Will Trump Actually Hand the GOP to JD Vance?

What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire day with pray.com you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers inspiring Bible stories and messages created to strengthen your faith whether you need peace encouragement or a fresh start pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Behind the Story. I am dilly wire DC Bureau Chief Tim Rice and joining me today is my friend and colleague dilly wire managing editor Dylan Houseman Dylan. Thank you so much for for being here today. Hi Tim. I'm excited to be here. Love behind the story. It's my favorite podcast. I listen to it every week. So I'm just more than honored to be on. That's that's always nice to hear. We appreciate that. We hope you know more people will follow your lead. So you know as listeners know usually this is where I bring on a reporter and we you know get this sort of behind the scenes scoop of how they got to a story that we published on our website. So we're going to do a little bit of that with you. There is a piece that I want your most recent column that I want to use as a jumping off point. But then you know we'll just we'll just chat and give the behind the story listeners a little bit of that sweet sweet Dylan Houseman wisdom. So the piece is and I encourage everyone to go read this as always on dillywire.com is titled since when has a little anointing ever hurt anyone. Some title a lot of times actually. So Dylan why don't you just start by telling us what was the argument that you were making in this wonderful column. Yeah I noticed in the last let's say six weeks four to six weeks JD Vance our vice president he's been getting a lot more attention. Usually vice presidents we don't really think too much about them we don't pay that much attention to what they're doing. But ever since the Iran negotiation you know MOU situation or they kicked him to high gear which is you know a couple months together. So he's really been in the spotlight a lot. He had the MOU where he was the face of it and he was out there selling it to everyone. He had his book come out around that same time. So he was doing a book tour doing a bunch of media. And suddenly some of the statements he was making on foreign policy about Israel about economics in his book about religion in his book started to catch people's attention and people started to say wait a second. Some of this doesn't sound quite right to me or sound like stuff that I like. That's what some Republicans and some conservatives were saying about some of his public public comments. And so this entire discourse started where you had this kind of admittedly small online I would say DC kind of based cadre within the Republican Party within the right who were suddenly being very critical of JD Vance and then you had the backlash to that which was JD Vance as allies in the media political operatives etc. Going very hard in the paint trying to put down this you know beginnings of a rebellion essentially happening and acting very aggressively towards it. So I wanted to write about that and my thesis essentially was that look JD Vance is almost certainly going to be the 2028 Republican nominee. I wouldn't put it at 100% but it's it's overwhelmingly likely I think even people who like him or dislike him all would kind of agree on that with the most part. He's almost certainly going to be the nominee most Republicans as of now like him and view him positively. So why don't you just let the process play out? Why do we have to have this aggressive you know stamping out of any kind of criticism or resistance to him whatsoever and specifically to get to the anointing part kind of to wrap it all in a nice bow. I think what I noticed is that whenever people would make a criticism of Vance and say oh I don't like what he said about you know common good economics in this book or I don't like how this Iran MOU is turning out or I don't like that he has a disabiled Tucker Carlson whatever the specific criticism has been the response from his defenders has not been for the most part to you know actually respond with substance and push back it has been to say you need to shut up because he's going to be the nominee. They've spoken about it as if it's inevitable 100% certainty that he's going to be the nominee which may be the case but I just think it's one uh substantively not correct to argue that way just in kind of an ethereal you know right in wrong sense but too I think it's politically kind of foolish which is kind of what I laid out in the piece so I think it's politically harmful to him to take that approach. Yeah any suggestion that Vance would not be the nominee or could legitimately be challenged by anyone was met with disain. We have two high profile examples in recent years of an insider political apparatus foisting a candidate on their party without allowing a normal open challenge process to occur ask presidents Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris how that worked out. So I mean it's funny but it's true and I guess what I'm wondering though is how do you your argument is clear but so how what do you think is the important thing there like why if everybody uh democrats or publicans pro vans anti vans and everyone kind of acknowledges that there's again an 85 to 90% chance that he is going to be the nominee why is it so important that we don't do a little anointing like what is what is it specifically I think it comes back to Donald Trump in the way that the republican party has operated under Trump which is that it's it's essentially a cult of personality coalition party it's it's a coalition of a bunch of different groups generally on the right although not even all on the right who view Trump as their guy for one reason or another but when you dig beneath the surface of what those groups all have in common it's some of them actually don't have very much in common you know the person who voted for Trump you know let's say a Tucker Carlson acolyte voter who voted for Trump because they thought he was going to be isolationist unformed policy and they wanted him to slam a bunch of tariffs everywhere does not have that much in common necessarily in terms of their world view and their political priorities with someone who voted for Trump because he's been a super staunch ally of Israel forever and it believes nominally in capitalism and wants to vote against immigrants because they think they're socialist like those two groups of people and you can split this off into seven or eight or nine different other you know pieces of the coalition you have the maha people you have the catholic integralist people who you know want us to do those common good stuff and are arguing about Twitter all on Twitter all the time about it you have the people that want tax cuts and nothing else kind of the old guard Republicans you have the you know movement conservatives you have the libertarians all these different groups and Trump has the unique I think secret sauce so to speak of Trump and his coalition management is that he has managed through his own personal will and personal appeal to keep all of those people together and so I think the idea that that's going to just transfer over to the next candidate whoever it would be even if it wasn't JD Vance or whatever it was the idea that that's going to transfer over seamlessly to a completely different person in personality I think is foolish and so then the question becomes how does this next person keep the coalition together and I think for the next person to keep the coalition together and you know in their goal expanded on it they have to actually have some of these arguments about policy and some of these discussions and open discourse about what do we actually want this party to look like in this movement to look like that really haven't happened under Trump because it's all just been kind of whatever Trump says goes once you get Trump out of the way you can't just say whatever Trump says goes anymore you actually do have to have some of those policy disagreements and hash out what is this party going to look like and so I think to keep everyone on side it's important it's just basic human psychology really like you don't want people to develop resentment you don't want a big chunk of your coalition who maybe disagrees with JD Mads about foreign policy and about economics to feel resentful and like they just got steamrolled by a bunch of jerks in the primary who didn't give them any voice you want them to feel like they're part of the process and they have some stake in what's happening or else you know a lot of those people might just not vote for you and that leads to losing in 2028 so that's why I think politically you have to go through that process yeah it's also just such a curious approach because obviously and you get to this in the piece but you know the way it's been framed as sort of as advanced as in Rubio Rubio Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the other sort of you know immediately apparent potential 2028 Republican candidate the president himself has sort of stoked the notion that it might be Marco it might be JD but even setting the particulars aside I don't certainly not in recent memory I'm sure it happened at some point but there's no instance of a sitting vice president running unopposed for a nomination right I mean you know even Al Gore you know I mean Joe Biden famously didn't run in 2016 but maybe Al Gore ran on the post I have to imagine at least somebody came to you know give him sort of a perfunctory challenge so you would think that you know they have to be prepared for some kind of primary process even if it's not you know even if it's silly even if it's you know like like every New York gubernatorial primary in the Andrew Cuomo years where it's the guy who's obviously going to win and then four people who just wanted to be up there on stage but so this this gets to the other I think important point or the other point of your piece that I found the most interesting which is that everything is an op right and this is not just this is not just criticism of JD Vance's allies it's not just criticism of Republicans but I think we've noticed this emerging a lot recently where anytime something is said anytime more than one person agrees anytime a bad things the thing happens to a person or a party that you support, it is a, it must be a conspiracy. So can you talk a little bit about that and why why why is everyone saying this? Why is everything an op all of a sudden? Yeah, I think I don't know the answer to why necessarily I think a lot of people seem to just genuinely be conspiracy minded and just earnestly come to that conclusion about their worldview. JD Vince is admitted that he is a conspiracy theorist. I mean, there's been reporting on you know, of Susan Wilde's called him a conspiracy theorist and he's admitted himself that he you know goes down rabbit holes on things and like look, everybody nowadays I think is at least a little bit of a conspiracy theorist probably or most most American people. So that's not like disqualifying or or you know, the end of the world in and of itself. But I think in this particular way, it's manifesting that all of the allies and JD Vince himself said this. This is one of the comments that really sparked people's iron was when he went on the Joe Rogan podcast and said essentially to paraphrase his comments. Yes, the people who are criticizing the MOU and my negotiation with Iran are agents of Israel who want there to be endless war on behalf of the foreign country. And they're being paid by Israel and he's referenced to this this social media operation by a guy named Brad Parscale who used to be a top Trump campaign operative back in 2016. And it's true that Brad Parscale is getting paid to do kind of lobbying on behalf of Israel. He's filed all the necessary paperwork. It's all out in the open. Everybody knows it and that some of that apparently has involved like working with social media influencers. But there's no, you know, direct tie. There's no evidence that says, oh, everybody that this matter, JD Vince's negotiation is on the payroll of Brad Parscale. He kind of stole the base. They're making that point. And that made a lot of people upset. And again, back to my previous point, I think it speaks to the fact that if you are a Republican voter who voted for Trump and you have this certain set of beliefs about foreign policy or again about economics. I don't want to people think this is that's the other point. People think this is all about Israel. It's not. It's about economics and Israel and religion, all to various levels, I would say, because another key aspect advances worldview is that he's not particularly capitalist in a lot of ways. In some ways he is, but compared to your traditional kind of run of the middle Republican. He's not exactly. So I think it's not all about Israel, but, but Vance kind of made it seem like it was primarily about Israel. It's part of this office conspiracy if people criticizing him, who were on the Israeli payroll. And I think if you're one of these people who is just a Republican voter or an operative or someone who participates in politics, and you have this good faith objection and it gets dismissed as all you must be getting paid. I think that creates resentment and it's kind of productive. And I don't know why that's the immediate fallback other than it's just kind of the nearest weapon available. I think it's it's kind of just the easiest thing to do. So everybody that hates me or whether it's mad at me is just a forward bought getting paid, you know, like that's that can be comforting can be self soothing, I guess, to one psyche, but like it seems counterproductive. And we'll find out in the election of the primary election that is you said will eventually happen in some way. We'll find out how much of that is true. It's interesting, to me, it's something that is, you know, it's always sort of been the purview of the left. And I think it's a bad habit on the left, right? You see whenever two people who share a world of you interact, I always think about, you know, whenever Clarence Thomas has dinner with a prominent another prominent conservative, you know, the left pro-Publica and whatnot rush pod save America rushes to say, you know, this is proof of some vast right wing conspiracy. Well, you know, Clarence Thomas is unquestionably one of the most elite is one of nine, one of nine of the most elite members of American society by virtue of his job. And everybody in polite, you know, mainstream Washington elite circles have spent the past 40 years demonizing him. So, you know, is it really that shocking when the only person he hangs out with is Samuel Alito? You know, like, that's not, you know, that's not that's just dinner with another prominent conservative, there must be something happening here. Yeah, I don't know if you don't like that. When was the last time Barack and Michelle invited Clarence and Virginia Thomas over for dinner, right? So I do think it's a little bit, it's a little bit of that, right? Sometimes someone does something that I don't like or says something neat about my guy, it must be an op, but I wonder kind of bridging this with the the first part of what we were discussing. This isn't good. I feel like Republicans have to and conservatives have to shake this attitude because I think you're absolutely right that for the first time in 10 years, the Republican party needs to have is about to have or should have a very serious conversation about what it is, what its priorities are, who's in its coalition. Or if everyone gets to be in its coalition, right, which members of the coalition have relative weight, which goes back to the policy priorities. And I think if everyone's knee-jerk reaction is to just say, well, they're a foreign agent or they're rhinos or that's an op, that's an op, that's whatever it's, I mean, it's, it's reductionists in the point where we shut everything down. So even when eventually the party does settle on a nominee, it's done none of the foundational work to undergerman, right? It's almost like setting up whoever, answer whoever, up, for failure. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of why I wanted to write something about it is because, you know, at the, at the 100,000-foot view, there is no way to run a political coalition in movement. But this way, like you can't, you simply can't have a movement that is entirely made up of people who are conspiracy-minded and not grappling with ideas in any way because they're just looking for, you know, accusing everybody of getting paid all the time and looking for the next cabal to go after. You know, at the end of the day, somebody has to be grounded at making policy and figuring out the right ways to run the country and then how, and then more importantly, how to actually put that into action. And so, you know, this is a road that leads to failure for the movement, no matter who ends up running it or what the actual ideology is. And then if you go down a little closer to like 30,000 feet in the 2028 election and all that, it is no way to build an electoral coalition that can actually win. I mean, you're not going to outcompete the left in terms of, you know, speaking truth to corporate power or the cabal is already getting paid and all that stuff. They've been completely consumed by that already. Every single democratic, every single competitive important at this point, democratic primary election is about who's getting more A-packed money, who's getting more corporate money, you're being bought by this person, you're being bought by that person. That entire discourse is consumed the entire other half of the aisle. If it consumes the Republican half of the aisle, it's, you know, you're going to get beat at their endgame, you know, that it's not going to be a way to actually build a winning coalition. And again, I think all of these groups that came together to support Trump, they all need to be catered to in a good faith way if you want to expect them to stick around. I mean, a lot of these people weren't even Republicans or as we know are low propensity voters that aren't inclined to just get up off the couch and vote for anyone that aren't next to their net. You have to welcome them in and give them give them the time of day. And so just saying that, you know, this guy's the guy, nobody else's objections or concerns mean anything and you better light up a vote for him. I mean, you can do that, but you're almost certainly going to lose. I think if you do that, you have to, you have to make people feel part of the coalition and part of the movement and not just write them all off as us. It's also really interesting. And I feel like if if the if Republicans don't do what you've just said, right, if they continue down this path of, you know, anointing advance, dismissing everybody else's an offer, what not. It seems like a massive unforced error, not just because of the reasons that you have, I think, correctly delineated, but because as we've been discussing a lot recently, Democrats are literally getting crazier, right. Obviously, Democrats are always going to run against Republicans by trying to position Republicans as right wing fascists. Republicans are always going to brand Democrats as, you know, America hating socialists. The difference between now and 15 years ago is that a lot of the people who we are seeing win the Democratic nominations in the primaries for this midterm election, people who are rising to the top of the party are quite literally American hating socialist, right. I mean, I'm no Barack Obama fan, but I think and I think that he has some American hating and socialistic tendencies, but I obviously I do not think it would have been fair to call president Barack Obama and anti-American hating socialist, same with Hillary Clinton. And so, I do allow Cyan, so Ron Bombotti could treat a lot. These people are literally anti-American and literally members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Like, this is not hyperbole. So even if Republicans lose in the midterms, which would be the expected result because the incumbent party of a, you know, always loses after two years into a presidential term, the Republicans have never had a better opportunity for a United Front against the common enemy. It almost seems like I can't do you think it's that they're taking it for granted or they're just rushing past it because I feel like one way or the other Republicans are squandering this kind of gold mine opportunity. I think they're squandering in a bit. I also don't know if the conditions will be there anyways for it on some level. I mean, I think if I were JD vets or the people around JD vets and I and I were describing to what you just laid out. And I would be, I would be laying low while I'm in office and trying to make overtures to as much of the parties I could have United front and obviously focusing on messaging against Democrats constantly. As you just said, they are actually American hating social snow, unequivocally. They're proud of it. That's the flag they're flying. And I think that would be the way to try to to unite the right and fight back against this movement and try to win an election in 2028. But instead, there seems to be this focus on, you know, getting mad at Mark Levin because he's criticizing the MOU all the time or getting mad at Grover Norquist for saying JD Vance is a criticized Grover Norquist to be clear, but some of his allies have criticized Grover Norquist because he wants to cut taxes. Like, there's this weird kind of petty infighting happening on the right and said, and I think you're right that it's squandered as an opportunity to say, guys, that the barbarians are actually at the gates here. And we actually do need to kind of set aside these differences to some degree and push back on them. And it is being squandered. But I also think on another level, you know, if Republicans do lose in the midterms and you've got Trump serving out his last two years as a lame duck and Trump, you know, I don't think Trump's a guy that likes to think about his succession necessarily. I don't know, I don't think he's going to do. This is the other part of the inevitability. They keep saying, well, Trump picked JD Vance as vice president. That's a de facto endorsement. And so it's going to be JD. Trump's going to get behind him. I've seen nothing in Donald Trump's behavior in public office in a decade that suggests that he's just going to quietly endorse JD Vance and then step aside and let the party be his. It's just not going to happen. He might endorse him, but it's going to be weird. You know, things are always a little bit weird with Trump. So I think, you know, you're writing on paper that this could be an opportunity to have everybody coalesce and come together and form a united front. But I think between the ideological splits that are very real, and again, the Vance teams approached kind of trying to stand about people who have questions and the Trump of it all and how is he going to, how is he going to interact with the primary and succession process? It seems unlikely, which is unfortunate because I'm genuinely worried about who is going to be the presidential nominee for Democrats in 2028. And God knows what the issue of the day will be for them at that point in time and how insane it will be. And I do not want to have to contend with that as the alternative if it's the Republicans can I get it to the other? - Yeah, at the Trump of it, that's a great point too. Again, it's another strange kind of like forced false dichotomy, much like how everyone's having the Vance or Rubio fight. And it's sort of it completely ignores the possibility that any number of people could seek the Republican domination after, you know, for 2028, you know, we spend so much time Democrats and Trump is obviously soaking these fires himself, Trump says, maybe I'll run for a third term. Democrats say he's going to throw away the Constitution. Republicans say he's obviously not going to do that he's kidding. And we spend so much time having that debate that it sort of aligns what you're pointing out, which is not that Trump is going to do anything illegal or unconstitutional, but he's just going to be there being Trump. And unlike every other president in the modern era who has either coordinated with his vice president and or successor, right, to campaign for them or in the case of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and a little bit Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton just sort of retreated into the back and let the campaign play out. Trump's obviously not going to do that. That's I'm not saying I'm not weighing in on that either way. You know, that's just to your point that is simply who Trump is. He is not going to retreat into a lame duck position and coordinate with the Republican presidential campaigns, such as it is. And we'll just solve this. We just saw, I referenced, or as you mentioned earlier, I referenced on the piece, Kamala Harris, like we just saw this happen with Kamala Harris where Joe Biden said no daylight kid. And like if you think Joe Biden didn't want any daylight, wait to see how Donald Trump approaches his successor running. Like he's not going to want any daylight. And you know, he's using an example like the Iran War. I think it's pretty clear JD Vance, not really big fan of going to war with the run. His public allies in the media, certainly not big fans of going to war with the run. The American people based on the polling, not big fans of going to war with the run. Is JD Vance going to be able to get up there and say, yeah, we messed up by going to war with the run? No, because then Trump's going to bite his head off. So this is going to be a problem. And I think people are just kind of ever looking at again, the Trump of it all and saying, it's just going to be this smooth succession. If any, the only person that might get a smooth succession is Donald Trump Jr. And I think people got to keep a little overnight on that. That's the, that's the wild card I'll throw in as, as we wrap up here, I think, that. Yeah, wow, I was on junior. All right. Well, honestly, I have a million follow-up questions about that, but we're going to have to do that offline and we'll probably have to have you back for part two. Maybe we discussed a Democrat in 2028 and the unlikely perhaps rise in Dodge, Jr. So that's, I just totally free you off with that. Yeah, you did, you really did. That was a good curve. All done is great. It's always good to keep you on my toes. Dylan Houseman is the manager editor of The Daily Wire. Dylan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Joe. What if a few minutes with God could change the direction of your entire day? With pray.com, you can begin each morning with powerful daily prayers, inspiring Bible stories, and messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today.