Vice President JD Vance took issue with being called an intellectual at a black-tie event in Washington, D.C.(Image: AP)Vice President JD Vance called an interviewer an “asshole” at a black-tie event in Washington, D.C. Tuesday night when the interviewer referred to him as an intellectual.
The event was hosted by conservative think tank American Compass, whose founder, Oren Cass, spoke with the vice president on stage. After welcoming Vance, Cass pointed to his time before the White House as a writer for National Review and an intellectual “in the good sense of the term.”
“I come here and you insult me,” Vance replied in jest. “And you call me ‘an intellectual,’ remind me that I wrote for the National Review. What an asshole this guy is!”
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Both JD Vance and interviewer Oren Cass had previously written for National Review, a conservative magazine often critical of the Trump administration.(Image: AP)The audience clapped, and Cass responded, “That’s fair. I will admit that I, too, wrote for National Review.”
National Review describes itself as a magazine of conservative opinion, though many of its stories are openly critical of Trump and his allies.
Vance himself was a fierce critic of Trump in 2016 during his first run for president. He called the then presidential candidate an “idiot” and said he was “reprehensible.” In a private-made-public text exchange with Vance’s former college roommate and Georgia politician Josh McLaurin, Vance even compared him to Adolf Hitler.
However, only a few years on, Vance secured Trump’s endorsement for Senate and then as his presidential running mate. Vance’s critics regard the reversal of his published views as a ploy to ascend political ranks in Republican politics.
“The public deserves to know the magnitude of this guy’s bad faith,” McLaurin wrote in the post on X in April 2022.
JD Vance compared Trump to Adolf Hitler in a private text message to his former college roommate in 2016.(Image: AP)At the American Compass gathering on Tuesday, before host Cass highlighted Vance’s connection to the magazine critical of Trump, he described him as someone who was an intellectual before becoming a politician.
Long before the Trump administration, Republicans have disparaged scientists, college professors and the value of higher education itself. In 1961, William F. Buckley, longstanding editor of National Review, was quoted in Esquire magazine as saying he would “rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory… than by the Harvard University faculty.” Ironically, Buckley based much of his public image on his degree from Yale University.
Cass, who seemed to quickly understand the faux pas of referring to a fellow Republican as an intellectual, notes in his own biography page on the American Compass website his work with The New York Times and his degree from Harvard Law School.