Hillbilly Elegy

in Hillbilly Elegy none of my hillbilly cousins went to Yale and none of them went on to be venture capitalists or whatever

At the same rally, Walz invoked the JD Vance couch meme, which is based on a fake passage from JD Vance's book Hillbilly Elegy that was uploaded by a random Twitter user a few weeks ago.

This is now an attack line that Walz used at his rally, a fabricated page from somebody on the Internet that has no basis in reality. And the base loved it, watch.

the best ... his bestselling memoir hillbilly elegy that was made into a movie now the libs hate him and disavow him but you know this is a guy who has real appeal especially to the voters trump needs to drive out which is in the rust belt

Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2016 while publicizing his memoir Hillbilly Elegy I never liked him

I finally saw the movie I watched with my wife a couple of nights ago. We watched Hillbilly Elegy. And I hadn't read the book, but I'm sure the book was better. Books are always better than the movies in almost every case.

It's the movie based on the book written by JD Vance about his experiences. I think most of it is set in kind of middleclass working class Ohio with his family and his mother struggled with drug addiction, kind of his memoir.

Little smoky wrote a book, Hillbilly Elegy, about the opioid epidemic that has plagued the United States of America.

But more interestingly, JD Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy depicts the opiate problem in his home state. And his mother was an addict and he writes in great detail about that suffering and people falling prey to drug addiction.

And attach J.D. Vance's failed drag queen photos. J.D. Vance's own grandmother told him when he was a little boy growing up, and this is in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, she told him, I think you're gay, honey.

J.D. Vance's net worth was around $1 million with his book, Hillbilly Elegy. He goes out to Peter Thiel, works for him, clearly gets queereyed, and now his net worth is over $10 million.

What happens to the people that he grew up around, that he wrote his book, Hillbilly Elegy, that get cancer and the government doesn't give a shit about it.

JD Vance runs around with certain degrees of eyeliner on all the time. Everybody knows that he was like the hillbilly elegy. And then he goes off to Peter Thiel's gay camp and comes back yassified, wearing all that eyeliner.

Also, in his hillbilly elegy, did not he put that he thought he was gay when he was like 10 years old and his grandma said he couldn't be gay?

I thought this guy was a hillbilly. He had a book, Hillbilly Elegy.

Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has Indian problems of its own JD Vance has been getting attacked by white supremacists because his wife is Indian and if you're thinking wow If someone insulted my wife I go ape shit on them. Then you are not JD Vance

Look I love my wife so much. I love her because she's who she is Obviously, she's not a white person and we've been acute attacked by some white supremacists over that but I just I love you

Sure, she's such a good mom. Yeah. Wow way to casually defend your wife against white supremacist JD I mean, I'm not a romance expert, but I don't think everyone wants to hear she's not white, but I love her

That's not a message you're gonna see on those Valentine's Day candies I mean Look, I mean, I hope those won his wedding vows like look you're obviously not white, but I do Enough about Indians

This guy would be so good against Vance at the VP debates he'd be like, oh you wrote a memoir about your hillbilly family That's cool. I jacked off in space Checkmate Plus he's got an identical twin brother who's also an astronaut like how cool is that?

He's a Yale graduate, a venture capitalist, and he became famous for writing the book turned horrible movie Hillbilly Elegy, right?

where he explained that white people become racist because they're poor

I grew up in in Scotland which was where we we pioneered Hillbilly Elegy, it's kind of like we did the pilot before JD Vance was even born we decided I don't know let's just deindustrialize and see what happens and I saw deaths of despair in Glasgow in the 1970s before I knew that that was what they were and I saw the demoralization of the society in the west of scotland in the 70s and 80s.

The origin story, this is actually amazing, the overlap between hillbilly elegy and tiger mom.

And then, um, in that email, he also said, you're, you know, your girls are lucky. You remind me of Maymaw. And you know, I'd never heard of Maymaw. So then he attaches this 10 page thing, uh, that is, here's like, here's my story. Right? And literally those first 10 pages are the beginning of Hillbilly Elegy.

And I wrote right back. And I just said, you have to write your own book. And he started writing it for me that semester as a, as a paper for the class.

Well, in your biography, autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy, you do know that there were some hard times in your family where you did have to depend on government assistance.

Vance has reflection, and that's evident on every page of Hillbilly Elegy. He has complexity. He's capable of complex thought.

Did you find or learn from anyone you talked to any contradictions between the man that he describes himself as in Hillbilly Elegy and some of the realities that people responded to once that book came out?

When he published Hillbilly Elegy, which is the story of his upbringing, it became his ticket to fame, but it was a kind of tarnished ticket because it explained his world to elites and was used to justify his turning against the class he had fought so hard to join.

The memoir belongs in an era that no longer exists. It came out in the summer of 2016, went nowhere at first, then caught on after interviews and became a key explanation of the Trumpvoter world for the elites.

Not the guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy or spoke so eloquently about the book and about his own upbringing.

And it's funny thinking back on the advice that I gave him.

And thinking of like collecting, going from collecting like 30 emails at a Barnes & Noble in like Columbus, Ohio to being the vice presidential nominee is quite something.

I'll tell you it is personally surreal and weird to kind of see something.

He's like, I think I was wrong.

I believed a lot of these media lies.

He was raised by his grandparents who were pretty well off in a pretty middle class area of Ohio.

His Appalachian roots are ancestral.

And he's clear about that in the book.

His family moved before he was born to this region of Ohio.

And the book is kind of about that migration out of Appalachia into the kind of Rust Belt suburbia.

Hillbilly Elegy has skyrocketed to the top of the best seller list.

Hillbilly Elegy, the movie, I think is the most downloaded movie on Netflix. People are like, who is this guy?

And now JD's trying to grapple with them and make them more palatable. He was using the language of effectively like a niche online subculture that is very popular and very commonplace in that subculture and sounds horrible to the rest of the public and takes issues like a child tax credit that are pop you pull that is a 70% issue and makes it sound like something that is radical fringe weird like out of step with mainstream america etc It's the worst possible messaging you could possibly have right?

The democratic framing has been much more potent in terms of how people are thinking about the Jade Vance pick.

The trump campaign's attempts to define Jade in in context of his biography and his story and you know his bootstrap story and the best-selling uh biography and all of these things have really not been the thing that have um that have caught on with the American public.

Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community.

And I got to tell you, I can't wait to debate the guy. That is if he's willing to get off the couch and show up.

That is if he's willing to get off the couch and show up. So see what I did there. Sort of like he's being played by Chris Farley.

Whenever he had finished up Hillbilly Elegy, he'd come to the Huffington Post to promote it. And Arianna was like, you need to talk to JD Vance. He's such a wonderful young man.

And we had a long phone call where I gave him tips on how to promote the book.

And then it was like six months later, the thing's like a national bestseller. I'm like, well, obviously those tips worked.

I think he's a tone for that and he's come clean that's okay

I like the fact he represents pro-life that's a big deal for us as Christians and a lot of other issues I'd have to go through them but when I compare him it's Josh Mandel or him I think he did just such an excellent job of just asking the questions that's all we you know we wanted so we're really happy in order to partner with you and it's just so you know valuable to us as a show in order to have that on the ground experience it just means a lot

Whenever he had finished up Hillbilly Elegy, he'd come to the Huffington Post to promote it. And Arianna was like, you need to talk to JD Vance. He's such a wonderful young man. And we had a long phone call where I gave him tips on how to promote the book.

And then it was like six months later, the thing's like a national bestseller. I'm like, well, obviously those tips worked.

One described it right.

remember when the chattering class salivated over J.D. Vance after the release of Hillbilly Elegy

JD Vance held an event with Josh Hawley, Charlie Kirk...

several of them actually said that they liked that he, JD Vance, had come, come to see the light that he reversed on Trump and that was pro-Trump...

others, you know, basically were very concerned about immigration...

one undecided and, you know, two or three others that were sold on JD Vance, including because of his, uh, book and, you know, behavioral health work...

I was a hillbilly allergy liberal myself when that came out. I thought it was incredible book better than the movie, as it usually is.

If you've read his book, I think the guy, I just don't think there's any getting around it. I think the guy's brilliant. I think he's very intelligent.

I was reading 'Hillbilly Elegy' by J.D. Vance while I was out there

I was reading hillbilly LG by JD Vance while I was out there

I was reading Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance while I was out there.

J.D. Vance I mean you know read his book watch the movie I mean it does connect he had a tough life you know and I think when you look at those things I think those stories and focusing more on those issues than like the policy issues of trying to pick somebody that oh well Tim Scott is his policy record no what's the story and how do you connect with people so that's why I think J.D would be a great choice.

JD is somebody who comes from that working class background. Everybody's kind of familiar with him and his book, Kill Billy Elegy and all of that.

I don't know if you've watched Hillbilly Elegy yet. I've heard about it for years.

I read the book.

That's the family and community he grew up in. And so it's authentic. It's genuine. It makes sense where they're starting to attack him for it, too.

And for the Kentucky governor to come out and be like, oh, he doesn't know what growing up in middle class was like. That's a man who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth.

And you watch that or read the book. And like he grew up in the worst of the worst.

Sam Brown is an injured veteran who has been called weird because of the injuries he suffered. And they are not paying attention to what they're doing when they just blanket everybody as weird. And now they've stepped in it.

I think the importance of hillbilly elegy in the minds of American voters on the left and the right cannot be understated.

J.D. Vance opened the eyes of like Appalachia and the Rust Belt to liberal Americans.

J.D. Vance really opened up this part of America to to the liberal elite in a way that no one else could.

And I think that's one of the strategic reasons that this moment is why he is good. If he stays in the Senate for too long, that that's that momentum of hillbilly elegy falls apart and is behind.

I think J.D. Vance is such an interesting pick, partially because so many Americans know him because of hillbilly elegy, which I just think it had, you know, publishing is sort of a dying industry in the day and age of social media.

And this was before he was in the Senate. It's about his I'm sure all of you know, but it's about his life growing up in Ohio and Kentucky.

It's about his family, this function that was there, you know, the influence of opioids and alcohol and his rise through, you know, the you know, the challenges, challenging circumstances he was in into the Marine Corps to Ohio State, to Yale Law, to Silicon Valley, working with Peer to Yale.

And they talked about J.D. Vance because he had opened their eyes to a world and community that they just had no access to. And I don't think that that is that can be understated as an impactful as an impact and influence for his campaign.

He is a former Marine who wrote a bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

J.D. Vance is the Republican candidate there. And of course, he wrote a really big book about the opioid crisis, Hillbilly Elegy, which was controversial.

J.D. Vance is in the race. He's the author of the bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

Also running, another high profile person, the author of that bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy and there's been a movie made out of it, J.D. Vance.

J.D. wrote a New York Times number one bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy, which is a fantastic book.

And it is a powerful explanation of the damage that's been done.

He wrote a bestselling book. Hillbilly Elegy was made into a movie. A very good movie. A movie that's terrific to watch.

J.D. Vance performed way worse than Mike DeWine in Ohio in the midterms. It was more of a Trump and Trump.

So maybe they've convinced themselves of that. I think more likely it is a pick of we feel comfortable with this person. I think that they feel that J.D. has shown enough loyalty despite all this horrible rhetoric about Trump in 2016 because he's gone there on all of Trump's worst things.

J.D. Vance went whole hog on vaccine conspiracies, whole hog on January 6th, overturning the election. Thanks, Mike Pence didn't have the courage. Whole hog on the Ukraine. It's Joe Biden's fault that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Right. So on all of these things.

J.D. Vance has said far more inflammatory things about Donald Trump than I ever have and ever will. The comparison to Hitler, I wouldn't say that. I actually find that offensive. That is going too far.

It was a range. Not a great, not a very positive range. But you know, I think my big takeaway and you may appreciate this because we talked through your book and I think you've kind of been a friend and a sounding board in my evolution is I was a firebrand earlier and early in my career.

JD Vance, who thought, who mused that Trump might be America's Hitler, right? And is now his biggest fan.

And I think the JD Vance that America met at the RNC is a bit lighter than the dark JD Vance that you're going to see a lot more of now that the RNC performance is over.

I don't know what it was. I didn't read it. I didn't really look at the inter... I just, I watched like a couple clips of them. And I was like, this guy's a douchebag.

I just made a snap judgment. I think this person is a douchebag.

He's real douchey.

JD Vance, the way he demeans and mocks childless cat ladies can probably take a little mocking on his own.

And like the fucking theme of the book is that there is some cultural rot in Appalachia and people need to take responsibility for their lives. These are good people, but like they should take some ownership of their lives and you know, you can achieve.

Like his message last night was that Joe Biden and the elites are the reason why Appalachia is bad. And they're the victims. And J.D. Vance will help them. Big Daddy J.D. will help them.

Like so his whole shtick has flipped. It's all totally phony.

He was once considered kind of an intellectual on the right, you know, wrote the book, you know, Hillbilly Elegy was published in The New York Times.

Apparently it's Hillbilly Elegy. Not Hillbilly Eulogy.

My fault, I misspoke there. I think I said that too after you, maybe.

J.D. Vance barely won. Oh, he had to spend a lot of money in order to win. Oh, he doesn't have a whole lot of track record.

If Karl Rove and Mark Thiessen, two of the biggest never Trump rhinos out there, are attacking J.D. Vance.

He's come a long way since buying into mainstream media narratives.

J.D. Vance represents America first very, very well.

I give credit to J.D. Unlike almost every other politician, he actually wrote his book.

It's been a while. It's been a decade or so.

I mean, that book came out what? In like 16, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, I did back in the day.

If you've read Hillbilly Elegy, I never hear him talk to this anymore.

They read Hillbilly Elegy.

I'm sure you've read Hillbilly Elegy, too.

I think that J.D. Vance is excellent as the vice president for a number of for a number of reasons.

I mean, JD Vance had nothing to go on but his own brains and hard work. He didn't come from some advantaged family or an advantaged demographic or in the college admissions process, an advantaged skin color.

In fact, he's from a disadvantaged background in all of those respects and is now a vice presidential candidate.

And so he was at Yale Law School for a non-legacy white guy to get into Yale Law School is quite a feat.

He's a smart guy. The base likes him. He's an American success story. He's high IQ. He's a person of high integrity. All right. He's impressive. Trump and him get along. He'll be useful. Everything's going to be cool.

He wrote a smash bestselling memoir about his difficult upbringing, which turned into a movie with Ron Howard directing.

He wrote a smash bestselling memoir about his difficult upbringing, which turned into a movie with Ron Howard directing.

They've just taken one comment, the cat lady's comment.

He wrote a smash bestselling memoir about his difficult, difficult upbringing, which turned into a movie with Ron Howard directing.

They've just taken one comment, the cat lady's comment.

These are not people that pulled themselves up by their bootstraps like J.D. Vance, and yet they're going out there pretending that they are something they are absolutely not.

They're attacking J.D. Vance from rising up from poor background in Ohio to go to Yale.

JD Vance is just a great American success story.

But you see it's not the version of the success story that the Democrats want they don't want to hear about poor white working-class kids who through sheer hard work perseverance and determination become a great success because remember the Democrats ultimately that the the overarching narrative that they have and it's a it's central to the identity politics that it's an that is the the uh the keystone I mean that holds together the Democrat coalition a central part of it all is you have to have Democrats in charge to help non-white Americans because of all the racism in this country so the Democrats will construct quote positive racist or you know affirmative action whatever you want to call it policies to elevate non-white Americans so they can have their piece of the American dream because without that it's impossible through again this being the Democrat narrative it's impossible through just hard work determination stable family etc etc so JD Vance is a problem for them because they don't like

J.D. Vance comes from that community. He wrote a massive bestselling book about the challenges of the working class is now the definition or the authenticity is measured by if you're born to a really poor family in America, which he was, he's born to a poor family.

His book Hillbilly Elegy comes out and it takes off and becomes a best seller and then all these Hollywood weirdos prior to JD Vance getting into politics absolutely loved him, loved his book.

They made movies about his book and everything else.

Some rando said on Twitter gave page numbers of where this was allegedly in hillbilly elegy JD Vance's book.

It's not because I think, oh wow, he wrote this great book, Hillbilly Elegy, and he's a really smart guy. Now Trump's going to win.

I was in the front seat sniffling and crying and going on. My husband was like, 'It's not that bad.' I was like, 'His mom's a drug addict. It could be a state drag. It's a mob.' And I was crying and everything.

And now here he is the VP. So I mean, you know, the nominee, it's a hell of a story, but that's what we do in this country.

I think Claytown is going to look like the town at the beginning of Hillbilly Elegy with all the closed stores.

If you've ever seen that story, his grandmother was 15 when he had his mother or she had his mother. His mother suffered from drug addiction. He grew up very poor.

I've read Hillbilly Elegy. A lot of women read Hillbilly Elegy. But it's a great book.

You can put it down once you start.

I remember reading Hillbilly Elegy and thinking wow this is uh well obviously it's a very good book huge bestseller um but uh JD is who the base wanted that we're gonna go with somebody that the base wants right now we're not trying some third way stuff is powerful

Now, I told you, right? I kind of called the J.D. Vance thing.

Now I know many of you have concerns, but I'm going to need you all to trust me on this. I know J.D. Vance. He's a friend. He's come a long way.

He understands the moment that we are in. He understands what Trump represents. He is loyal.

He is a great and I mean great vice presidential pick for Donald Trump.

He's a smart policy guy. He's loyal to Donald Trump. He's a populist, wants to bring American jobs back here to this country.

Hillbilly Elegy for anybody who hasn't read it. I've read it. It's very good.

It would seem to me like there's a the passing of the baton would be obvious and therefore there'd be no overshadowing of Trump or attempt to overshadow Trump because everyone's very clear.

bestselling author, Hillbilly Elegy.

best selling author, Hillbilly Elegy, sure many of you have read it.

And by the way, if you're on the fence about J.D. Vance, go to Netflix. It's still one of the top 10 trending movies. Watch Hillbilly Elgy and you'll like him more.

I read Hillbilly Elegy years. Yeah, I think I read in 2012 or 2011 when it came out in a long time ago.

I read Hillbilly Elegy early on when it came out because so many people said you really got to read this. It's a good book.

We've got J.D. Vance on the line now. J.D. just won his primary for Senate in Ohio. He's also the author of Hillbilly Elegy.

He's also the author of Hillbilly Elegy.

The craziest part is Vance let the couch get on top because JD Vance is a lazy boy.

We cannot say more than that, but that is what we can say.

The headline is no, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch, but much in the same way that the AP might have debunked one aspect of the story. That is a claim the AP cannot make.

The only claim the AP could make is that the claim that JD Vance documented sex with a couch in Hillbilly Elegy, that is false, but this is a sweeping, sweeping claim of the negative.

And I want the American people to know what a Kentuckian is and what they look like because let me just tell you that J.D. Vance ain't from here. This is the left's birtherism and to be clear, I 100% support it.

I think if somebody calls you on that, what you do is at least listen.

Trump also announced his VP candidate, JD Vance famous for writing a book. I've never heard it said. Vance is famous for writing a book about a hillbilly he killed. I haven't read it.

If you look at the full context of what I said it's very clear the Democrats have tried to take this thing out of context and blow it out of proportion which is what they always do Trey because they don't have an agenda to run on themselves.

In September of 2021 Vance posted the cat ladies man they must be stopped.

In a fundraising email he described the serious issue of radical childless leaders in this country fighting back won't be easy our childless our child fighting back won't be easy our childless opponents have a lot of free time.

Just these basic cadences of life that I think are really powerful and really, really valuable when you have kids in your life. And the fact that so many people especially in America's leadership class just don't have that in their lives.

You know I worry that it makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less a less mentally stable. You go on Twitter and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don't have kids at all.

I don't I simply don't know what Hillbilly Elegy is about.

In reality, J.D. Vance wrote about having sex with a sofa in his book,

a couch fucking work of staggering genius.

He was really embraced by the kind of like tech elite because they were fascinated by his story, his book, his ambition.

So, yeah, there's a sense of like, well, does he really represent us to the VC candidate that we want? And then there's people that are supporting him and super excited to have someone who understands their business and their business incentives potentially in the White House.

And so, it's not going to be a clean win necessarily.

We are now at a point where we may be contractually obliged to at some point reference Hillbilly Elegy in all of the shows we do now at this point.

Never going to read it, never going to watch it. We'd rather stab my eyes out with a fork.

We'd rather stab my eyes out with a fork.

Would you rather never see a movie again or the only movie you can see is Hillbilly Elegy? 100% never see a movie again. No question.

J.D. Vance was the absolute worst pick for VP for Trump.

J.D. Vance underperformed Governor DeWine, the Republican governor there, I think by double digits.

I think that Trump, if he hadn't been shot, would not have picked J.D. Vance.

No one looks at him and thinks he's presidential.

I don't understand how you think that America's Hitler is what the country needs.

He wrote the bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir of his experiences growing up in poverty.

J.D. will do a great job. I'm extremely excited about the pick of Senator Vance to be vice president. He will be a great ally with President Trump in pushing President Trump's policies and priorities.

J.D. Vance is the representative of the working class. He grew up in a very poor family in Appalachia. His grandmother raised him. His mother had a drug addiction problem. He has experienced in his lifetime on how he was raised with so many Americans, whether it's in the Ozarks where I come from, Appalachia, whether it's the Rust Belt. These are Americans that a lot of times feel like in Washington that they are viewed as flyover country. And he's going to be such a strong voice for them. And I think you'll see that tonight in his speech. So I'm extremely, extremely excited about Donald Trump, Donald Trump's selection of J.D. Vance.

J.D. Vance is the representative of the working class. He grew up in a very poor family in Appalachia. His grandmother raised him. His mother had a drug addiction problem.

Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, J.D. studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community. Come on!

And that's what his book was about. And that's always been Donald Trump's bailiwick.

J.D. Vance does speak to sort of the sort of white working class.

I think, you know, Van circa 2016, when he was sort of a a new voice speaking for rural America and the sort of white working class and the sort of forgotten element of American society.

he had very high unfavorable ratings, only a 39% approval rating that's largely built off the image and the brand people had painted of him as being this America first nationalist cat lady hating Ivy League at one time, hillbilly elegy author

J.D. Vance had love the guy or hate the guy has been targeted by a disinfo campaign.

The idea being that, beep me here, Paul, he f**ked a latex glove in between. That was tucked into a couch.

So the idea, here's why this is a great comparison that we've made here because the original story about upholstery intimacy. Wow.

It was reported by a seemingly reputable source, right? Yeah.

And then repeated by other seemingly reputable sources. Because it appeared to be credible, right? And most people don't read the books that they claim to, you know, that they claim to cite.