Algemeen·NRC·20 apr

J.D. Vance’s theory of Trumpism is no match for the practice

Vice-president J.D. Vance loves big ideas, or at least the idea of big ideas. Unlike President Donald Trump, he reads books and even writes his own, and he talks, authentically, like a diploma-carrying member of the elite they both ostentatiously disdain. He aligns himself with the „post-liberal right”, a term so highfalutin one struggles to imagine Mr Trump using it. Mr Vance serves as the chief emissary between the Trump White House and the intellectual „New Right”, the agglomeration of pointy-heads, Silicon Valley potentates and podcasters with big ideas of their own for saving Western civilisation, as Mr Vance, apocalyptically, likes to describe his mission.