Offline with Jon Favreau - JD Vance, Project 2025, and How the Right Got Weird

Episode Date: August 4, 2024

All of a sudden, nearly every Democrat in the country has started calling out Republicans for being really damn weird. And with JD Vance’s pronatalist views and Trump’s insistence that Kamala Harris isn’t actually Black, the GOP isn’t beating the allegations. When did Republican rhetoric go from fear-inducing, to groan-inducing? Jon is joined by Laura K. Field, a researcher and political theorist who recently published a piece in POLITICO on the topic, and who is writing a book about the evolution of the Republican party. She breaks down why GOP weirdness is tied to the emergence of the “New Right,” how JD Vance exemplifies this moment, and how to prevent the movement from capturing more power in American politics. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

She's their worst nightmare. She's probably worse than Hillary, though they might not have the kind of instinctive animus that they did for her. But I also think it's their worst nightmare in terms of the people in the new right who are smart probably rein that in. And they probably need to if they want to win. The funny thing about Kamala is she's not miserable. She's a very happy person. She's not a miserable cat lady. Which they also hate, yeah. They hate it. And they cannot sort of wrap their heads around women having power. So it's very tricky for them. I think they're in a real bind.

I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone. You just heard from today's guest, writer and political theorist, Laura Field. So you may have noticed something new about the 2024 campaign recently, and I'm not talking about the Democratic nominee. Over the last few weeks, lots of Democrats, from Kamala Harris down to the shit posters, have started calling Republicans out for being really fucking weird. And let's be honest, the party is not beating the allegations.

From J.D. Vance's war on childless cat ladies, to Libs of TikTok's obsession with trans kids, to Trump's insistence that Kamala Harris actually isn't black, the Republican Party's priorities have felt increasingly out of line with the views of the vast majority of Americans. But when did they get this weird and extreme? Where did all these ideas come from? Laura Field is a researcher and political theorist who has spent her career studying reactionary conservatism and the, quote, new right. She recently published a piece in Politico titled, J.D. Vance Has a Bunch of Weird Views on Gender.

And she's working on a new book about the evolution of the Republican Party titled, Untethered, New Right Intellectualism and the Future of American conservatism. I invited her on to talk about how GOP weirdness can be explained by the emergence of the new right, how J.D. Vance exemplifies this moment, and why Democrats calling out these views may be the most effective ways of preventing this movement from capturing more power in American politics. As a heads up, we're getting straight into the interview this week. Laura and I had lots to talk about. J.D. Vance, Project 2025, Donald Trump, all kinds of stuff. Here's Laura Field. Laura Field, welcome to Offline. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So you wrote a piece in Politico magazine last week that caught my eye about J.D. Vance, his pretty out there views on gender, and the intellectual wing of the MAGA movement known as the New Right, which you're currently writing a book about. And I wanted to talk to you about this because there's been a lot of focus on Vance's childless cat lady comments, his views on abortion, and him just being weird. But I think it's important for people to understand that there is a political philosophy behind all of this, a pretty extreme political philosophy that will likely be with us long after Trump leaves the scene and probably started even a little before he entered the scene. But just to start, what led you to become something of an expert on the new right? Well, it's a good question.

I studied political philosophy as an undergraduate, and then I did an MA in it, and I kind of got caught up in a certain corner of the conservative intellectual world. So I did a PhD in political philosophy and I've never been a conservative, but I've sort of some of the first people to get on board with Trumpism and to try to sort of build out this intellectual architecture for Trump. That was sort of shocking to me because they weren't good friends of mine or anything, but they were sort of in very close worlds to my world. And so I was shocked by that and I got interested in learning more. And then I just started writing about it because I sort of understood where they were coming from. I've learned a lot about the conservative intellectual tradition since then. You know, I wasn't really an expert in conservative

history. I was pretty into the great books, you know, like my dissertation was on Rousseau and Nietzsche. So this was not my main area of interest, but then I kind of got caught up in political events myself and decided I wanted to write about it because I think I do have a particular perspective on this, having been sort of adjacent to those worlds for so long. Well, maybe that's a good place to start is the people that you knew in conservative intellectual circles, what was sort of the philosophical transformation from what they had previously believed to trying to sort of retcon that to what Donald Trump believed, or at least manifesting itself in support of Donald Trump? So I think that there are all these different

little worlds, right, that we're talking about. And so the particular one that I came from is sort of one corner of one part of it. And they are not sort of, they're sort of, I'd say they're conservatives and more like the old fusionist conservatism, right, where they believe in liberal economics. They're socially conservative, but still sort of have an internationalist bent. So that's sort of the old conservatism that I would be familiar with. Some of these other pockets, like the West Coast Straussians and some of the people who got behind Trump earliest, I think they have always had sort of a radical streak where they're really, they believe in sort of the American founding in a very sort of dogmatic way. They sort of think that this compromise fusionism that we see, sort of the old establishment conservatism, was always kind of

a half-baked compromise. It doesn't make much sense and was not truly conservative. So they have a much more reactionary streak in what they believe. They're sort of reaching back into these older traditions that we could call the old right, which is much more isolationist, is much more committed to economic nationalism, right? And is anti-immigration, but is still socially conservative. So they've got this sort of, this is an old tradition that's sort of, that we could call it the old right that we sometimes talk about is this sort of early part of the 20th century conservatism. That's been a force in American conservatism all through the 20th century. And you can sort of see it flare up again and again. In the 90s,

there was quite a bit of this. And then there's this group called the paleo-conservatives. And so you see it sort of, these sort of weird forces burgeoning up throughout history. And then, but these guys have sort of always been connected to some of that. And so Trump, they saw as a real opportunity to bring some of this back to a much sort of more old fashioned kind of conservatism. And I think really the social conservatism is the kind of the most important thing for them. It's this effort to really sort of restore America to what they understood it to be in the 50s or even earlier. Yeah, I'm so interested in it because I do think, you know, if you ask a lot of political liberals or Democrats sort of to explain Trump in 2016 is, okay, well, there's a lot of people who they, you know, that they're okay with or believe in his sort of racism and misogyny. And, you know, it's about him trying to make people afraid of others, people who don't look

like them or come from where they do. And it's as simple as that. And is there really a philosophy behind it? And I think that your writing suggests that there is more of an actual political belief behind it, which is, you know, Republicans all through my lifetime have been, like you said, free market conservatives, very into tax cuts, deregulation, internationalist, a muscular internationalism, and then, of course, the social conservatism, but perhaps not quite as extreme as the new right. And, you know, up until Donald Trump, pretty willing to be more open on immigration and immigration reform, even though they were, you know, cared a lot about securing borders. How would you describe sort of like the philosophy of the new right as it exists today?

So I'm just going to start by saying a little bit about how the establishment understood conservatism, which is to say since Reagan, you have a fusionist vision where there's liberal economics, social conservatism, and liberal internationalism sort of all fused together. And anti-communism is a big part of that, right? And the new right sort of has rejected that compromise. They reject the liberal economics, sort of the globalist economics, and they want nationalist economics. And so that's, you saw that with Trump with the trade wars. They want closed borders, right? They talk about secure, you know, secure anti-immigration position. And then they talk about like an American first foreign policy, right? So that's kind of more isolationist, maybe more skeptical about America's role in the world.

And then, but they really have gone very hard on the social conservatism. And I think overall, what we see here is an effort to really preserve a homogenous America, right? A one nation nationalist perspective. And so that's what they're really seeking is they're rejecting liberalism, right? And partly they're doing this because they are anti-progressive, anti-liberal. They hate a lot of the changes that have happened over the last couple decades, especially. But they think things have gotten so bad right now, and this is where we get some of the real radicalism coming in, that they reject sort of the basic liberal democratic order. And so some of the most radical people on the new right, they think things have gotten so extreme that anything goes, right?

This is where you get sort of the rhetoric around January 6th and stuff, that you really have to take extreme measures to try to turn back the clock. Can you talk a little bit about Michael Anton and the Flight 93 election for people who aren't familiar with that? Because I do think he, in that essay and since then, has really sort of summed up the worldview. Michael Anton is a complicated guy with a very interesting background, but he wrote this essay called The Flight 93 Election in 2016, and he had been defending Trump already online for months, right? He was really early on the sort of the Trump bandwagon. And I think he saw that Trump represented something really interesting and offensive essay, I think, called the Flight 93 election, where the premise of it was that if Hillary Clinton were to win, it would be the end of America. It would sort of be like the final nail in the coffin. The analogy is to the Flight 93 from 9-11, right? Right. And basically the the idea was that the the democrats are the

the terrorists in the cockpit yeah the democrats are the terrorists if you fly if if you vote for hillary you're gonna crash the plane um and so it was kind of all hands on deck to stop that from happening um and electing trump is like being the hero that takes down the plane. So pretty offensive, right, comparing Democrats to terrorists. But that's how this guy thinks, right? He talks about if Hillary Clinton wins, it's like playing Russian roulette with a semi-automatic weapon, right? I mean, it's really sort of violent imagery. And the essay was aimed especially at the establishment Republicans. It was a real kind of grievance-mongering piece about how much the establishment conservatism had conceded to the left and how basically conservatism hadn't won anything. Conservatism

had sort of been rolling over for liberals for for you know 40 years and so that was it was really time to just take back control close the borders really offensive stuff in there about about muslims and i mean just any everything you can imagine and so this essay got published in the claremont review of books which is it was a pretty mainstream um publication put out by the claremont institute so it's pretty shocking to a lot of people that they published that um and then it got read on the rush limbaugh show in early september 2016 and sort of went viral after that i'm not saying it had any impact on the election but it was sort of the first real sense that there was, oh, there is some intellectual heft. I mean, it's tricky, right? Because Anton is not like a brilliant genius. Some other people in the new right who have since come along and joined the

movement are, I think, much more respectable than Anton. Well, no, I think it's important that the way that you're talking about this and write about this because, you know, you look at Trump and Trumpism and a lot of people say, understandably, cult of personality, there is no ideology behind Trump and it's just sort of, you know, random racism and xenophobia and it's all about Trump. But it does seem like this economic, close the borders uh stop trade isolationist and then extreme cultural conservatism which in and we can talk about it but from some of these uh new right thinkers is like going back to an explicit hierarchy of race ethnicity and gender um in this country and that country that goes further than just, you know, your old school social conservatives

and what they believed about that. It seems more explicit. Yeah, it's much more explicit. And I think that's right. And I think what I would want to say to your audience, because I do, I mean, my good friends are liberals, but there's a general misunderstanding, I think, of the intellectual strength of some of this and the some of them are certainly sort of red pilled or whatever um but but a lot of these guys are um ideologues right it's not um this is not about the grift right it's not necessarily about sort of making

money or getting famous though i'm sure that there are mixed motives obviously for all these different people but these are people a lot of whom are really self-convinced that there is a crisis, right, in this country, that progressivism is terrible for everybody, including, you know, everybody who calls himself a progressive or a liberal. And so they think they're sort of saving the world. They're on sort of a world historical mission. There's a real, and it's intellectual, right? It's sort of galaxy brain or it's, you know, you can call it a lot of different things and it's been described in a lot of different ways. But these are people who, the people I write about are sort of like great books pilled almost, you know, like they are just, they think they're sort of Roman heroes, right, who are going to replicate these great moments in history and have a new founding era.

And they're obsessive about this kind of thing. And different factions are attracted to different historical figures. And it's not all silly. Like, it's easy to laugh about it, right? But a lot of this stuff, I think that it stems from problems we have in our culture, right? Failures we've, that liberalism does have some failures. It is a complicated thing. And so a lot of what they say sounds ridiculous, and we can talk about how this happened to them, but a lot of it's sort of serious, or at least their diagnostics are interesting and useful,

right? They're seeing real problems. They're responding to problems they're seeing around them. And so half of it's sort of crazy, silly online stuff or like ivory tower stuff or just like a problem of insularity. But I think a lot of it is a lot more serious than people are willing to recognize. I mean, I've had the suspicion for a while because it is very easy and has been throughout the Trump years to say, well, they're doing it all for the tax cuts because they all like tax cuts. And certainly a lot of Republican politicians do like that as well as their donors and some of the people that they represent. And then it's, well, they're doing it because they like, they want to just stay in office, or they want to keep their jobs, or they want to have more power. They just like Trump. They're trying to defend Trump. They're

too afraid not to defend Trump. And again, like you said, motivations are complex. And I think for a lot of different Republican politicians, those are in fact the motivations. But there are clearly people who have been radicalized. We know that people are radicalized. And some of those people who have been radicalized are currently at the upper echelons of our government, which brings us to J.D. Vance. And I've always thought about my suspicion about him because everyone's like, you know, a lot of people are like, J.D. Vance is full of shit. He used to be this never Trumper. And, you know, now he's just doing it because he wants to get ahead. But I sense from J.D. Vance's interviews, his comments that maybe he has been radicalized. Maybe he wasn't always like this, but he has been radicalized. And I wonder what

you think about that. And if you could just talk about some of the ways that Vance is connected to the new right, both through some of the people he's close to and then some of the ideas that he espouses. Sure. That's my impression too, is that he's been radicalized and maybe he has always been very open to this kind of thinking. But my sense is that around the time when his book came out, The Hillbilly Elegy, sort of other books were coming out or some of these people were rising in prominence on the new, what we're calling the new right, which for audience members is just sort of the intellectual wing of Trumpism. And we won't go into all the history of why it's old and new, right? But presumably he started seeing these writers, seeing these books like Patrick Deneen's book, Why Liberalism Failed in 2018. I think he probably was attracted to a lot of that. Maybe he studied some of this when he was

in law school and stuff too, right? And sort of was always a little bit radicalized. And he knew Peter Thiel from early on, right? Or from around when his book came out. And so he's been close with some of the people on the new right from 2016 on, but he didn't support Trump originally, and then he eventually came around. And so I think that while this sort of new right movement was emerging and developing, he was presumably also becoming persuaded by some of these arguments. And he talks about by 2019, there's a speech where he talks about being converted to Trumpism. And so I think that's also the time when he converted to Catholicism.

And one faction of the new right is sort of this Catholic faction, the post-liberals, that he seems to be the closest to. So he's, we could go through sort of all of the different, maybe, I mean, I could say a little bit about some of the different groups and his connections to those, if that would be useful. I mean, I think that for Vance, the group he's closest to is this group called the post-liberals. Sometimes people speak about them as interchangeable with the integralists, neo-integralist movement, which is a very radical group of Catholics. I don't know that Vance sees himself as an integralist, but he does identify with the new right generally and with post-liberalism, which is sort of this elite, most serious group, I'd say, of the new right, because they're the most intellectually serious.

And what do they believe? What's the post-liberals? The post-liberals sort of, they're really wanting to go to a like pre-liberal in old-fashioned way, like almost medieval. They oppose the Catholic compromise with liberal democracy in France is where some of the origins of this stuff comes from. And so they want a reintegration of church and state. Okay, if we're thinking about integralism, they think that all of government should be organized towards spiritual ends, ultimately. And so the separation of church and state is something that they opposed. I mean, the true integralists are theocrats, but a lot of it's much more kind of cagey and sophisticated in its rhetoric. And so the people that Vance explicitly identifies with, like Patrick Deneen, who is quite close with some of these integralists, and Vance is close to people that are definitely flirting with some of these ideas of the kind of ultimate integration of church and state. And so just in practical terms, that turns into the anti-abortion stuff.

I think they would take issue with, they would like, want to make divorce much more difficult. As J.D. Vance has talked about. Yeah. And so some of those policies you can kind of, and I think overall they want a society where religion plays a much more prominent role in public life. And it's not clear that minority religions would have the same rights as other people. You have a situation where people who have been baptized in the Christian church, any Christian church, are subject to different laws, which would be more extreme. So, I mean, it gets pretty radical, right? It gets kind of, you know. From theocracy adjacent to full-on theocracy, it sounds like.

Yeah. I mean, I think we have to, you know, maybe people would still have rights who aren't Christian. I mean, they are not have to, you know, maybe people would still have rights who aren't Christian. And so it's, I mean, they are not necessarily cruel, horrible people, but you get there pretty quickly. So that's sort of the way of thinking of some of those guys. And those are the ones that Vance is closest to, but they're also sort of politically a little on their own and not necessarily in the thick of the new right in the same way that some of these other groups are. And Vance is close with all of them. I mean, you kind of go from top to bottom, the most sophisticated, all the way down to some of the people who are sort of on the hard right,

online, really nasty stuff. And Vance sort of peers in all of these different quadrants. I was going to ask about, because you wrote about Vance's focus on gender ideology. Yeah. If you could talk a little bit about gender ideology and some of Vance's views on gender beyond just his war against childless cat ladies. Which is, again, one of those things that seems offensive and then you can mock it, but it feels like there is something underlying those comments that is quite radical. I mean, so gender ideology is used on the new right mainly to talk about sort of trans issues, right? And ideas about marriage and sexual relations and everything.

So it's kind of a catch-all. I wrote about the anti-feminism, and there's a very, very strong streak of that throughout the new right. I mean, the cat lady's comments, we can't just skip over it, because that one really struck me, because to me it indicates that Vance is very closely, if not allied with, but very sort of immersed in some of the ugliest stuff on the new right, which is really anti-women sort of in a way that they want, they really do want to have a much more patriarchal system. So it's really, really radical. And some of the people writing this way, the cat ladies comment, I mean, they talk about how our regime is just dominated by, if not women, right, all these career women and the cat ladies, then female sort of values.

They talk about it as if the whole country is just controlled by these sort of feminazis or, right, that would be sort of the older lingo. That cat lady comment just really resonated with some of these. It just, to me, screamed that he was connected with sort of some of the worst characters or sympathetic to some of the ugliest misogyny on the new right. But I think in a more general way, and when he talks, when we think about his sort of overall view and what he would ideally have, it's a very, it is sort of more of this pro-natalist family values version of it, but that is high, it would be a highly patriarchal version of it, where families that are traditional families would be the ones getting the benefits. Gay people would be excluded. And so you can think about Viktor Orban's Hungary and some of what's going on there. I think that he's very much eager to have something like that in the United States. Yeah, well, when he made the comment, he specifically cited Kamala Harris, AOC, and Pete Buttigieg. And it seems like the

idea is people without children, either because they can't conceive or don't want to or whatever, or they should not be in charge. And there's too many of them in charge. And somehow, the people who should be in charge and should get these benefits are people who are in traditional families where the woman has as many children as possible or should be encouraged to have as many children as possible. And that there's some value to people in this traditional family structure with children to the country and to governing that single people or gay people or people without children just don't have. Is that?

Yeah, I think that's right. You're maybe just missing the part where they feel so aggrieved, right? Where they feel like the traditional family not only isn't possible, is not encouraged, it's hated on, right? And so that's, I think, motivating some of this is this sense that they need to compensate for all the hate they're getting, which I think is is not right and is delusional. And it's actually not that hard to have a heterosexual family with kids in this country. I mean, there are things that are there aren't real problems that they are concerned about. Right. That it is really hard to have kids. Right.

It's really hard for everybody to raise kids in this country. There aren't, there maybe aren't the supports that we need. And so to his credit, he wants to help assist people to have families. And I think that that part of it is serious and, and, and real, but the, the sharper side of it is that it only, it can only be the traditional family that he supports and that these policies will support. And I think that if you say they were to be elected, we'll see the true colors, right? I mean, are they going to compromise with liberals to make a family tax credit, right? I think that if it's going to be open to gay people or single people, they won't care about it enough. They care more about supporting traditional families than they do about helping everybody,

is sort of what I would suspect. So I think that there's sort of these clashing motivations, but they're really angry about new forms of family, right? They're angry about these changes that have taken place. And I think that they do care about the family in a way that's sincere, right? They're angry about these changes that have taken place. And I think that they do care about the family in a way that's sincere, right? And they truly believe that the traditional family is sort of the cornerstone of a thriving society. But there's no reason, I mean, I get so frustrated because there's no reason you can't support families and be

pluralistic about it and be open to different styles of family and still pass some of these policies. Well, what's their argument for why the traditional family needs to be the cornerstone of society that's not just, you know, openly bigoted? Like, what is their sort of intellectual reasoning behind this obsession with the traditional family structure well i think that we can't i think that you and i would agree that it is bigoted that that's that it is sort of a bigoted perspective and i think that they get their backs up because they say no i have a different religious view right i don't believe that gay marriage is um is legitimate because they think homosexuality is a sin, right? And so it comes down to some really clashing deep values that they hold and that I don't hold. They then they proceed to say, and the fact that we have these these new forms of family, these new forms of marriage, the fact that that exists in our culture prevents they think it prevents them from preserving their way of life.

And they're probably right about that. It's harder for conservative Christians who believe it's a sin to preserve that belief with their kids and in their schools and stuff when there's all of these different pluralistic views around them and on television and the culture is liberal. And I'm grateful for that and I think it's fucking great. Right? But they don't. They feel it's slipping away and they feel their control is slipping away. feel it's slipping away. And they feel their control is slipping away. They feel it's slipping away. And they feel their control is slipping away. And I think we have to be honest that it kind of is, right?

And that that's part of what's going on here is that they are reacting to something real. And there's a really hard disagreement there that is—it sort of helps us understand why they're sort of in this world historical uproar, right? Because they really think that this is the devil in some cases, right? And sometimes some of these guys on the new right talk that way. I mean, it's kind of esoteric, but they talk about demons and Satan. And so, I mean, so that's just what we're talking about. It is kind of a medieval clash. It's like the reason liberalism was invented was to manage these kinds of disagreements and they reject it they think it's gone too far and and that that they are going to try to put a stop to it and so i think we have to find a way i mean there's not an easy solution here it's very hard core

disagreements well the other thing i've been thinking about is their views on democracy, right? And it does seem, and I think you brought this up earlier, but it does seem like a number of them now believe that democracy as it exists is no longer the best system of government and that not everyone should have an equal voice and that maybe we'd be better off if just a few people are in charge who are, I don't know, the smartest, the great men, the techno geniuses, right? Like, I feel like this sort of spans from like the Peter Thiel view of the world to some of these like right-wing social Christian conservatives, but how have their views on democracy evolved in the new right? Well, I think we're, again, we're kind of talking about

a faction of the new right that to the extent that it's been a continuous presence, which it kind of ebbs and flows, right? But I don't think they ever really cared that much about democracy, right? I mean, these are people, you think barry goldwater was kind of some of this and you know he he's complicated figure but you know that sort of against um civil rights right this is kind of what we're talking about these are not people who ever cared much about democracy or this kind of streak of conservatism i don't think has does care much about democracy but you're right it's it's it's that's that's what we're talking about right is these these figures who are now very centrally important in the gop if not kind of in control of it i mean it's tricky because

trump isn't doesn't necessarily play with people very well right and so they're kind of trying to maneuver this thing but they don't, democracy is very low, I think, on their list of values, some of them. I mean, it's not a priority for them. I think they're deeply hierarchical. They will play along with a bit of democracy. And it's also, I think they are, some of them are practical enough to realize that Americans care about democracy. So they can't just completely tell the, you know, they can't just spew off all their hierarchical medieval stuff openly. But I don't think they care deeply about it. that they also feel like the only way that they can keep the power is to work with the counter-majoritarian features of our system, right? But nobody on the new right is talking about expanding voting rights or anything. They don't care deeply about that. And they don't

think people matter equally. And just getting power to them and sort of instilling their vision and their agenda on the country is more important than risking that vision not being put into power because you gave too many people the right to say otherwise. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that they think it's at a point where, I mean, you use the tools you have available. And if that happens to be a voting booth, then good. But you use it, you get the power, you change things. I mean, from the philosophical perspective, the people that they're reaching back to are often, you know, you think about someone like Karl Schmitt from Germany, this very radical Nazi jurist who was very influential and talks all about sort of the friends and enemies distinction. And for him, everything is kind of an all or nothing existential combat, basically. And that's how a lot of these guys are thinking, right? They're like, okay, we, all that matters is getting the power for our side so that we can, um, like you said, impose our worldview, um, as broadly as possible. And I think that might mean that the national level, if they can, they'll work, they'll do what they can. And they've got a whole bunch of different ways of thinking about this,

but it could just be at the state level. And I think we've seen a lot of that already being obviously worked out at the state level. And that's going to be here, I think, either way, you know, no matter who wins in November. You mentioned Trump, and I'm sort of fascinated with how he fits into all of this, right? Because he's now been asked a couple times to respond to some of J.D. Vance's comments, the childless cat lady stuff, and he's got this very typical Trump sort of rambling answer. But you can see Donald Trump, the guy who's been divorced three times and

is probably, you know, has been pro-choice for most of his life, right, is sitting there and he's like, you know, all families are, families are good and some families are bad and some families and some they stay together and some don't and that's okay. And you can tell he's trying to like, you know, walk it back a little bit. But there's been a lot of talk about Project 2025 in this, in this election. And now he's named J.D. Vance's running mate. And I think the optimistic case, the most optimistic case for Trump winning is I've heard some people say, okay, Trump wins. He's just doing it because it's an ego thing. He wants to prove that he can win and then he's going to do four years and that's going to be it.

And, you know, Trump can't get anything done anyway because he's kind of an idiot and whatever else. But it feels like even if that is true, J.D. Vance is your vice president and all the people behind Project 2025 seem to be some of these people and have some of these ideas that are much more radical that you've been writing about. Is that true? Or how do you think that would work? Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. I think J.D. Vance is very much, he's closely connected to a lot of the people in the Project 2025 stuff. And as I was writing that piece for Politico, I did come across this line from Vance from an interview in 2021 where he's spouting this very radical stuff can i just read this quickly yeah absolutely because this is like this didn't make it into the piece i don't think but um he's talking about what he thinks trump should do if he were to win in 2024 and it's very radical it might as well have come right from the preface

of kevin roberts um he wrote the introduction to the project 2025 and. It might as well have come right from the preface of Kevin Roberts. He wrote the introduction to the Project 2025. And so it might as well have come from this. And it sounds a lot like some of the Catholic integralist stuff. So let me just read this. Okay, he says, I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left. We need like a de-bathification program, a de-wokification program. I think Trump is going to run again in 2024. I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, and replace them with our people.

So Vance was saying that in 2021. That's before there was a Project 2025, right? And so he's definitely sort of in it with all that. In terms of how this plays out with Trump himself, I mean, that's the million-dollar question. And I think that Trump made that decision to have Vance be his running mate. I mean, I was shocked by that decision, I'll tell you. I think it was a really ballsy decision and a really sort of super masculinist decision. Just like risky, bold, and pretty foolish. And I think that it was cocky. And it was a move that was probably to please Elon Musk and Teal or I'm not sure what.

And this sort of new, but it was definitely like a stamp of approval to the new right when he chose Vance. Yeah. And so I think it backfired very quickly because of Kamala. And I don't think they obviously didn't expect Biden to get out. Right. And so it's kind of been amazing, right, these past few weeks to see that unfold because I think it was – it's shown – I mean, this stuff is not especially popular necessarily, right, with mainstream people, with normal people. Trump has his charms, right? We can kind of – I mean, it was so weird at first, but I think now we can all kind of understand a little bit more about what's going on with that guy.

And it is a cult of personality. And it is – he's very funny and he and he he's got his he's just a he's a weird guy but he he is what he is and he's totally unpredictable and so and i don't think he's an ideologue in the way that these guys are i mean obviously right he's not reading this shit he's not concerned about catholicism um he's and so he is their tool right and they think they can maneuver him um and it's not at all clear how much he'll go along with especially what now that he sees how unpopular some of it is um but you know you don't you just don't know either because i don't

see him i think he i think a lot of this stuff with the project 2025 and vance it's very strategic he's just going to say what he thinks people want to hear and then once he's in power they'll do whatever they want right to the extent that they can get it together and i think that's the real worry is that now with project 2025 with all of the establishment the old establishment is now um these think tanks and stuff like they are behind him now and they weren't before they weren't in 20 2016 you didn't even have heritage they were supporting him and they helped him staff his um administration but it wasn't like it is now this is really a different thing so um he can say he doesn't like 2025 and he can but but he's not going to disavow all of these people and all of this work that's been done so there's no sign that he won't do it in I don't think, but it's anybody's guess,

I think, what he actually is capable of doing or what he would want to do, and especially if it's so unpopular. Yeah. My gut on this is that he's just not going to, he's not an attention to details guy, and he's going to be busy with whatever fights he's picking every day

and whatever TV show he's watching, but he will have people in the government who have tremendous power who can implement a lot of this. I do think that my first reaction to the J.D. Vance pick was it's a pick that came from overconfidence, cockiness, we're going to beat Joe Biden, we've got this election wrapped up, let's just shoot the moon here. But now that Kamala Harris is the nominee,

it does feel to me like this is their, it's not just their worst nightmare in terms of now they think they're going to lose, but there is a biracial woman who could win the presidency. And having been on both Obama campaigns and eight and, you know, Palin started, Sarah Palin was sort of an early warning sign of this

when we were running against McCain. Having been, you know, electing, helping elect the first black man to be president, I just, things have gotten so much more extreme on the right in the ensuing years that I sort of wonder how the rights, the new rights reaction will manifest itself over the course of this election. Like this, it feels like this is their nightmare and they will throw everything they have at trying to stop Kamala Harris. Yeah. I mean, I think that it's hard to see how they could get much more radical. I think you're

right. And they can't help themselves a lot of the time, I think. So, I mean, when you say their worst nightmare, I think you're right. She's their worst nightmare. She's probably worse than Hillary, though they might not have the kind of instinctive animus that they did for her. But I also think it's their worst nightmare in terms of the people in the new right who are smart probably understand that this is really a big challenge and a liability and that this stuff is so racist and so misogynist, the whole movement kind of is, that it's going to be hard to rein that in. And they probably need to if they want to win. And so I think that it's really complicated, but they're going to just ramp it up probably because that's who they are.

Yeah. And they are genuinely freaked out about the progressive America that we have or we're starting to have. Yeah. And so the funny thing about Kamala is she's not miserable. She's a very happy person. She's not a miserable cat lady. Which they also hate, yeah. They hate it. And they cannot sort of wrap their heads around women having power.

So it's very tricky for them. I think they're in a real bind. Last question on this. From the Harris campaign's perspective, they're going to have to deal with all of this and handle all of this. Do you have thoughts on how they do that without sort of giving the new right what they want? Right. Without going off on identity politics and sort of. Exactly. Exactly. Because I've been thinking about that a lot because they are clearly either strategically or just because that's who they are baiting the Harris campaign as they did with Hillary, as they did with Obama to like get

in this fight with them about identity and race and gender. And, you know, as you said earlier, they are part of this movement is like recognizing real problems that exist in America. And you want to, I imagine that if you're the Harris campaign or any campaign opposing them, you want to acknowledge the problems that we have in this country, acknowledge the struggles families are having in this country without sort of tripping some of the wires that would sort of ignite people that might be, find the new right appealing. Yeah, I think avoiding some of the most woke talk would be rhetorically strategic, right? But not because you want to please the new right, but I think that they want to be thinking about ordinary Americans.

And ordinary Americans are not radicalized, I don't think. I think I've seen some evidence. I don't think they're radicalized to this extent. I don't think they love this crazy stuff. Surely some people love parts of it, right? But I think that if they can focus on, just like you said, the real problems that exist, and also, I think they should be outspoken about the fact that most Americans aren't radicalized in this way. I think the stuff about the weirdness of the new right is good. It is weird and it is, it's not, I don't think it is that popular once people start to understand what's going on here. And I think that they also need to have a positive liberal vision, right? And they need to kind of bang on that stuff, right? That we are a pluralistic society and we can also come together as Americans. I mean, all that sort of old, I mean, Obama was very good at this. Well, as I say, it's got to be rooted in,

it's a war over the definition of patriotism and what it is to be American. And there's always been two definitions. There's the definition that the right is now reaching back for, right, which is this hierarchical, you know, white male only, you know, landowning society. But then there's the other vision, which is this is a country, this is the world's biggest experiment in multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy that includes everyone and gives everyone a voice. And that's been part of our founding too,

even if we haven't always lived up to it. And that those are the values that unite us, right? I mean, that the multi, that the, you can actually have a positive belief in multiculturalism and think that that's a really valuable thing that you, you can learn from and you can, you know, I think that they need to keep that in mind, that those are, those are real things that we can hold on to that I think Americans believe in and that these guys really don't. And so I think pointing to the radicalism without, I don't think you need to be super, I'm pro-woke, right? But I think that some of that lingo and some of the, you know, box checking has always been a real problem for Democrats, right? The kind of identity, like, okay, we've got this person, that person. that's been a real problem because it's alienating because it isn't unifying right and it just on a sort of

commonsensical um approach you can't that's just not going to be that's necessarily going to be alienating to anybody who's not on those lists right of um of identities trying to build a majority um yeah laura field thank you so much for chatting with me and for making us so much smarter on the philosophical and intellectual roots of all this craziness that we're seeing on the right. So I appreciate that. Thanks so much for having me, John. The Supreme Court might be on break, but the conservative agenda is still going full steam ahead. Project 2025 is a 900-page far-right wish list that lays out a hyper-specific and bone-chillingly fascist roadmap for a second Trump administration. Over at Strict Scrutiny, our favorite trio of badass constitutional law professors is breaking down the full 900 pages in a four-part series with your Monday episodes. Melissa, Leah, and Kate scoured all the fine print for you because lawyers are sick freaks who love that shit. Thank you. away and now is the time to volunteer donate and canvas your ass off for progressive candidates and initiatives up and down the ballot sign up for a shift at votesaveamerica.com and pick up

a canvassing kit for yourself or maybe for a friend in a swing state it has all the essentials for a day of door knocking including a clipboard pen band-aids a tote bag and more the crooked store gives back with every order to support organizations doing incredible work across the u.s to make sure every voice can be heard head to crooked.com store to get your kit now We'll see you next time. Produced by Austin Fisher. Emma Illick-Frank is our associate producer. Mixed and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support from Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Ari Schwartz, Madeline Herringer, and Reed Cherlin for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Dilan Villanueva,

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