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A true believer in a post-Trump, MAGA agenda? Or is the presumptive 2028 GOP frontrunner waiting for the chance to be his own man? And what does his wife, Usha, think about all of it? The answers may lie in Vance\u2019s pivotal years at Yale Law. Chris Whipple returns to the school\u2014and talks to the VP\u2019s professor and mentor, \u201cTiger Mom\u201d Amy Chua.An author photo outtake for JD Vance\u2019s best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, 2016.Naomi McCullochIn the fall of 2010, on the first floor of the Sterling Law Building, a neo-Gothic edifice in the heart of Yale\u2019s campus, contracts class is underway. Nearly every seat is filled, and there\u2019s a buzz in the air. That\u2019s because Amy Chua, who teaches the class, is a magnet for some of the most ambitious students at Yale Law School. A petite, energetic Chinese American, Chua is known for her uncanny ability to place her top pupils in the most coveted jobs in the judicial firmament: clerkships with federal appellate court judges such as Brett Kavanaugh and Merrick Garland (many of whom are Chua\u2019s good friends). It\u2019s just one step from there to the holy grail for Yale Law grads: clerking on the Supreme Court.Sitting in the front row, to Professor Chua\u2019s right, taking notes, is a focused young woman, Usha Chilukuri. The daughter of first-generation Telugu Indian immigrants, she\u2019s already been pegged as the brightest student in the class of 2013, possibly even a future president. (Hillary Clinton was the breakout star of the YLS class of 1973.) In the back row, to Chua\u2019s left, is a beefy ex-Marine. Some classmates wonder if he\u2019s cut out to be a lawyer, much less a future president. His name is JD Vance.Vance accepting his Yale Law School JD diploma, 2013.Yale Law School\u201cHe had, like, a pink or purple sweater,\u201d Chua recalls. \u201cHe was not always that elegant.\u201d But the professor saw potential in the rumpled first-year student from Middletown, Ohio. \u201cI always thought he was destined for great things,\u201d she tells me in an exclusive interview for Vanity Fair. Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, a YLS constitutional scholar, predicted that Vance would someday end up in the White House. But that was several years later\u2014after Vance, with Chua\u2019s help, had become famous.A few months after that contracts class, Chua would publish Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a book that became an instant bestseller and made her an international sensation with its tough-love message that parents should stop coddling their kids and proactively drive them to achieve their full potential. By 2016, under Chua\u2019s tutelage, Vance would publish Hillbilly Elegy. That well-regarded account of Vance\u2019s dysfunctional childhood and his hardscrabble Appalachian roots made him a phenomenon. Here was a freshly minted Yale Law grad who could explain the plight of the impoverished Rust Belt\u2014and excoriate Donald Trump in the same breath. Vance said Trump could become \u201cAmerica\u2019s Hitler\u201d and, in an article for The Atlantic, compared him to \u201ccultural heroin.\u201d But then, in 2021, Vance made a head-spinning ideological about-face. He threw in his lot with Trump and his MAGA movement. The next year, with the ex-president\u2019s endorsement, Vance was elected to the US Senate. He would become Trump\u2019s running mate in 2024 and the favorite to become his party\u2019s 2028 presidential nominee.Ever since, Vance has been pilloried as a cynical political opportunist. \u201cI don\u2019t think JD Vance believes in anything,\u201d says Stuart Stevens, who ran Mitt Romney\u2019s 2012 presidential campaign. \u201cI think he would be a Trotskyite if that would advance him.\u201d But what does Vance\u2019s mentor Chua think of his 180-degree transformation? \u201cI have a very different view of JD,\u201d she says. \u201cI do not think he changed at all. I think he\u2019s exactly the same guy.\u201dA close friend says that Vance has been ambitious and strategic from the get-go: \u201cAnd if you\u2019re not strategic, maybe you shouldn\u2019t be in politics.\u201dAmy Chua sits in her office on the third floor of Yale\u2019s Sterling Law building on a recent summer afternoon. Behind her, through an ornate window, are the classical slate-and-copper rooftops of Yale Law School. Chua rarely speaks publicly about her most famous pupil, and she\u2019s excited, animated. Vance, the son of a drug-addicted mother and mostly absentee father, was an outsider at Yale, Chua says, just as she had been as a daughter of Chinese immigrants at Harvard Law. \u201cI was very similar to him in law school. My parents are really smart, but they were not lawyers. My mom barely spoke English when they came here. I didn\u2019t know anything\u2014I didn\u2019t even know there was a separate federal and state court system.\u201dChua agreed to meet me after an introduction from a mutual Yale friend. (I\u2019m a graduate of Yale College.) \u201cI could speak two kinds of Chinese,\u201d Chua continues, \u201cbut I didn\u2019t know how to set a table. So I really related to JD.\u201d She related to something else too: Vance\u2019s big dreams. \u201cI\u2019m a law professor. But I\u2019m also a talent scout. I love people with big dreams.\u201dTo this day, Chua remains close with the vice president and second lady. How close? There are two people, says a friend of both, whose phone calls JD will invariably pick up. One is Trump; the other is Chua. Last April, after a would-be assassin was thwarted while storming the White House Correspondents\u2019 Dinner, Vance texted Chua from a secure room at the Washington Hilton Hotel. (Usha, six months pregnant, was at home.) He had been whisked there by the Secret Service. The Tiger Mother, also an attendee that night as the guest of The Free Press, was in the main ballroom, awaiting the VP\u2019s return.Chua was at first reluctant to talk with me; indeed, few people associated with Yale appear willing to speak on the record about Vance. His detractors fear that opening up about him could invoke the Trump administration\u2019s wrath. Since his return to power, Trump has slapped sanctions on Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Princeton, Cornell, and Brown. But Yale, until this summer, had largely avoided such unwanted attention. Why make waves, some ask, by potentially offending Vance? One professor suggests, half in jest, that Yale\u2019s gotten off relatively easily thus far because Vance likes to visit his old stomping grounds: \u201cHe brought his kids just after he was elected and wanted to take them to all the places he used to go for pizza. So I was kind of hoping that would keep Trump from coming after Yale.\u201dYale Law professor-spouses Jed Rubenfeld and Amy Chua.Tom Pilston /eyevine/ReduxConversely, some of Vance\u2019s allies worry that saying anything positive about him will make them campus outcasts. Yale undergraduates are predominantly liberal, a YLS professor insists, \u201cand the law school is way more extreme.\u201d Alarmed by reports that the university might agree to cut a \u201cdeal\u201d with the Trump White House over alleged improper admissions practices, several students and law school faculty members are leading a campaign against such a settlement; they\u2019d rather fight the administration in court. Indeed, from the moment Vance signed on as Trump\u2019s VP in 2024, he\u2019s been persona non grata to many of his fellow Yalies. Says one close law school acquaintance: \u201cIt\u2019s Trump.\u201d Both the vice president and second lady declined my request for in-person interviews. Offered a chance to comment on statements made about the VP and second lady in this article, Vance\u2019s spokesperson, Taylor Van Kirk, responded to some queries, but not to others.A roster of Vance\u2019s YLS class might make you think the country\u2019s run by an Ivy League cabal. Enrolled there, from 2010\u20132013, were Vivek Ramaswamy, a future presidential candidate, DOGE volunteer, and current candidate for Ohio governor; Elbridge Colby, now an undersecretary at the Pentagon; Michael Ellis, a CIA deputy director; and, of course, JD and Usha. Dan Driscoll, who resigned in September as Trump\u2019s secretary of the Army, graduated in 2014. If Vance becomes president, they could constitute the nucleus of his cabinet. One wag calls the VP\u2019s class \u201cthe bizarro world version\u201d of YLS\u2019s storied class of 1973, which included Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Robert Reich (later Clinton\u2019s labor secretary), and Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut\u2019s senior US senator). Justice Clarence Thomas, \u201974, was just one year behind.Vance arrived in 2010. He\u2019d served in Iraq as a Marine public affairs officer and then earned a BA with honors from Ohio State. Yale was in flux, no longer a bastion for legacy students with names like Auchincloss and Vanderbilt. The YLS class of 2013 also included an unusually large number of US service members.Vance and a small band of fellow vets would knock back beers in working-class New Haven bars. (The group tended to shun the tony old-school Yale dining establishment Mory\u2019s.) He vented about the folly of the Iraq War. \u201cHe certainly had seen plenty of nasty stuff up close,\u201d says a classmate who\u2019d served in Iraq at the same time. \u201cIt didn\u2019t matter if you were combat or non-combat, [you saw] roadside bombs, missiles flying into the Green Zone.\u201d As a press officer in Iraq, Vance honed his ability to hedge the truth. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to put a good gloss on what\u2019s happening,\u201d explains this classmate. \u201cHe probably didn\u2019t agree with a single article or social media post that he wrote. But he probably wrote it better than anyone else and strongly got behind it. So that\u2019s kind of who he is.\u201dAt Yale, Vance was outgoing and popular. But he didn\u2019t hide his contempt for the architects of the war. In class, one of his close friends recalls, when the subject turned to why the American-led coalition had invaded Iraq in the first place, he would say: \u201cThey were like, \u2018Oh, oops, no weapons [of mass destruction].\u2019 And it was my town that died. The people from towns like mine. They went off and they never came back. And they never said sorry.\u2019\u201dWhile attending Chua\u2019s contracts class, Vance signed up for her one-on-one office hours. Vance asked her, \u201cWhy are you so nice to me?\u201d Chua was taken aback. \u201cI later realized,\u201d she says, referring to his dysfunctional childhood, \u201cit\u2019s his background. A lot of people weren\u2019t nice to him.\u201d Vance seemed adrift; he didn\u2019t necessarily want a law career and wasn\u2019t sure what he was doing there. \u201cHe was a real hillbilly,\u201d says Chua. \u201cHe was often completely lost here. He was going to drop out 50 times.\u201dThe standout of the YLS class of 2013 was Usha Chilukuri. \u201cShe was a rock star,\u201d says a classmate.Usha\u2019s desire to excel was unmistakable, but, to some, it wasn\u2019t clear what drove her. Unlike many of her classmates, Vance would later write, Usha \u201ccouldn\u2019t have cared less about running the world.\u201d With a BA from Yale (summa cum laude) and a master\u2019s from Cambridge, \u201cshe felt this pressure to keep chasing these gold stars, but it wasn\u2019t real ambition,\u201d says a close friend. \u201cI don\u2019t know if it came from her parents. Why did Usha need to clerk for the Supreme Court? I\u2019m very ambitious. I never felt like I needed to clerk for the Supreme Court.\u201dUsha\u2019s political views weren\u2019t readily apparent. \u201cShe certainly came from a liberal political family,\u201d says another friend, \u201cbut with small-c conservative philosophies about family and education.\u201d Usha was cool, self-possessed\u2014and disciplined. \u201cWith a glass of wine, Hillary and I could have fun,\u201d says a Yale Law professor, referring to that other famous YLS alumna. \u201cUsha won\u2019t drink more than half a glass. She\u2019s the only person I ever said, \u2018Usha, you could stand to be a tad more ingratiating.\u2019 Because she is a very chilly fish.\u201dVance\u2019s political ambition was plain as day. \u201cI instantly saw it,\u201d says a close friend. \u201cI\u2019m glad he didn\u2019t lie. I\u2019ve heard many podcasts where people asked him when he became senator or vice president, did you plan this? And I was like, \u2018If he lies, I\u2019m going to call him out, right?\u2019 Because he always had that dream.\u201d As for his politics, Vance was a mainstream Republican; he admired Mitch Daniels, the pragmatic and fiscally conservative GOP governor of Indiana and ex-director of the Office of Management and Budget.Assigned with Usha to a 16-student study group, Vance was bowled over, falling hard for his classmate after they teamed up on a moot court project. Chua says: \u201cI gotta tell you, Usha must have been 50 billion times better than he was at that assignment.\u201d Usha, too, warmed up to Vance. \u201cWhen he was a student and he was still struggling with his early issues, she was there,\u201d Chua recalls. \u201cShe is capable of enormous warmth and love.\u201dVance had a fiery temper and a short fuse. On occasion, he would have meltdowns when a professor gave Usha a questionable grade or if he felt condescended to. \u201cHe had a really big anger,\u201d says a friend, \u201ca strong conviction, which I now see as part of what he is\u2014you know, not trusting these arrogant coastal elites that don\u2019t care.\u201d When a professor made disparaging remarks about students from state schools, this friend remembers, Vance, a proud Ohio State Buckeye, went ballistic: \u201cHe said, \u2018I\u2019m transferring, I\u2019m dropping out.\u2019 He was very drama queen.\u201dThe drama queen in Vance was evident more than a decade later, the friend observes, when the vice president exploded at Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February of 2025: \u201cHe\u2019s not very good at BS, and you can tell he just didn\u2019t like Zelenskyy. There are people he doesn\u2019t like. He gets his back up.\u201dHow in the world, wonder some of Usha\u2019s law school pals, does she tolerate her husband\u2019s current hardline political views? Usha is a US citizen, born to parents who emigrated from India. And yet Vance has supported Trump\u2019s efforts to nullify birthright citizenship, mindful of the potential effect of such a move on millions of families. Is Usha troubled by this? (The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, recently rejected the president\u2019s repeal of the right by executive order.) Chua dismisses the narrative that Usha chafes at Vance\u2019s political views, including his decision to run as Trump\u2019s vice president: \u201cHe would never do anything if she was against it. This is another giant misunderstanding. When I read stuff out there, like there\u2019s this whole conceit that it\u2019s, \u2018Blink twice if you\u2019re trapped\u2019 or something like that\u2014she\u2019s in prison, and she\u2019s so terrified or whatever. That\u2019s ridiculous. She\u2019s incredibly strong and centered.\u201dA Yale Law School '13 class picture features JD Vance and Usha Vance in the top left.Yale Daily News and Surbhi BharadwajWhat about Vance\u2019s bogus charge about Haitian immigrants, which Trump repeated during a 2024 debate with Kamala Harris? \u201cAre there moments for Usha,\u201d I ask one of her close friends, \u201cwhere she\u2019ll say, \u2018JD, eating cats and dogs? Are you kidding me?\u2019\u201d She replies: \u201cI would say that there have got to be thousands of those moments, but they might not be the ones that we, the coastal elites, would think. Usha knows how much JD wants to be president someday. And so I think she\u2019s just completely on \u2018Team JD.\u2019\u201dAt Yale, Vance was searching for a greater purpose in life. As he writes in his book Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, published in June, he\u2019d become an atheist in Iraq after the on-again, off-again Baptist and Pentecostal churchgoing of his youth. Vance hoped to rediscover some kind of spiritual or philosophical grounding. Like William F. Buckley Jr., Yale \u201950, who wrote the seminal critique God and Man at Yale, Vance believed the university had become hostile to both religious faith and conservative ideas. While Buckley blamed this on Yale\u2019s godless liberal faculty, Vance attributed it to a subtler but more potent \u201csocialization.\u201dAt Yale, Vance writes, \u201cthe groupthink pressure was incredibly powerful. In the early 2010s, we had not yet reached the peak wokeness of 2020, of corporate CEOs or professional athletes groveling before an offended mob. But I should have seen it coming.\u201d As Vance saw it, students, believing in nothing else, were trapped on an unfulfilling academic and professional treadmill: \u201cWe fought over jobs we didn\u2019t actually want while pretending we weren\u2019t fighting for them at all. Our prize for winning the meritocratic game was a desk job at an investment bank, preparing pitch decks, or at a law firm, billing hours, making just enough to buy our way into a sense of social superiority.\u201d He sought a more meaningful, purpose-driven path.In 2011, Vance attended a talk that would change everything. It was given by the billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal and Palantir. \u201cPossibly the smartest person I\u2019d ever met, he identified very openly as a Christian,\u201d Vance writes. Until that point, Vance had thought \u201cdumb people were religious and smart people were atheists.\u201d Thiel urged students to reject the meaninglessness of cutthroat professional competition. Vance was hooked. Through Thiel, he discovered a French-born philosopher, Ren\u00e9 Girard, under whom the future billionaire had studied at Stanford. As Vance puts it, Girard\u2019s theory of \u201cmimetic rivalry\u201d\u2014that people perpetually spar over the things other people want\u2014\u201cspoke directly to some of the competitive pressures I had experienced at Yale.\u201dThe roots had been planted for Vance\u2019s 2019 conversion to Catholicism. And, some observers would argue, to a political gospel according to Thiel.Hillbilly Elegy, which would fuel Vance\u2019s meteoric rise, arguably began with an email to Chua soon after his arrival at Yale. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother had made her famous, but also a pariah. Many saw Chua\u2019s parenting techniques, such as calling her children names and denying them bathroom breaks, as a form of child abuse. (Her daughters, Sophia and Lulu, both Harvard graduates, have defended their mother\u2019s strict methods.) Chua was on her book tour, holed up in a Seattle hotel room after a slew of death threats. Vance had just read a copy of Battle Hymn in the Yale Bookstore. \u201cI just don't get it,\u201d she says he emailed her. \u201cWhy is this controversial? Your girls are lucky. You remind me of Mamaw.\u201d Mamaw, a.k.a. Bonnie Vance, was JD\u2019s gun-toting, Bible-thumping grandmother, whom he deeply respected. Soon, Vance began confiding in Chua about his tumultuous childhood. He attached a few pages of musings that would eventually become his origin story.Chua immediately saw the makings of a bestseller. \u201cHe had a chip on his shoulder, he wanted to prove himself,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018You should do this.\u2019\u201d With her guidance Vance wrote about 200 pages. \u201cIt literally starts off, \u2018My name is JD Vance,\u2019 which is the beginning of Hillbilly Elegy. At that time, it was not political at all. I thought it was just going to be an autobiography.\u201d Vance, according to Chua, kept cluttering up his story with philosophy, possibly as an attempt to incorporate some of the intellectual frameworks he was processing at the time, courtesy of Thiel, Girard, and others. \u201cIt was grand theory,\u201d says Chua. \u201cMaybe Gramsci or someone else. And I said, \u2018We should just cut that out.\u2019\u201dChua connected him with her literary agent, Tina Bennett. Three editors at HarperCollins would ultimately pitch in to help Vance whip the manuscript into shape. And three years after his Yale graduation, Hillbilly Elegy was published. The question was raised: Did Vance actually write the book himself? In his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy took credit for Profiles in Courage, a book that, to a significant degree, was written by his aide Ted Sorensen. JFK won a Pulitzer. Was Hillbilly Elegy, I ask Chua, another Profiles in Courage? \u201cNo, no, no,\u201d she asserts. \u201cJD is a great writer, a prolific writer. They may have edited it and shaped it, but the part that made the book good was the voice.\u201d The publishing rumor that one of the editors did the lion\u2019s share of the writing is, according to insiders, not true. A person close to the HarperCollins editorial process tells me, \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s an editor who ever worked here who\u2019s not claimed to have written a book. That is how editors make themselves feel better.\u201dChua and her husband threw a book party for Vance at their apartment on New York City\u2019s Upper West Side. The swanky guest list included former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, President Joe Biden\u2019s future national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his wife, Maggie Goodlander (a Chua mentee and future New Hampshire congresswoman), entrepreneur Wendi Deng, and author Patrick Radden Keefe (another Chua prot\u00e9g\u00e9). In their toast, Chua and Rubenfeld predicted that Vance would end up in the White House.A few years later Chua and her husband would be accused of getting carried away with their student mentoring; it was said that they hosted boozy parties with students and that Chua told aspiring female clerks to convey \u201cmodel-like femininity\u201d in job interviews with Brett Kavanaugh\u2014charges she called \u201coutrageous\u201d and \u201c100 percent false.\u201d Rubenfeld was suspended by Yale for two years for, among other things, \u201cunwanted touching\u201d\u2014allegations he \u201cabsolutely, unequivocally\u201d denied. Some of Chua\u2019s allies believe the accusations were politically motivated payback for her refusal to sign a petition opposing Kavanaugh\u2019s appointment to the Supreme Court.Launched by his Tiger Mother and HarperCollins (which is my book publisher as well), Vance was catapulted into the elite chattering classes; soon he was hobnobbing with VIPs and CEOs at corporate retreats. And that is how Vance met Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host at the time, who would become a friend, political ally\u2014and possible rival for the 2028 nomination. \u201cMy friendship with JD has been used to cause him problems, and I feel bad about that,\u201d Carlson tells me during a series of conversations.Yale\u2019s Sterling Law Building.Maurice Savage / Alamy Stock PhotoThe two conservative firebrands crossed paths in San Francisco a decade ago. \u201cIt\u2019s like a parody, where I met him,\u201d says Carlson. \u201cIt\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d They were speakers, he recounts, at a \u201cCEO Summit,\u201d the kind where politicos and pundits can rake in six-figure speaking fees. Carlson was impressed by Vance\u2019s blunt, populist message. \u201cI just thought, \u2018Wow, that was interesting. He was basically saying the market run-up has created such a crazy imbalance in the way wealth is distributed that we\u2019re going to get radical populism. And so you need to think about how to distribute this more evenly or else you're going to get lynched.\u201dVance\u2019s transition to Trumpism, Carlson maintains, was partially triggered by the hypocrisy of these masters of the universe: \u201cIt was like he\u2019s a pet hillbilly with a Yale law degree. And they\u2019re like, \u2018No, really, we care about the white working class: Here\u2019s JD Vance from Ohio!\u2019 And so he spent a lot of time with those people, which is very much a bipartisan world. And he realized how fatuous and kind of repulsive it is.\u201dBut Vance wasn\u2019t yet ready to join the MAGA revolution. And herein lies a tale, reported here for the first time, that isn\u2019t part of his official bio. Vance professed aversion to both presidential candidates in 2016; in fact he said he couldn\u2019t bring himself to vote for Trump or Clinton\u2014and cast his ballot for independent candidate Evan McMullin. But according to sources, Vance was offering his own back-channel advice to Clinton\u2019s campaign, hoping to help get her elected.\u201cJD called me and said, \u2018Can you put me in touch with Jake Sullivan?\u2019\u201d says a person who served as an intermediary to Clinton\u2019s campaign. At the time, Joe Biden\u2019s future NSC chief was Clinton\u2019s senior policy adviser. \u201cI was, like, \u2018Jake is running Hillary\u2019s campaign. He\u2019s way too busy.\u2019\u201d But according to this source, Vance was on a mission. \u201cHe called me again and he said, \u2018I hate Hillary. But I hate Trump more. Trump can\u2019t win. He can\u2019t win. Hillary\u2019s going to lose, but she doesn\u2019t have to.\u2019\u201dVance, says this intermediary, made the case that Clinton needed to visit the Midwestern swing states immediately: \u201cHe listed Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and what we now call the Blue Wall states. And he\u2019s, like, \u2018She needs to come here instead of being down with Beyonc\u00e9 in Miami. She needs to come here and apologize for the Iraq War. Apologize for sending so many people, my community, all the people in all these states whose sons and fathers died and everybody just forgot about them.\u2019\u201d (As New York\u2019s junior senator in 2002, Clinton had voted for a resolution authorizing George W. Bush\u2019s Iraq invasion.)Vance and Sullivan spoke directly just six weeks before the election. A few weeks earlier, in an infamous unforced error, Clinton had said at a fundraiser: \u201cYou could put half of Trump\u2019s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.\u201d A source close to Sullivan says he doesn\u2019t recall Vance talking about the Blue Wall states, but that he did urge Sullivan to get Clinton to \u201cfix this \u2018deplorables\u2019 thing.\u201d Vance, according to this source, was insistent that the Democratic nominee get her act together: \u201cShe\u2019s got to focus.\u201dWhen I ask the vice president\u2019s spokesperson, Taylor Van Kirk, if it was true that Vance had given advice to Clinton\u2019s campaign, she replies: \u201cA lot of people asked the Vice President for advice in 2016. He never worked for a campaign, but he urged both Republicans and Democrats to care about working class towns like Middletown, Ohio. We 100 percent reject the characterization that he was trying to help Hillary win.\u201dVance\u2019s transformation into a MAGA acolyte came in early 2021. Rob Portman, Ohio\u2019s junior senator, announced he was retiring; Vance decided to run for his seat. In Communion, Vance writes that his 2022 Senate campaign was \u201can effort to make what I thought were explicitly Christian arguments about the economy.\u201d Maybe so, but Vance was also coming around to Trump and his movement.Vance\u2019s relationship with Thiel, whom he\u2019d befriended after that talk at Yale a decade earlier, was paying dividends. After graduation, he and Usha had gotten married, then hopscotched across the country, moving from Washington, DC to Columbus, Cincinnati, and San Francisco. Usha completed three clerkships\u2014with district court judge Amul Thapar, appellate court judge Kavanaugh, and Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts. Vance worked briefly for a DC law firm before exploring venture capital in Silicon Valley. In 2016 he joined Thiel\u2019s technology investment firm, Mithril Capital\u2014and then, with Thiel\u2019s backing, started his own company, Narya Capital. (The name comes from J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s Lord of the Rings trilogy, a favorite of Thiel\u2019s and Vance\u2019s.)At the time, Thiel was one of the few tech billionaires who supported Trump. The mogul saw opportunity in Vance\u2014and vice versa. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t like Peter Thiel was some Silicon Valley guy who saw a husky kid from Ohio who wrote a bestseller and said, \u2018Let\u2019s make him our token candidate,\u2019\u201d says a longtime Vance observer. \u201cIt was also an ambitious but very intellectual author who wanted to get rich.\u201d Both men were taken with Ren\u00e9 Girard. It was this \u201cbro\u201d philosophical bonding, says this observer, that helped lead \u201cVance to kind of come around on Trump.\u201d Thiel ponied up a $15 million donation to a PAC supporting Vance\u2019s Senate campaign. The next step was for Vance to make a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago.Vance told me about his first meeting with Trump during a visit I paid to the White House in November 2025 for a VF profile on Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. \u201cSomebody had handed him some oppo file on me,\u201d Vance recalled. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018You said a lot of mean shit about me.\u2019\u201d Vance replied: \u201cYeah, Mr. President, let\u2019s talk about that.\u201d There was plenty to talk about. In an article for The Atlantic, for example, Vance had compared Trump to an \u201copioid of the masses\u201d that \u201centers minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears.\u201d Yet during their hour and a half together, Trump evidently accepted Vance\u2019s entreaties\u2014and his new supplicant took a shine to Trump\u2019s one-on-one charm. \u201cTo spend 10 minutes with Donald Trump is to realize that 95 percent of what the corporate media writes about him is fake,\u201d Vance told me. \u201cHe\u2019s just not [that] person. He\u2019s much warmer.\u201dA Yale buddy of Vance\u2019s argues that JD was first wowed by Trump\u2019s unfiltered persona: \u201cI think that Trump won over JD in the same way he won over the country in 2016. He just really spoke much more like a working-class person. He was un-PC. It\u2019s more cultural-aesthetic than it is economic. JD bought it.\u201d\u201cI think JD genuinely likes Trump,\u201d this friend continues. \u201cHe thinks he\u2019s really funny. I also think Trump genuinely likes JD. And I think he likes Usha a lot, because Usha is withholding. She\u2019s not going to suck up to Trump. She won\u2019t do it. This is just me, but I\u2019ve seen it. I think he finds her classy. She\u2019s very pretty, but she won\u2019t dye her hair. And I think he just likes her.\u201dWhen I spoke to Vance last year, he argued that Trump had been vilified by the mainstream press. Ninety percent of the \u201cRussiagate\u201d reporting, he said, was \u201ccompletely and utterly false.\u201d And the media had lied, Vance said, about Trump\u2019s infamous statement concerning those who attended the racist 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, declaring there were \u201cvery fine people on both sides.\u201d Vance insisted: \u201cHe allegedly endorsed white supremacists, but he actually didn\u2019t. If you look at what he said, he criticized them.\u201dMarine corporal Vance.Does Vance, a voracious reader and deep thinker, really believe in this Trumpian revisionist history? Whatever criticism the president may actually have made about white supremacists that day, it\u2019s hard to imagine \u201cvery fine people\u201d marching with neo-Nazis chanting, \u201cBlood and soil.\u201d But if Communion is any indication, Vance is all in. For all of his theological soul-searching in the book, he offers almost no introspection about serving a boss, many of whose utterances are deeply un-Christian and whose policies Vance once denounced as a cruel hoax that Trump had foisted on his most devoted supporters.Last year, on assignment for VF, I spent time with Vance and his friend and rival Marco Rubio in the West Wing. They were a study in contrasts. Vance was relaxed and confident, chattering away. Rubio, his possible competitor for the 2028 nomination, stood around awkwardly, sometimes looking at his shoes, and engaged only when spoken to.At one point, as Vance posed for photographs with the VF team, the discussion turned to digital photography versus traditional analogue film, which captures reality with more authenticity. \u201cIt has more soul,\u201d remarked VF\u2019s creative director. The vice president replied: \u201cWell, I think I once read in the pages of Vanity Fair that I have no soul.\u201d Vance let out a booming laugh.Actually, he didn\u2019t read it in Vanity Fair. Maybe Vance was thinking of a piece titled \u201cJD Vance Keeps Selling His Soul. He\u2019s Got Plenty of Buyers,\u201d in The New York Times. Or an Atlantic essay, \u201cThe Moral Collapse of JD Vance.\u201d But almost two years into Trump\u2019s second term, it\u2019s still the central question about Vance: Does he stand for anything other than his own advancement?Mark McKinnon, a former campaign strategist for George W. Bush and John McCain, says: \u201cAs much as you may hate Trump, it\u2019s authentic. If you don\u2019t like Rubio, Rubio\u2019s Rubio. But with Vance, there\u2019s not an ounce of authenticity. It\u2019s just all made up. It\u2019s all to please whoever the audience is. He\u2019s the last guy you\u2019d want in the foxhole.\u201dI asked Susie Wiles last year to compare the pivots of Vance and Rubio from Never Trumpers to MAGA loyalists. \u201cMarco was not the sort of person that would violate his principles,\u201d she said. \u201cHe just won\u2019t. And so he had to get there.\u201d By comparison, Vance\u2019s U-turn \u201ccame when he was running for the Senate. And I think his conversion was a little bit more, sort of political.\u201dWhen I repeat this remark to the VP\u2019s friend Tucker Carlson, he practically gags. \u201cThat\u2019s the opposite of the truth,\u201d he says. \u201cMarco is principled?\u201d Carlson can\u2019t hide his disdain for Rubio, whom he considers an unrepentant Bush-era neocon in MAGA camo.\u201cMarco\u2019s an establishment Republican masquerading as an America Firster,\u201d claims Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, who writes extensively about American conservatism. Vance, he says, is all about \u201cthe obloquy of the liberal elites. He\u2019s a true believer in a way that I don\u2019t think Rubio is.\u201dCarlson argues that Vance\u2019s conversion to Trumpism was both personal and ideological: \u201cJD saw Trump as a vessel for not just his ambitions but his ideas. I\u2019m certain that JD felt that this was the last chance to give voters something different. Up until then, you could tell yourself, and with some good reason, that this guy [Trump] is actually taking on a very corrupt system.\u201dIn 2024 it had been none other than Carlson, along with Donald Trump Jr., who\u2019d persuaded Trump to choose Vance as his running mate\u2014bypassing Rubio and Doug Burgum, the untested North Dakota governor who is now the interior secretary. If Vance and Trump were strange bedfellows, one of Vance\u2019s friends couldn\u2019t imagine the Ivy League\u2013pedigreed JD and Usha hanging out with Don Jr. and his friends. \u201cThe idea that they\u2019d have a lot in common or see the world the same way is just\u2026.\u201d He lets the sentence trail off and rolls his eyes.Of course, Carlson would change his tune about Trump in February when the president ordered a military attack on Iran. That was a bridge too far for the president\u2019s once-staunch ally, who denounced Trump\u2019s war as a betrayal\u2014and said he regretted ever supporting him.It\u2019s hard to think of another national politician who so completely changed his stripes. But then again, there\u2019s Richard Nixon. The 37th president, who rose to fame as a fierce anti-communist, shattered that mold when, as president, he forged a historic new relationship between the US and the People\u2019s Republic of China.Heilbrunn ticks off Vance\u2019s similarities with Nixon: \u201cHe\u2019s so young. The meteoric rise. Nixon went from congressman to senator to\u2014bam!\u2014vice president. Nixon began as a super anti-communist and red-baiter and then he morphed. And Nixon was highly intelligent. And Vance has also been decisively shaped by women. Not just his mother and grandmother but by Amy Chua and then Usha.\u201d Nixon was profoundly influenced by his devout Quaker mother, Hannah Milhous Nixon, and his wife, Pat.In June, just after my conversation with Heilbrunn, Vance visited the Richard M. Nixon Library and spoke favorably of the disgraced ex-president. In today\u2019s social media world, Vance said, the Watergate scandal wouldn\u2019t last more than 12 hours. In fact, the two politicians share other traits: their anger toward elites and their belief in a so-called deep state. And one other thing: Nixon believed in conspiracies. As a California senator, an ally of the virulently anti-communist senator Joseph McCarthy, Nixon had peddled the myth that the US government was riddled with Soviet spies.Vance, for his part, is a self-avowed conspiracy theorist. This was evident on September 10, 2025, when the Trump White House got word that Charlie Kirk, the head of Turning Point USA, had been assassinated as he spoke at Utah Valley University. Vance and a few of his team had been texting with Kirk, the VP\u2019s close friend, just before the shots were fired. \u201cI walked into Susie [Wiles]\u2019s office and she was crying,\u201d Vance had told me last year. \u201cUsha happened to be there. And I can\u2019t even remember why. You know, normally, she doesn\u2019t hang out in the West Wing a whole lot.\u201d (Usha had an office in the nearby Eisenhower Executive Office Building.)A suspect in the shooting was quickly arrested. But Vance thought there might be more to it. \u201cI\u2019ve had many, many questions,\u201d he claimed. \u201cI don\u2019t know how he was radicalized\u2014or if there were people in his network egging [him] on, encouraging [him] to do it, maybe even financing.\u201d Publicly, Vance spoke ominously of \u201ca leftist infrastructure\u201d fomenting violence against conservatives. \u201cMy view,\u201d he said, \u201cis it reveals something that\u2019s sort of gone pretty dark in a particular corner of the far left in this country.\u201d Yet the evidence suggests that what it actually revealed was the twisted mind of a lone individual. Kirk\u2019s alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, has yet to enter a formal plea.It was Kirk\u2019s widow, Erika, Vance writes in Communion, who convinced him and Usha to have another baby; she had told them that she\u2019d regretted not having more children. This July, Usha gave birth to a boy, Alec. They have two other boys, Ewan, 9, and Vivek, 6, and a girl, Mirabel, 4.In 2018 Vance and Usha were traveling in France. During a stroll through a cathedral, he writes in Communion, he underwent a kind of epiphany; in mid-August of the next year, he was baptized as a Catholic in a private ceremony. Usha, who is Hindu, had no intention of converting, but believed that her husband\u2019s move was \u201cgood\u201d for him. Vance says his new faith helped him develop patience. Moreover, he writes, \u201cI needed grace.\u201d But Vance has displayed little grace in his public exchanges with his religious superiors. In 2025 he clashed with Pope Francis on the plight of migrants. Last April, after Pope Leo XIV criticized Trump\u2019s policies on immigration and the Iran war, Vance chided him as though scolding a wayward student: \u201cI think it\u2019s very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.\u201d In Communion, rather than apologizing, Vance doubles down on his remarks, accusing Vatican officials of offering platitudes instead of specific critiques of Trump\u2019s immigration policy. What is it about the phrase \u201chumane treatment\u201d\u2014for which the Vatican was advocating\u2014that the vice president doesn\u2019t understand?In Communion, Vance\u2019s defense of Trumpism is facile, shallow\u2014and brief. He devotes a total of three pages to the period from his election to the Senate to Trump\u2019s second inauguration. Explaining his adoption of the MAGA cause, the vice president writes, for instance, that Trump \u201chad proved me wrong by being an effective president.\u201d Maybe\u2014if you consider governmental paralysis, futile attempts to repeal health care, a botched response to a lethal pandemic (Trump at first denied its existence and then minimized its severity), massive job losses (more than any president since Herbert Hoover), two impeachments, and an attempted insurrection to be effective. No wonder Usha was so much better at moot court.Vance also writes that he enjoys the intellectual challenge of his Catholic faith: the search for \u201cWhat do we believe?\u201dSo what does JD Vance believe?There are two main schools of thought about Vance and his ideology. One is that he\u2019s a leader who tacks with the prevailing political winds. \u201cHe\u2019d be actually a great college professor,\u201d says someone who\u2019s known him for years, \u201cbecause he\u2019s interested in ideas and how things are changing, but he doesn\u2019t have a constant in terms of political compass. He\u2019s phony in presenting his conviction to the world as this deep-seated conviction when it\u2019s anything but.\u201dThe other theory is that unlike Trump\u2014who governs by instinct, not ideology, and whose second term has been a parade of self-enrichment and retribution\u2014Vance believes in an authoritarian, Christian nationalist worldview, one that could radically reshape American democracy. As president, according to this theory, Vance would work to overturn the liberal postwar world order. Subscribers to this belief point to Vance\u2019s longtime interest in a Catholic thinker named Patrick Deneen and the concept of \u201cintegralism.\u201d Heilbrunn explains: \u201cIt\u2019s essentially a recipe for an American theocracy\u2014that the Constitution does not reign supreme, but there\u2019s a higher moral law above it, and that we need \u2018regime change\u2019 inside the United States. Not just toppling the deep state but the entire liberal apparatus, the universities, Hollywood, and the media.\u201d Van Kirk, the vice president\u2019s spokesperson, says: \u201cWe wholeheartedly reject this characterization of Deneen\u2019s work.\u201d\u201cTrump is episodic, willful, and impetuous,\u201d says Heilbrunn. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t fulfilled the promise of the revolution. He has not constructed an authoritarian state\u2014because it\u2019s all based around this cult of personality and his grievances. And Trump has no staying power. But Vance could be much more systematic about all of this.\u201dYale\u2019s Rumpus named Usha Chilukuri in its 2006 \u201cMost Beautiful People\u201d issue.Courtesy Yale RumpusAdding to concerns about Vance is his continuing fascination with Thiel, whom the vice president has repeatedly cited as a major influence. The eccentric libertarian who helped bankroll Vance\u2019s winning Senate bid has warned about the threat of a one-world, woke (possibly AI-led) government run by an \u201cAntichrist.\u201d He\u2019s said that freedom and democracy are incompatible. It\u2019s a long way from Hillbilly Elegy.The intellectual shock troops for Vance\u2019s movement, in Heilbrunn\u2019s view, could well be some of his Yale Law classmates, including the aforementioned Elbridge Colby, the grandson of CIA director William Colby, who died in murky circumstances while canoeing near his Maryland house. \u201cYou could look at them as a bunch of professorial cranks,\u201d Heilbrunn says. \u201cHowever, what we\u2019re talking about is an ideological vanguard. You have a committed cadre that wants to overthrow democracy. I think they\u2019re all just trying to wait out Trump. And they\u2019ve pinned everything on JD.\u201dCurt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative, who\u2019s known Vance for years, cautions against a \u201cliberal porn\u201d theory of this supposed revolution-in-waiting: \u201cIt\u2019s like, here are the guys on the Darth Vader Death Star who are funneling Dan Brown novels or Hitler shit into the mainstream, right?\u201dWhat would a Vance presidency look like? It\u2019s hard to discern from Communion. The book appears to be Vance\u2019s first real attempt to emerge from the shadow of the man who\u2014more than Chua or Thiel or Carlson\u2014truly altered his political trajectory. Vance seems to want to be seen as a MAGA leader who\u2019s actually read a book and formulated a worldview. Along with Deneen and Girard, he cites St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and other religious and political thinkers. The trouble is, he\u2019s drawn no coherent conclusions from all that reading.As he prepares for a possible run, what are voters to make of a man who, not unlike the restless, impressionable Yale Law student he once was, is still on a quest for meaning in his life as well as a compelling political agenda? Ten years ago, Vance wrote that Trump offered \u201cfalse euphoria\u2026. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they\u2019ll realize it.\u201d Surely Vance knows that that day has come. (The president\u2019s sunken approval rating is just the latest evidence.) And yet, in Communion, Vance offers no plan of his own to fix the nation\u2019s domestic ills.As for America\u2019s place in the world, the man who has said, \u201cI don\u2019t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other\u201d has no convincing alternative to the post\u2013World War II order. Of a visit to the Munich Security Conference, he writes: \u201cWhatever world wars had been avoided, the fruits of the so-called rules-based international order\u2026were rotten.\u201d The idea that avoiding world wars is some kind of fringe benefit of NATO membership is obviously absurd; it\u2019s the whole point. Equally specious is Vance\u2019s argument that the rules-based world order produced \u201cpointless wars of choice.\u201d What exactly would he call Trump\u2019s war on Iran?MAGA agitator Steve Bannon, for one, doesn\u2019t see Vance as a latter-day sage. Bannon tells me that around the time Vance was converting to Trumpism, he got a phone call from Rebekah Mercer, the GOP mega-donor: \u201cShe goes, \u2018Peter Thiel just thinks this guy\u2019s amazing. This guy\u2019s going to be the future.\u2019 And I\u2019m sitting there going, \u2018Wow. Given his statements that he hates Trump and he hates the white working class\u2019\u201d\u2014in Hillbilly Elegy, Vance argues that many of Appalachia\u2019s downtrodden have themselves to blame\u2014\u201c\u2018I don\u2019t get it. I think he\u2019s a chameleon and a lightweight.\u2019\u201dCan Vance win the nomination and the general election? It\u2019s an arduous trek. He must carry Trump\u2019s baggage: the president\u2019s inability to address, much less solve, the crises of affordability and inflation and health care and housing. In 2020, Vance wrote to a friend that Trump \u201chad thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism.\u201d That\u2019s still true today, partly as a result of Trump\u2019s helter-skelter inflationary tariffs and the broken promise of a manufacturing revival. Vance will also have to defuse two issues that drive swing voters mad: Jeffrey Epstein and Benjamin Netanyahu.Vance knows the Epstein scandal could be political kryptonite in 2028. \u201cThe people inordinately interested in Epstein,\u201d Wiles told me, \u201care the new members of the Trump coalition. It\u2019s the Joe Rogan listeners. It\u2019s the people that are sort of new to our world. It\u2019s not the MAGA base.\u201d These voters, in Wiles\u2019s view, are a high priority for Vance, \u201cwho\u2019s been a conspiracy theorist for a decade.\u201dIt\u2019s possible that Vance will get credit for being on the right side of the Epstein scandal. The New York Times has reported that the vice president led a July 2025 session in the Situation Room at which he argued for total transparency\u2014to make all the Epstein files public. Trump at first balked, declaring that demands for their release were illegitimate: \u201cIt\u2019s just a Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.\u201d Then, in late 2025, the president reversed course and signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act into law. Millions of documents were released. But in the end, many were redacted, millions of others were held back, and the DOJ has brought no new charges against alleged Epstein-connected perpetrators.Vance, then a Marine Corps public affairs specialist, visited the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor during Fleet Week 2005.Zack FrankWhen I ask Carlson about this, he says that in the summer of 2025, he personally pressed Trump to release all the Epstein-related documents\u2014to no avail: \u201cMy position from the beginning with Trump, I said it to Trump, was, \u2018I don\u2019t understand why you would ever keep any of this stuff secret.\u2019 And I got like a bunch of different answers.\u201d Carlson was unconvinced by the president\u2019s explanations for why the files had been withheld: \u201cI don\u2019t feel any need to cover for Epstein. So I said, \u2018You shouldn\u2019t either.\u2019 In the end, it came from Trump directly.\u201d\u201cWhat came from him directly?,\u201d I ask Carlson. He replies: \u201cThe order to cover it up came from Trump. I asked him why. And he gave me this long, very emotional explanation that this was all a plot against him, like Russiagate.\u201dWhen offered the chance to respond to Carlson\u2019s account, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis replies: \u201cJust as President Trump has said, he\u2019s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein. And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee\u2019s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein\u2019s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein\u2019s victims than anyone before him.\u201dFor Vance, the president\u2019s Iran war is a thornier challenge. Even though the MAGA base has largely supported Trump\u2019s conduct of the conflict, swing voters who\u2019d been angry about his coziness with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu are now livid. Vance must not only defend a war he initially opposed, one waged largely at Bibi\u2019s behest; he\u2019s been saddled with leading the negotiations to end it. And he\u2019ll take the blame as the conflict continues to rage with no diplomatic solution in sight.At the recent Republican conclave in Dallas, Vance tried to minimize the war as a GOP liability, arguing unconvincingly that those who oppose it (as, he suggested, Charlie Kirk would have done if he were alive) shouldn\u2019t \u201cthrow the baby out with the bath water.\u201d With no good answers for the conflict, Vance must worry about one of the most famous and outspoken critics of the war: Carlson.\u201cEverybody thinks this is going to be a Vance-Rubio race,\u201d says McKinnon. \u201cI think it\u2019s going to be a Vance-Rubio-Carlson race.\u201d Indeed, by virulently opposing Trump\u2019s decision to go to war, Carlson has seized the mantle of the MAGA \u201cAmerica First\u201d movement. And he could be a formidable opponent on a GOP primary debate stage. \u201cHe\u2019s just got a skill set that\u2019s pretty unparalleled,\u201d says McKinnon. \u201cHe would just do circles around Vance.\u201dWhile he\u2019s a strong debater, Vance has never been accused of having charisma. \u201cHe seems about as engaging as a fire hydrant, right?\u201d says Heilbrunn. I saw this firsthand when Vance and Carlson gave speeches at Trump\u2019s infamous 2024 rally at Madison Square Garden, where one speaker called Puerto Rico \u201ca floating island of garbage.\u201d That day, as the assembled faithful devoured every helping of red meat, Vance fell flat. Carlson, on the other hand, rocked the house.In Dallas, Vance tried to whip up the crowd by extolling the \u201cbirthright\u201d of Americans\u2013and upbraiding a heckler. He was boisterously received by the MAGA audience, which may have given his Republican rivals pause.And what if Vance, despite these headwinds, outflanks his potential challengers? The GOP nomination could well be a poisoned chalice. The Republican party, Carlson tells me, is a corrupt and dying creature. \u201cI don\u2019t think the Republican Party has much of a short-term future at all,\u201d he says. He pauses and then adds, laughing, \u201cIf I\u2019m out.\u201d\u201cWhat if you're in?\u201d I say. \u201cAre you considering running?\u201d\u201cNo, of course not. It\u2019s all so disgusting.\u201dI press him on the subject, but he isn\u2019t biting. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019d be a very good candidate,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m ideally positioned because I\u2019m not beholden to anyone and because I sincerely say exactly what I think. And those are exactly the reasons that I could never get elected to anything.\u201d Another reason, some analysts say, is that Carlson would rather be at his home in Maine, opining on his podcast, than waging a grueling national campaign.As for Rubio, Trump\u2019s secretary of state told me last year that if Vance runs for president, he\u2019ll be \u201cone of the first people to support him.\u201d Could Rubio change his mind? Party mandarins point out that he\u2019s the preferred candidate of the GOP\u2019s establishment and its big donors.Rubio is also the favored candidate of a large contingent of Republican friends of Israel. Many are alarmed by Vance\u2019s criticism of Netanyahu\u2019s political coalition. On Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast, the vice president accused \u201cpeople within the Israeli government\u201d of trying to derail US negotiations to end the Iran war. And some fault Vance for failing to denounce his pal Carlson for giving airtime on his show to Nick Fuentes, the antisemitic, far-right political commentator. A former Vance ally, the conservative pundit Rod Dreher, writes: \u201cI don\u2019t think there is a racist or antisemitic bone in Vance\u2019s body. But why has he been so reticent to take on the metastasizing cancer of Jew-hatred among the young, politically active right?\u201dDreher\u2019s criticism evidently struck a nerve. Vance\u2019s press secretary, Van Kirk, replies: \u201cThe Vice President has repeatedly and forcefully condemned antisemitism and has told Nick Fuentes and others who attack his family to \u2018eat shit.\u2019 He has also articulated that sometimes the priorities of the United States and Israel align, and sometimes they diverge, just as they do with every ally. The idea that the Vice President hasn\u2019t pushed back on antisemitism is pure fiction.\u201dHistory shows that as the sitting vice president, Vance is favored to become his party\u2019s nominee. (Trump is said to be leaning toward a Vance-Rubio ticket\u2014for now.) But some believe the Hillbilly from Yale is at a distinct disadvantage against his potential rivals.John Ellis of Substack\u2019s Political News Items predicts that the disruptive effects of AI will be a contentious issue in the 2028 campaign, and that Vance will be tarred by his association with AI\u2019s Silicon Valley creators. \u201cGuess which politician is most closely aligned with the AI Overlords? That would be Vice President JD Vance.\u201dMore dangerous, perhaps, is the threat posed by Trump himself. \u201cJD Vance is in the worst position he could be,\u201d says a White House correspondent who has written about Trump for more than a decade, \u201cbecause he\u2019s seen as the front-runner. Which means that at some point next year, Trump will destroy him. It\u2019s just inevitable. There\u2019s no way he can stand somebody else hogging his spotlight.\u201dThe president was supposedly impressed by how the VP has slimmed down and how he presented himself on his recent book tour. But mostly Trump\u2019s been making Vance\u2019s life miserable\u2014and not only by anointing him the public point man for an unwelcome war. Behind closed doors, the president has needled his VP; he\u2019s said to have cracked to some of his inner circle, \u201cYou stuck me with this guy, I\u2019m stuck with him.\u201d It\u2019s a modern version of the humiliation LBJ used to heap on his number two, Hubert Humphrey, who long threatened to break with Johnson over the way he was conducting the Vietnam War: \u201cNow Hubert, I want you to toe the line and when I reach my hand in my pocket, I want to feel your balls.\u201d Trump has been only slightly less subtle. He\u2019s reportedly ridiculed Vance for being a klutz, after he fumbled the Ohio State football team\u2019s championship trophy during a ceremony on the South Lawn.Perhaps Vance thinks he can somehow escape paying the price of the Faustian bargain he struck when he fell in with Trump; maybe he should have paid more attention to the fate of his predecessor, Mike Pence.Bannon believes the Trump-Vance dynamic will only get worse\u2014as the Senate, more frequently, treats the president like a lame duck and the conflict with Iran drags on: \u201cTrump is like the apex alpha male to the alpha males, right? He\u2019s like Charlemagne\u2014a savage. He demands action, not chitchat. It\u2019s obvious that intimidates JD.\u201d Adds a longtime White House observer: \u201cI just don\u2019t see how Vance shapeshifts out of this one. Because he also can\u2019t leave\u2014unlike Rubio and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. They could both leave the administration and hit the campaign trail.\u201d Politically speaking, Vance is joined at the hip with a president whose policies, according to pollsters, are unpopular\u2014if not anathema\u2014to a majority of American voters.Some insiders have raised the possibility that Vance will sit out the 2028 race. He\u2019s only 42. He could wait and run in a later election, when his odds might improve. A prominent GOP political hand from Ohio, who knows him well, says: \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s as ambitious as people think he is. In fact, I wonder whether he\u2019s going to run. I really do.\u201dFew of those who knew him at Yale are wondering. One law school friend told me that Vance is the same person he was in contracts class, when Amy Chua pegged the young man with a chip on his shoulder as someone destined for great things. He\u2019s still ambitious and strategic. \u201cMy instinct,\u201d this friend asserts, \u201cis that it\u2019s impossible that he won\u2019t run in 2028.\u201dThat said, there\u2019s another nagging question that looms over Vance\u2019s prospects. Will the president leave the stage? After being impeached for inciting an insurrection and, in the years since, continuing to push the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, why would anyone expect Trump to go quietly?As a frequent White House guest points out, these days special visitors to the Oval Office get a specially emblazoned hat: \u201cHe keeps them in the closet between the private dining room and the Oval. They don\u2019t say \u2018Trump-Vance.\u2019 They say \u2018Trump 2028.\u2019\u201dFrom Prince George to Princess Leonor: Where Young Royals Will Attend School This FallThe Pitt\u2019s Patrick Ball on Shipping, Stardom, and Season 3From Cowboys to Clean Girls: The State of American Style, in PicturesRead MoreSusie Wiles, JD Vance, and the \u201cJunkyard Dogs\u201d: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump\u2019s Second Term (Part 1 of 2)Throughout the first year of Donald Trump\u2019s second administration, Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple has interviewed Wiles amid each moment of crisis. This insider\u2019s account joins a portfolio of portraits for an unflinching, up-close look at power\u2014and peril.Susie Wiles Talks Epstein Files, Pete Hegseth\u2019s War Tactics, Retribution, and More (Part 2 of 2)Trump\u2019s chief reveals her thoughts on the first year, and on the team she\u2019s built with JD Vance, Karoline Leavitt, Marco Rubio, and 3 more key players. Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple reports.What Is Usha Vance Thinking?\u201cIt\u2019s patronizing to say that she\u2019s been silenced,\u201d one Yale Law classmate says of JD Vance\u2019s wife, who has perfected the art of knowing where she stands in the Trump administration\u2019s political pecking order. \u201cShe has chosen this.\u201dOn the Ground at TrumpapaloozaPresident Trump's party has gathered at his urging in Dallas, Texas, for an unprecedented midterm convention. The event is for Trump, about Trump, but the conflict that has come to define his second presidency is not to be named.Inside Karoline Leavitt\u2019s Wildly Pugilistic, Seriously Professional Press ShopIn public, White House press office staff are belligerent toward members of the media, hurling insults and invective. But in private? They\u2019re cordial, efficient\u2026even charming. Reporters fear what's next.Cruising With The Mooch in the HamptonsAnthony Scaramucci says he wants to own his bad bets, from Donald Trump to Sam Bankman-Fried. At his summer house\u2014and around town in his Lamborghini\u2014he makes his case to Vanity Fair for how to fix this country for the working class.Poor Dad Author Goes BustRobert Kiyosaki tells VF he\u2019s more than $1 billion in debt. Did he read his own book? Chris Cox visits the longtime best-selling author and friend of Trump at home in Arizona.Rocket Man: How Jeff Bezos\u2019s Space Race Against Elon Musk Made Him Cozy Up to TrumpIn an exclusive excerpt from Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era, Jacob Weisberg paints a revealing portrait of Bezos, from a science-fiction-loving schoolboy with dreams of being an astronaut to a billionaire hell-bent on getting what he wants.New York\u2019s First Muslim Mayor Navigates His First 9/11 AnniversaryAn online petition calling on Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from 9/11 ceremonies has lodged over 100,000 signatures. At a Staten Island event honoring fallen firefighters, tensions are expected to be particularly high.Michael Cohen Is Back to Calling Trump \u201cBoss\u201dAfter a long, vicious feud that ricocheted across the national press and a Manhattan courtroom, the president and his former fixer reunited this week on Cohen\u2019s radio show for an interview that immediately slipped into a cozy rapport of kindred spirits.The Dominick Dunne of \u201cthe Biggest Hip-Hop Trial Ever\u201dVanity Fair talks to Trap Lore Ross, the bespectacled British YouTuber who\u2019s made himself the foremost chronicler of a Los Angeles courtroom saga.The secretary of defense is not beloved within his castle\u2014or indeed out in the land. Yet those around him are talking about a White House bid. How? Why? 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