Bulwark Takes - JD Vance Humiliates Himself Trying to Define "Socialism"

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Tim Miller gives his take on JD Vance’s fumbling attempt to define socialism and the hypocrisy at the heart of MAGA’s attacks on Democrats. Asked why socialist candidates are gaining ground across the country, Vance pivots to immigration and transgender athletes instead of explaining what socialism actually means.But while Republicans warn that Democrats are bringing socialism to America, the Trump administration is expanding government control over the economy, intervening in private enterprise, and using the power of the state to target political enemies. Tim explains why the administration’s own policies undermine its anti-socialist rhetoric, how Vance’s answer exposes the weakness of MAGA’s midterm message, and why the word games are more than just a political joke.This episode is sponsored by The New York Times.

U.S. voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to vote fromabroad.org and click request my ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Vote fromabroad.org. Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark. The Vice President, J.D. Vance. was out today and he got asked an interesting question and you know smug jd can struggle a little bit if you get them kind of into college dorm room jd um we saw this a bunch uh when he was on the male podcast circuit in the 2024 campaign he talked about the childless cat ladies

the one thing that he's ever walked back that he said um because jd's pretty good if you let him prep you know you went to you went to an Ivy League law school like he knows and you know he's got the kind of talented mr. Ripley thing you know so if he knows that you're going to ask him about the controversy de jure he'll have kind of a smarmy response to it but if you can't ask him something a little bit off of the news of the day he starts to reveal the shallowness of his arguments and we saw that really clearly on Thursday when he was asked to define socialism. I want to watch it all together

because it's pretty funny. It takes everything that you hate about JD. It's kind of like off the cuff lying, condescension, you know, feeling very proud of himself. Like he was like, he really thought he was clever with this reply. And I think that it reveals a lot about the weakness of the mega worldview and the arguments they're making against the Democrats as we had to the midterms.

So let's take a look. How do you define socialism personally and why do you think socialist candidates are popping up everywhere across the country? Oh, man. You know, I guess it's honestly, it's a hard term to define these days because very often socialism, you know, classically you would think socialism is about prioritizing workers. And yet, in reality, I guarantee that most of the self-described socialist running across the United States of America are going to how about this announcement today, which is prioritizing American workers over foreign workers. So I don't know what the term means anymore. I think in reality, what it actually means in the American context is that you want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls' sports. That's what unites the socialist that I see running across the United States of America today.

that is so funny for the start is just really not that hard to define socialism you can just define it like pretty pretty simply as you know government control of industries it's not really that complex you don't have to do the whole you have jd like well I'm going to try to sound like really smart right now and be very kind of sitting it's like you can just give the simple answer to the

question but he isn't capable of doing it in part because they're doing a ton of socialism in this administration, which we're going to talk about here in a second. But I want to talk about his definition and really dissect that first. You get the JD tell, the tell for almost anybody, by the way, in politics, when they use the word honestly. If they're about to answer a question, they're hemming and hoeing and they say, honestly, they're about to lie to you. It's just a good tell. It's a good little tick for you to look for. So JD starts with, oh, man, you know, I guess.

Yes, honestly, it's a hard term to define these days. And again, not that hard to define. And then he goes on and creates a kind of weird construct for what socialism is, which is prioritizing workers, which I guess is like kind of part of it. But then talks about there like there's this imaginary other straw man socialist over here that doesn't like American workers. don't unclear who he's talking about. He doesn't like offer that.

And then as he is kind of like drowning and, you know, kind of doggy paddling to try to survive this answer, he comes up with like, okay, well, what are some negative stereotypes? I can talk about the people that I smear as socialist, the left wingers.

And it's like, well, going back to the only two issues that they can talk about, immigration and trans. So he's like, it's like my definition. The definition of social. of an American now is you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want

boys to play in girls' sports. Neither of those things are prime priorities for, say, Zoron, or whoever, Angie Nixon who I interviewed earlier this week, you could listen to her herself on the podcast. If you wanted to be, you know, a little cheeky about the current DSA crop and say that, like, their version of socialism is different from traditional socialism or textbook socialism, European socialism. And their version of socialism would be basically like socialized healthcare and ending American support for Israel. Okay. Like that would at least, that's kind of what they talk about, like the DSA candidates.

But JD doesn't want to do that because those are popular positions. And that's why the DSA candidates talk about them. And so he puts up a straw man. It doesn't, it's not even like a plot. or like realistic version of what the DSA candidates talk about. I mean, you know, we had Angie on on Wednesday and she was mostly talking about healthcare and corruption. That was the big issue she was talking about.

So, I think that's what the DSA candidates talk about here. We have an advertisement from the New York Times. Now, there's a story in today's New York Times that involves a U.S. ambassador. Times found that David Milstein, a senior advisor to U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee, was skewing information to portray the, Netanyahu government in a favorable light before it reached officials in Washington, D.C. Time spoke with more than a dozen U.S. officials and reviewed internal cables and other documents to report that story.

That's exactly why fact-based reporting matters. I personally can have an opinion about what happened, and we can debate what it means, but somebody has to go and actually report it out first. They have to talk to the people involved. They have to review the documents, and they have to put together the facts that the rest of us can then argue about. For me, the New York Times is one of the places I turn to for that kind of reporting. You may have your own sources that you trust, whether it's the Times, the Wall Street Journal, heck, we at the Bullwark do reporting as well. You can go to your local paper or a reporter just

knows the beat. But this show, and really all commentary on current events, it depends on somebody doing original reporting first. That story is just one example of the result of fact-based reporting, and now you get to decide what to think. So wherever you seek it out, nationally, locally, support fact-based reporting. To the broader question about socialism, and one of the things I've been really trying to repeat over and over again, because I think that it's important, is the fact that, like, this administration just uses criticisms of socialism and communism as, like, a brand that they don't like. You know, like they criticize them in the same way that, like, if you were a big Coke, drinker you would criticize Pepsi or whatever.

There's no substance to the critique at all. Like, in fact, these guys love communism and socialism. Trump itself has like said, I mean, well, A, for starters, Trump, like, loves the other communists. Loves Chairman Xi, totally sucked up to him, wanted him

to be his bestie. He loves Kim Jong-un. He's a huge fan of the actual communists out there. And the one time he's, like, I think, kind of was in a mission against interest, said that he would be a great communist. Let's watch that. Communism's easy to sell. I would be the greatest communist in history. I'd be right up there with Lenin. I'd be as good as anybody. Yeah, I would be the greatest communist in history.

And you're basically there. You're kind of there. And what Trump is doing is he's created this hybrid version that he feels like is palatable in America, which is like corporate cut Votocracy mixed with national socialism. And that's what he is. He's a national socialist corporatist, basically. He wants all of the rich guys to have no rules on them, be able to make as much money as they want, get favors from the government, as long as they are loyal to him. He's a nationalist.

And he totally is happy to use the tools of the national socialist when necessary when it comes to the determining. camps and the gulags. We had those here. It comes to the masked agents in the street. It comes to targeting political foes for jailing. Before I started taping this, that DOJ is now looking into Cassidy Hutchison, whose only crime is telling the truth about Donald Trump. So using the power of the DOJ to go after enemies, the camps, then just from an actual like traditional definition of socialism standpoint, Donald Trump has bought stakes in many companies. We have government-run gas stations, you know, price controls he's in favor of, direct payments to people to try to bribe them. He's doing that.

Heavy state direction of trade and industry. This is it. Like Trump is like across the board, whether it be the way, you know, the DOJ targets foes or the way that we put people into prison camps without due process. We purchase stakes in companies. We bully private enterprise, state-run control of the economy. Like, this is national socialism. It's what Donald Trump is doing. And that's what JD-D. Danes is for.

And by the way, if J.D. Vance was to become president in 29, he would accelerate it on all those things. Like, J.D. Vance, I think there should be more state-run control of the economy. Donald Trump just doesn't like the negative attention about the immigration stuff. Like, he wants to do it, but he gets a little queasy sometimes from negative attention. I don't think J.D. cares about that at all. He's socialistic. I think that the DOJ attacking foes. J.D. is fully on board for that.

All of the socialist elements of this administration, like J.D. is four. And so when the question comes, how do you define socialism, which if you're running against socialism, you assume you'd have to have a critique of socialism. J.D. doesn't actually have any critiques of socialism because the administration is socialist and all the traditional definitional ways. So JD's critique of socialism, quote unquote socialism, he has to play these white word games. And he has to create a new definition of socialism that he doesn't like, which is immigration and trans kids playing girls lacrosse. So those are things he doesn't like.

He actually likes socialism just fine. But that's inconvenient for their political message in the midterms, which is, ooh, scary Democrats are bringing socialism. So it's hard to do, ooh, scary Democrats are bringing socialism when you acknowledge that you're doing socialism. So that's, you know, it's a Yale. It's a Yale move. It's kind of looks like the cups and the ball. Like it's a little word game that J.D. Vance is trying to do. And it's funny at some level.

It's good to mock at. I mean, it's ridiculous. But I do think that also, like from a substantive standpoint, it's something that's pretty alarming, like the degree to which they're doing this Orwellian thing where they're increasingly taking state control of the economy, and of the legal system while also trying to demonize their foes as being the socialist ones.

So we're going to keep talking about that here so people understand the truth of what's happening with this administration. We'd appreciate it. We'd had your support. You can subscribe to the feed. If you want to become a Borg Plus member, we have a surprise discount this month.

Go to the Borg.com slash surprise. Come join us, come hang out. And you're just supporting us, making sure we get this message out. So we appreciate you all very much. See you soon.