality. He has, he is bereft of morality. He's bereft of spine with empathy.

And he called them lazy, acting like he understands our culture, and he's one of us. He's not.

He said it was weird that I attacked, and this is in his words, his, quote, origin story. Fictional characters have an origin story. Real people have childhoods. So let me be clear, J.D. Vance ain't from Kentucky. He ain't from Appalachia, and he ain't going to be your vice president.

He just started talking in this divisive, dismissive and cool way about people who are different from him. And that is just not the person that I used to know.

Well, I don't think anyone knows what J.D. or Usha believe because they have literally changed their principles on every imaginable issue.

What I think is reflected in both of their changing of their principles on every single issue is that their core value is amassing money and power, not the integrity and kindness that I think are core values of everyone in the Rust Belt.

J.D. Vance is a phony. He's fake.

He claims to be from Eastern Kentucky, tries to write a book about it to profit off our people, and then he calls us lazy.

He's not.

I have read so many think pieces about your book and seen so many interviews with you. I have the book right here.

But your story, first of all, is fascinating. So the way you went from sort of rust belt country to Yale.

I've got to play a little bit of this because I'd love to get your reaction. Here he is. J.D. Vance is a phony. He's fake. I mean, he first says that Donald Trump is like Hitler, and now he's acting like he's Lincoln. I mean, the problem with J.D. Vance is he has no conviction, but I guess his running mate has 34. He claims to be from Eastern Kentucky, tries to write a book about it to profit off our people, and then he calls us lazy. And this makes me angry, but it especially makes me angry about our people in Eastern Kentucky. Listen, these are the hardworking coal miners that powered the industrial revolution, that helped build the strongest middle class the world has ever seen, helped us win two world wars, and he called them lazy, acting like he understands our culture, and he's one of us. He's not.

He claims to be from Eastern Kentucky, tries to write a book about it to profit off our people, and then he calls us lazy.

And he called them lazy, acting like he understands our culture, and he's one of us. He's not.

And then you move on to Yale Law School and there's Amy Chua, our mutual friend who we love, who encouraged you to write the book and change your life and saw in you this special story in person that ultimately would lead you to enter the national conversation.

And I think even Joy Reid could see it back then. Now, maybe not.

You know, we're going to go read Hillbilly Elegy or some other book to try to understand people in the middle of the country.

Hillbilly Elegy tells us the code to follow when one feels that one has been wronged and that code is to fight, to fight.

I'm not one of these people who says that poor folks don't have any disadvantages. Like, I can't possibly look at my grandma's life and my grandma's upbringing and say she had the same set of opportunities as someone who was born in an upper class background in the 1940s in New York City.

Hillbilly Elegy takes a hard look at sort of the malaise happening in these communities in the Rust Belt, the almost the lack of agency a lot of a lot of these workers have.

There's a line in the book that says hillbillies could go from zero to murderous in a fucking heartbeat.

We talked to you about Beverly earlier in the week when we went back over my long-form interview with him and talked about Hillbilly Elegy.

And I was like, like, that's a guy we need to run for office. Right. You know, it's not the sort of the typical checkbox thing like, yeah, he went to Yale Law, but he went to the Marine Corps out of high school.

And then sort of coming around and come around. It sort of met a while ago now towards, I guess, the end of my father's term, talking a lot, hanging out, became like really good friends with him.

I read Hillbilly Elegy when it came out.

My home, he writes in Hillbilly Elegy, was a hub of misery.

You got to read the book.

When I finished the book, I felt a little worried about you.

The book is not an effort to sort of finally work through all of these things that happened when I was a kid. It's the beginning of an effort that will probably take me for the rest of my life.

It's like, yeah, I love Trump, but like what?

So it appears that no good deed goes unpunished because even though JD Vance wrote this bestselling book Hail Belly Elegy that was made into a film by Ron Howard that cast Glenn Close in the iconic role of JD's MAMA.

Glenn Close is not grateful for any of those opportunities because by the way for which she was nominated for an Academy Award a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award.

They could choose to focus on that just as much as they focused on an old J.D. Vance comment on the Childless Cat Ladies.

I think you got the hillbilly elegy against the real hillbilly.

Dennis I know has been reading Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance.

I see a lot of parallels here in some ways between what Usha, JD's wife has done for him and what Nancy Reagan did for Ron.

He's trying to out-come and he's trying to out-pour J.D. Vance who has a hit best seller and a Hollywood film based on how poor he was as a kid growing up.

That angst that JD Bantz talks about in Hillbilly Elegy, none of my Hillbilly cousins went to Yale and none of them went on to be adventure capitalists or whatever.

It's not who people really are.

Dennis I know has been reading "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance.

I see a lot of parallels here in some ways between what Usha, J.D.'s wife has done for him and what Nancy Reagan did for Ron.

and he's trying to out pour J.D. Vance who has a hit best seller and a Hollywood film based on how poor he was as a kid growing up

That angst that JD Bantz talks about in Hillbilly Elegy, none of my Hillbilly cousins went to Yale and none of them went on to be adventure capitalists or whatever. It's not who people really are.

It's not who people really are.

This year when you held up the book it looks to me it kind of reminded me of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy and your story in some ways really reminds me of his story too where he had so many challenges in his nuclear family that he grew up in with his mother all sorts of issues there not to mention father figures and through it all he had two really important influences his sister Lindsay and his mama whose grandmother, his maternal grandmother and they made all the difference

Go back and read his book Hillbilly Elegy...

...and I've said it's always been far my favorite interview I've ever done was of J.D. Vance in-depth at NBC.

It's kind of like...it reminds you of JD Vance's Hillbilly, you know, it's kind of like that in its tone and who you're talking to.

This remains my favorite interview I did while I was at NBC. It's just such a pick yourself up by the bootstraps and try to make life happen despite so many things being thrown at him story.

If you read his book, Hillbilly Elegy, which you must if you haven't met you, but America, a mixed race guy from Canada who grew up in a fatherless home and a Latino with Cuban-American roots who are pushing the solutions to that.

It's not totally dissimilar from Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance. It just takes a hard, honest and sometimes unfavorable view of Appalachia and what's happened there.

He's getting killed, killed in the reviews, which was completely predictable.

But I read those reviews, and I think the movie was great. And I think, you know what? It's okay to go after deplorables again, and it's not okay to humanize them as he does.

Vance paints Appalachia as a near exclusively white space erased our black residents and their history in the region missing are the many generations of native American communities ignored is a growing Latino population disregarded are Appalachians who embrace racial justice and acceptance of their LGBTQ neighbors.

It's like, okay, so BIPOC is black indigenous people of color, LGBTQIA is lesbian, gender nonconforming, bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual.

And I read this and I'm like, you people are crazy. Like truly the authentic, real Appalachians use these like 14 character pronouns every time they talk about themselves.

Well, you're not allowed to feel sympathy for them. Why? Because they have white skin.

I think about somebody like J.D. Vance, you know, who grew up in Appalachia and had a mother who was addicted to drugs and nobody in the family had ever been to college.

We met for the first time in person when I was doing a profile on JD Vance and I went to Yale Law School to talk to you as the person who had encouraged him as his professor to write that memoir.

It's getting killed, killed in the reviews, which was completely predictable.

But I read those reviews and I think of the movie was great. And I think, you know what? It's okay to, it's okay to go after deplorables again. And it's, and it's not okay to humanize them as he does.

I have been surprised and, you know, and concerned by a lot of the rhetoric, you know, coming out of that campaign given the experience that I had then five, six years ago.

I'm very surprised and disappointed by much of the rhetoric I'm reading and hearing. People do change and I assume that's the case.

He made, he made the movie Hillbilly Elegy a couple of years ago based on J.D. Vance's bestselling book and good for him for making the movie.

I have been surprised and, you know, and, and concerned by a lot of the rhetoric, you know, coming out of that campaign.

He made the movie Hillbilly Elegy a couple of years ago based on JD Vance bestselling book and good for him for making the movie even though at that point we knew that JD Vance you know seem to be more Republican leaning but more of a Trump whisperer at that point who could explain the white working class as opposed to you know it's fine to be a Republican as long as you're never Trump Republican.

And I'm not sure what else we should put on our drinking bingo card, but give us some thought and I'll come back to you after the break.

I will say if J.D. Vance does not mention the name Mamaw, I will fall off of my sofa.

Humanizing and a great personality who millions of Americans know, thanks to his book Hillbilly Elegy and the movie,

do you ever read his book hillbilly ology?

the libs hate it dude because he like it's like to pull yourself up

He wrote that book Hillbilly Elegy, which was a very interesting book. I mean, a very interesting book.

It is interesting to sort of hear how fascinated these people were with my story five, 10 years ago. And now that I am on the presidential ticket, they've decided that I'm the worst possible guy in the world. It's not surprising, Megan. And it's kind of what I signed up for, right? I mean, I want to make people's lives better.

Now, this is Vance's first run for political office, but he was already a national figure before this because of his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

Vance first became prominent for his 2016 memoir about growing up in Appalachia in a community torn apart by the opiate crisis. That background helped Vance connect with a lot of rural and Rust Belt voters and informed his populist campaign stances. His book was later turned into a big Hollywood film starring Alister Amy Adams and Glenn Close.

He capitalized by writing a book trying to explain the Appalachian experience, even though again, he only kind of lived there part time and mostly, yeah, had abandoned those people in that part. Like the book is about him abandoning that part of his life as soon as he possibly can.

Not a great book by my opinion, as someone who grew up in a really fucking poor town in the deep south, but-

JD Vance, one of our country's most prominent fascists, had written about fucking a couch in his book, Hillbilly Elegy

because no one actually confirmed or disconfirmed. It's in a book. Don't look at it.

No one read that book, so nobody checked it.

Right? So because of that, like people just weren't interested in checking it.

The lie went incredibly viral with an even number of people believing that JD Vance had literally fucked a couch and also an even number just understanding the joke, which is that Vance is again, it gets to a truth about Vance, which is that he is the kind of weirdo who would fuck a couch.

They've probably heard the couch fucking stuff and then they've heard allegations that he's like a straight up fascist and you know he thinks that single women should be dragged out into the street and shot or something like that.

He was this guy this like never trump conservative who was explaining to everyone how the evil of trumpism had infested and and you know latched onto the minds of small town americans, right?

I had a kind of similar background, my dad was in the picture, but socio economically it was kind of similar, we grew up in a very poor and troubled small town, eventually my my caretakers got me out of there into a more functional part of the country, and I can see I see Jade's book as kind of cynically positioned to take advantage of the liberal outpouring of sympathy for rural whites that followed Trump's 2016 victory, an attempt to position himself as someone who can explain why this part of the country swept Trump into power.

He did not write about poor folks addicted to oxy and the hollers with any real empathy, he painted them as helpless fools and mental children and himself as better for getting out and that's really all I have to say on the matter.

I can't say for sure, but he might be the first VP pick to have admitted in a New York Times bestseller to fucking an inside out latex glove shoved in between two couch cushions. Vance Hillbilly Elegy, pages 179 to 181.

No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch.

This story did not go through our standard editing processes and has been removed.

He wrote about sofa sex in his memoir.

He's like, yeah, the Hillbilly Elegy era, he was like a lion, which, like, maybe he was a scavenger the whole time, Ben.

J.D. Vance has an issue with men and strongmen and the need to have them around.

You know what I mean? Like because and he's written about it in his book.

So I'm not like going off on a limb here because of his own father and everything else.

He's talked about it rather significantly in that book.

And you could see that like the need for a strong male figure in his life.

I like this book.

And then when I watch J.D. Vance now, I don't feel like I'm watching the same person who wrote that book.

I don't understand where he's coming from.

The weird word has worked beautifully.

It's actually weird as funny versus deplorables or any other word that's a Hillary use and stuff, which who wasn't funny?

I like this book.

And then when I watch J.D. Vance now, I don't feel like I'm watching the same person who wrote that book.

I don't understand where he's coming from.

It's funny that that special, it's called 'The New One', and it's all about how I never wanted to have a child and all the reasons why you, no one should ever want to have a child and why I was right and then ultimately why I was wrong.

The reason the couch joke arrived was that one night I was doing a show at Princeton and it was all mostly students and I, and it didn't have the couch joke in it that you just played and it was all about having kids and I've never looked at an audience that has been more disinterested in the topic that I'm discussing.

you can push back a tiny bit you what you can relate to is JD Vance who wrote about having a hillbilly life

I fucking hated the hillbilly elegy.

There are really three finalists remaining for the vice president. It is Marco Rubio, Doug Burgum and JD Vance. I think JD Vance is by far the best selection.

Look, there are many, many things that JD brings to the to the to the to the picture that other candidates don't. One, I think that he is by far the best person on camera to defend Trump.

You know, Trump's gonna go into the presidency with a Democratic Party that wants to put him in jail and extremely hostile media, and he's gonna have to have an aggressive fighter who is gonna support him 100% of the way, and I think that JD does the best job at that. JD can fundraise for Trump and JD will be an agreement with Trump on the big issues.

I said I told that to the president yesterday. President said, you know, I love JD, you know, obviously, you know, it's strongly considering it but he wasn't always with me. I said no, no, I say I think that helps because you want to try to have people vote for you that might not have always been on board for your agenda.

And I say that somebody who supported in the day, he came down the escalator as soon as he said, you know, you know, we need a wall. I was like, this is my guy. So I don't behold. I don't have a grudge to anybody who wasn't with him the first day. I wasn't. I don't begrudge you something wasn't within the first 100 days of his administration.

For those that do not know, he's a bestselling author of the book Hillbilly Elegy, which also became a Netflix series.

He's bestselling author across the board, made a bunch of money, came from a forgotten part of the country, understands those needs, wants and concerns, speaks to them effectively.

I think there's no pass to the White House at Georgia Arizona. I'm not guaranteeing we're going to win them, but we should be okay. I mean, God willing, you have to pick off one of the blue wall. You have to. And JD is built for the blue wall. He is the best blue wall candidate, not Marco Rubio, not anybody else. He is a senator from the former blue wall that Donald Trump has turned red.

He would do amazing in Western Pennsylvania. He is pure MAGA. He's young. He's incredibly articulate. He is a ruling class traitor just like Donald Trump. I want everyone to understand this that Donald Trump and JD Vance are in common because they are ruling class traitors. Now, JD Vance grew up in a blue class background, best-selling author, Netflix series.

He then got into the ruling class and defected. What are your thoughts, Kane?

I would be ecstatic if JD Vance were the choice by the president. You know, I've tried to analyze everything Trump has said right in between the lines. And one of the things he talked about three or four months ago was the person has to be ready to step in day one. You don't want to talk about the death of a president or the possible passing of a president. Trump says you have to be realistic. You have to choose a candidate who's ready, who has the skills.

You talked about JD Vance. Yeah, growing up blue collar and then sort of Stanford and venture capital and being incredibly successful. I think he's been great in the last 10 days, two weeks out there for President Trump.

he's been talking a lot about trade policy he's been talking about things that people care about on twitter a little bit more than than the stuff that he actually used to write about when he was writing hillbillyology.

if you look at the movie, Hillbilly Elegy and just burned it to the ground because the idea behind Hillbilly Elegy was that you might want to take some of these rural white folks seriously and the critics had decided in the meantime that no you know after the movie got greenlit now it's not the time to take rural white folks seriously.

Hillbilly Elegy has 20 some percent on Rotten Tomatoes it's gotten 85 percent approval rating among audiences.

jd vance talks about this in hillbilly elegy the the pathologies of poverty that exist cross racially are the same.

Four years ago, Hillbilly Elegy was a well-regarded memoir. Now with its 2020 Netflix adaptation, the work has become critically panned and the subject of endless controversy.

For folks who haven't read Hillbilly Elegy, which of course was your huge best-selling memoir, 3 million copies sold became sort of the talk of the country for a solid six months there.

I try to really get readers to understand in hillbilly elegy is the way in which family dysfunction is not just an immediate reaction to sort of economic circumstances or whatever else is happening.

The critique of the movie and of the book from the left is of course that it is a libertarian fable because your personal story to get back to that is growing up in these somewhat impoverished circumstances although your grandparents weren't poverty-stricken but your mom obviously was.

We'll talk with jd about all of that stuff here's a little bit of the trailer People have to be able to hold two thoughts in their head at the same time.

I mean JD did a nice book hillbilly elegy that indicated that probably that's a bunch of us are who elected Trump

Hillbilly Elegy becoming a major bestseller and movie

J.D. Vance is the preferred candidate of the Biden campaign.

J.D. Vance is against abortion, even in the case of rape. He only makes an exception for the life of the mother.

He is, you know, has very conservative, or far-right positions on, Jen is against gender-affirming care.

He wants to strip language that's LGBTQ and, you know, sort of female-friendly, from a lot of our government policies. I mean, I could go on.

He's anti-IVF. He has suggested that we should get rid of no-fault divorces. He is, I mean, it's it's like turning back the clock in a very dramatic way.

So JD Vance writes Hillbilly Elegy.

He's at Yale, Peter Thiel is there. He meets him. Can you tell us who Peter Thiel is first of all?

But the first company that executive is on record saying that he gave Vance the job as a favor to Peter.

Well, it was a bad movie, but you know, the LA people, the New York people, all were like terrible making fun of this movie.

And that that coincided very closely with his 'I am anti-elites. I hate...' it was almost like a 'you made fun of me.'