What Vance Won't Take Back

The Dumbest Thing

Mara: "It's okay to admit error." That's how a passage begins that CNN's Kasie Hunt read aloud on air in June, a passage she introduced as coming from JD Vance's new book. In it, he names what he calls "one of the dumbest things I ever said."

Eli: The cat ladies line.

Mara: That's the one. His line about childless cat ladies. And the man now calling that dumb is the vice president of the United States. What he's taken back, and what he hasn't, is the best clue to which Vance might run for president in 2028.

Eli: Not long ago he wasn't calling it dumb. August 2024, on his campaign plane. His mother is sitting across the aisle. A TIME reporter brings up the uproar, and Vance calls it a ridiculous thing to focus on.

Mara: And the interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro says that when she raised it with him before the election, he defended it. Her words: "He doubled down on it."

Eli: So from a ridiculous thing to focus on, to one of the dumbest things he ever said. That's a longer trip than Michigan to Tennessee.

Mara: It's Thursday, September 24th, and today's angle is what JD Vance still defends, which is the clearest sketch of the president he might try to become. So which JD Vance would run? We'll follow the times he's changed course or said he was wrong, and then the things he's chosen to defend instead.

Eli: Start where he did. Middletown, Ohio. His White House biography describes financial struggles and family instability: a mother battling addiction, a father who was absent, and grandparents who filled that void.

Mara: His grandmother above all. Mamaw. At a rally back in Middletown he told a story about her taking in a girl fleeing abuse at home. "When that little girl ran away from home and tried to find a safe space, she asked, 'Where can I go?' And everybody said, 'You can go to Bonnie Vance's house.'" And then: "that is the Middletown that I knew."

Eli: After high school, four years in the Marines, including a tour in Iraq. Ohio State on the GI Bill, then Yale Law School. Two years as Ohio's senator, and vice president since January 2025.

Nixon or Worse

Mara: Which brings us to Donald Trump. In 2016, Vance called himself a Never-Trump guy.

Eli: That's the public version. The private one is sharper. TIME reported a text he sent that year to a former Yale roommate. He says he goes "back and forth." Option one: Trump is a cynical, and there's a word here we'll skip, "like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful)." Option two: "he's America's Hitler."

Mara: Those are the two poles. A useful Nixon, or Hitler.

Eli: Not a lot of middle ground in that text message.

Mara: He's owned it since. Later he called it "one of the most poorly kept secrets in this race that I was a critic of Trump in 2016."

Eli: So how does he explain the turn? He says that by 2018 or 2019 he had come to blame the political and media culture, more than Trump, for the divisiveness. And then this: "The point that I got to was if Donald Trump didn't talk like this, and if Donald Trump wasn't going directly at the institutions, then he wouldn't be able to get anything done."

Mara: So in his telling, the way Trump talked was part of how anything got done.

Eli: And on results, he says, "In government, I thought Trump did a good job." He points to issues he cared about: "our manufacturing relationship with China and just our long-term stagnation of the middle class in this country."

Mara: That's a real argument. You can disagree with it, but it's about policy, not just the man.

Printouts on the Desk

Eli: Which makes the next scene so striking. February 2021. The two of them meet for the first time, at Mar-a-Lago.

Mara: The man who texted "America's Hitler" is about to walk into the room.

Eli: Into Trump's private office. And according to TIME, citing a source familiar with the meeting, there are printouts on the desk. Vance's past salvos against Trump.

Mara: Printed out.

Eli: And TIME reports Trump opens with: "You said some nasty," and then a word we'll bleep ourselves, "about me."

Mara: That is quite an icebreaker.

Eli: And TIME reports that Vance apologized.

Mara: So the critic says sorry, face to face, in TIME's account.

Eli: What Vance says in public is that people read too much into the change. In a 2024 interview: "But there's not some, like, major change. It's just that they're seeing, sometimes they're forced to see the non caricature version of me."

Mara: The non caricature version. We just finally saw him clearly.

Eli: Hard to square with an apology over a stack of printouts.

Mara: Or maybe that's exactly how he'd square it. The critic was the caricature.

Arms Crossed in Munich

Mara: Now the other kind of moment. Not a correction, an argument. February 14, 2025, a few weeks into his vice presidency. Munich, at Germany's annual security conference.

Eli: At one point he joked, "I hope that's not the last bit of applause that I get."

Mara: Then came the line that landed. "The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America."

Eli: At a security conference. Telling the room the threat he worries about most is Europe's own retreat.

Mara: A volume published about the conference describes Germany's defense minister, Boris Pistorius, sitting in the second row during the speech. Arms crossed.

Eli: He also told Europe to carry more of its own defense.

Mara: And a few days later, Trump said of it, "I thought he made a very good speech, actually a very brilliant speech."

The Longer List

Eli: The second list keeps going. In 2024 he proposed deporting around a million people a year. And on the 2020 election: "I've said that I would have voted against certification."

Mara: He's argued for broad presidential power, too. He wrote that judges aren't allowed to control the executive's "legitimate power."

Eli: He followed his own argument to where it led.

Mara: And as vice president, twice he's cast the deciding vote: to confirm Pete Hegseth, and to pass the big budget bill, H.R. 1. Both times, 51 to 50.

Eli: Then this September, at a White House briefing, on the standoff with Iran: "I wouldn't call it a war," before acknowledging there "have been places where this has flared up."

Mara: And on prices at the pump: "Gas, frankly, could have been much, much higher were it not for our efforts." That's his claim. Roll Call reports energy prices rose after the strikes in Iran.

Eli: So he's defending the policy, and choosing the words for it.

Eli: So what's driving him? Take the friendliest witness first. At that Middletown rally, Vance told the crowd about his high school math teacher, Ron Selby, who, as Vance tells it, thwarted a student who called in a bomb threat to get out of an exam. Selby was sitting in the audience. Afterward he said: "He was mature beyond his years when he was in high school – still is now. He's 39 going on 60."

Mara: And there's a decision that fits that. In 2018 Vance passed on a Senate run. "We had just had a baby, my wife had just started a tough job," he said, and they were moving from Columbus to Cincinnati. His rule: "to do it the right way you really have to have your family in the right place."

Eli: The other reading is blunter. Sarah Longwell: "I wouldn't say that I think he's got a core that's driven by something other than the pursuit of power."

Mara: And David Frum, who knew Vance early in his political career, told NPR in 2024 that the limits politicians set for themselves are telling. Vance had drawn his in advance, at Trump. "I think he walked across it."

Eli: The printouts push me toward Frum.

Mara: And 2018 pulls me the other way. Someone chasing nothing but power sits out a Senate race over a new baby and a move? That's at least a point for Selby.

Eli: Fair. And nothing says both can't be true.

Mara: Whatever the motive, the mission is on the record. TIME asked whether Trumpism would outlast Trump. "I'm going to try to make sure that happens."

Eli: And he's well placed. Roll Call reports he's above 40 percent in recent Republican primary surveys, with Marco Rubio around 20.

Mara: The general election looks tighter. One Emerson College poll of 1,000 likely voters in mid-August had him at 45 to Kamala Harris's 49, and 44 to Gavin Newsom's 49. That's one poll, more than two years out.

Eli: And ask him straight out? At that September briefing, he laughed: "That's an innovative way to ask the question — but I'm still not going to take the bait."

Too Big for His Britches

Mara: So think again about the man who wrote about admitting error. What he's called dumb is a line about cat ladies. His view of Trump changed, and TIME reports he apologized to Trump in person. Tone, and one man. Deportation, certification, presidential power, Europe: those sit on the other list, the one he's argued for.

Eli: And the next conversation has a date around it. The midterms are November third. After that, he says, "Usha and I will absolutely sit down and talk about what comes next for our family." He says he hasn't decided. Until then: "I really don't ever want my thought about a future job, whether it's president or anything else, to make me a worse vice president."

Mara: "I don't plot things out," he said in June. "I make the decisions that are right in front of me."

Eli: Same test as 2018. Family in the right place.

Mara: Most of us have watched someone reinvent themselves and wondered whether it was growth or tactics. With Vance, the list of apologies is short, and the list he's defended is long. That second list is what a 2028 race would be fought over.

Eli: And when he's imagined what Mamaw would tell him, he says she'd probably encourage him "not to get too big for my britches and not to let all the attention, positive and negative, go to my head, and to remember that most important is that I'm a husband and a father."

Mara: There's plenty more to understand about JD Vance and the race for the White House in 2028, so keep an eye on both.

Eli: And stay with Donald Trump too. We have more episodes on him, and you'll be ready when the next turn comes.

Mara: That's our story for today. I'm Mara.

Eli: And I'm Eli. Thanks for listening to Angle, and until next time.