Shillbilly Elegy: How JD Vance Became a Winning Spokesman for MAGA's Darkest Machinations
Inside the Hive
Vanity Fair
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
JD Vance emerged as a media darling with “Hillbilly Elegy,” his best-selling 2016 memoir of growing up poor in Ohio, but it's just one of several hats he's worn—Yale-trained lawyer, Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Never Trump pundit, Pro-Trump senator, and Vice President of the United States—all by the age of 40. On this episode, host and Vanity Fair editor Radhika Jones is joined by executive editor Claire Howorth and Hive editor Michael Calderone to trace Vance’s populist ride through America’s power centers and how his right-wing ideology dovetails with a burgeoning constitutional crisis. They also explore how Vance is shaping up as Trump’s Veep—and whether he has the political chops to one day land the top job.
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| 0:00.0 | Claire, Michael, the time has come for us to select a headline for today's episode. |
| 0:06.0 | I will say that I found myself stumped on this one. |
| 0:10.4 | Who's got something ready? |
| 0:12.1 | One phrase that came up a couple of times in this conversation, |
| 0:14.8 | which immediately struck me as a possibility, is right-hand man. |
| 0:18.4 | J.D. Vance is Donald Trump's armed-twesting intellectual MAGA air. |
| 0:23.3 | Strong contender. Claire, where's your head? |
| 0:27.0 | Okay. Showbilly elegy. How shit poster and statesman J.D. Vance became a winning spokesman for Maga's darkest machinations. |
| 0:37.3 | That is very complete, very thorough. |
| 0:42.2 | Needs no further explanation. |
| 0:44.5 | And has, I think, the requisite amount of profanity, which is our new, our two-week-long |
| 0:48.9 | tradition, carried inside the hive. |
| 0:50.8 | Let's go with Claire for this week. |
| 0:53.1 | And I think shillbilly, Ellogy, will let everyone know exactly who and what we're talking about. |
| 1:04.0 | Welcome to Inside the Hive from Vanity Fair, podcast about power and the people who love it. |
| 1:09.6 | I'm Radica Jones, the editor of Vanity Fair, |
| 1:12.1 | and I'm joined by executive editor Claire Haworth. Hi, Radica. And Hive editor, Michael Calderon. |
| 1:17.5 | Hey, Radica. Today, we want to talk about a person who has risen rapidly in American culture and |
| 1:24.0 | politics, worked his way through a number of elite power centers. He grew up |
| 1:29.3 | in poverty in Ohio, worked his way into Yale Law School, then made headway in Silicon Valley |
| 1:35.4 | before publishing a best-selling memoir called Hillbilly Elegy, which was made into a movie by |
| 1:40.9 | Ron Howard. And now, after a brief term in the Senate, he is vice president of the |
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