The Senator tries — and fails — to defend Trump alongside Trumpism.

In Ross Douthat’s engrossing sit-down with his old friend and now Senator J.D. Vance, there is, to begin with, a nuanced discussion of how Trump has upended American politics toward the populist right, which Vance supports for a variety of decent (and, to my mind, largely persuasive) reasons. This strikes me, for example, as a very cogent insight into the last couple of decades:

[C]enter-left liberals who are doing very well, and center-right conservatives who are doing very well, have an incredible blind spot about how much their success is built on a system that is not serving people who they should be serving.

So far, so smart. I plead guilty of center-right complacency myself. And there is a potential, serious defense of Trumpism that dispenses with Trump, even if Trump deserves real credit for changing the debate in the first place.

But of course, Trump is still around, as deranged as ever and a bit more incoherent, and Vance has to find a way to cope with that towering reality as well. And part of that reality is entertaining Trump’s delusional conviction that he won the elections of 2016 and 2020 in landslides of historic proportions — but was denied re-election because of massive, coordinated fraud.

That’s when a few sparks finally begin to fly during the Ross interview. And it’s worth mulling Vance’s triple-lutz of rationalization, because it amounts to the most plausible attempt to justify Trump’s inability to accept any election result he doesn’t win. Vance notably doesn’t bother to defend Trump’s own firehose of specific accusations of voter “fraud”. He knows he can’t. Only Trump himself can sustain the manic conviction that he was massively robbed both times. So Vance performs a two-step:

Every time we bring it up, it’s like, “Well, yeah, they litigated all these things.” No, you can’t litigate these things judicially; you have to litigate them politically. And we never had a real political debate about the 2020 election.

But you can litigate things judicially. In fact, every claim of election fraud in the US has always been litigated judicially. That’s how we do it. And in 2020, after dozens of suits, there was no significant fraud found.

So what constitutes litigating an election “politically”? Vance explains:

My actual critique starts with the Molly Ball article in 2021 — that felt like bragging. I put that article in front of the average Trump-fan Republican voter in my hometown, and they say, ‘That is an illegitimate election.’

What did Ball’s piece say? It’s a somewhat goosed-up account of bipartisan attempts to ensure a smooth and transparently fair election during a once-in-a-century pandemic. Money quote from the piece:

They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.

The result was a massive increase in mail-in and absentee ballots. And look: if this had happened out of the blue, it would be one thing, especially since Republicans are less adept at early voting than Democrats. But it happened during a plague for obvious reasons. Rules had to be changed — or turnout would have collapsed, delegitimizing the entire enterprise. Maybe those new rules should have been challenged at the time — but nothing was stopping the Republican National Committee from doing that, as Vance admits:

[T]he R.N.C. should’ve been mobilizing and responding to that, and they failed, and that was a huge indictment of the R.N.C.

He further concedes that the new voting rules were proposed “for Covid reasons, in a way that partially is the fault of the Republican National Committee — we weren’t prepared for it, Democrats were, and they took advantage of it.”

So this has nothing to do with the new rules as such, but merely with one party being less on-the-ball than the other in a dramatically-altered election. And sorry, but that’s not “election interference,” let alone “fraud” or “rigging”. It’s just an election in a uniquely difficult year. And you don’t get to complain about the rules you agreed to after the game is over.

The new pandemic rules, moreover, were endorsed by the Congress, which passed $400 million in the CARES Act for the election’s unique challenges, which Trump himself signed into law. If the rules were rigged, Trump helped rig them! Sure, Mark Zuckerberg donated $300 million — but there’s no evidence the money was directed only to help Democrats; and the Voter Participation Center channeled resources to secretaries of state, red and blue.

How about the attempt to pressure social media not to run “disinformation”? In the late-breaking case of Hunter Biden’s laptop, that was indeed a black mark for the mainstream media. But the story wasn’t buried entirely; it was covered by a big paper, the New York Post; and their scoop wasn’t totally suppressed by Twitter and Facebook, despite their best efforts. And decisions by the press to cover some things and not others in a campaign is simply what happens in a free society. The press has been biased to the left for as long as I can remember. And at the very end of every campaign, choices about coverage can get fraught, as with the Comey shocker in 2016. But that doesn’t constitute “election interference.” It constitutes normalcy.

And, of course, this blaming of social media for an election loss is more than a little ironic since that was precisely Clinton’s sad story in 2016 — with the charge that the Kremlin had somehow made the critical difference in electing Trump by its own propaganda campaign in social media. By Vance’s own standards of election interference, therefore, Hillary was robbed. But she wasn’t, of course. She ran a predictably shitty campaign as the worst politician of her generation.

Vance even goes so far as to say that the attempt to stop the certification of the election by force on January 6 was no big deal, and less reckless than “the attempt to completely suppress concerns about … our most fundamental democratic act as a people.” Constitutionally, Vance says he was far more worried about the military brass finding ways to avoid obeying Trump’s commands than a violation of the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy.

I guess you can just about see a sliver of a case here (although as Ross notes, you can obviously be against military subordination and against perverting the peaceful transition of power). Vance is right that the way in which elites have responded to Trump has been in many ways reckless and counter-productive.

But Vance’s case is completely undermined by Trump himself. Trump, after all, did not say after the election that the Covid rules were why he’d lost. He said he’d lost because votes were stolen, stuffed, and hidden, and the voting machines had been rigged. He’s saying the same things today. And the reason for all of it was not some genuine concern about easier mail-in and absentee voting (he endorsed absentee voting, after all), but Trump’s basic, characterological inability to function in a system that doesn’t guarantee him victory every single time.

That is not the system’s fault. It’s the fault of the party that nominated a malignant, delusional loon. We also know from Vance’s Twitter history — recently exposed even more thoroughly by Andrew Kaczynski — that Vance indeed once understood all of this perfectly well. Of course he did.

And Trump’s endorsement of violence on the night of January 5 and through the day on January 6 takes all of this to a unique and much darker place. He didn’t make the strained case for politically litigating the election rules that Vance makes; he was even happy to egg on a mob to hang Mike Pence for doing his constitutional duty. There is simply no defense of this, and no defense of the double standards, any-argument-to-hand tactics, and flirting with constitutional disaster that Trump deployed in his psychotic war on reality. He is unfit to be president.

Vance knows this of course — he has a law degree from Yale, after all — which is why he remains such a fascinating figure. Juggling the legitimate insights of Trumpism and the lying, livid lunacy of Trump himself makes for an unedifying but instructive spectacle. Vance has made the bet. Excusing political violence, supporting a deranged fantasist, and delegitimizing free and fair elections is the price he is prepared to pay for power.

And it’s a bet, I’m afraid, he is increasingly likely to win.

Nellie is a writer and reporter. She has worked for many mainstream publications, most notably the NYT covering Silicon Valley. Now she is teamed up with her wife, Bari Weiss, to run The Free Press — a media company they launched on Substack in 2021. Nellie’s weekly news roundup, TGIF, is smart and hilarious, and so is her new book, Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History.

Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the scourge of Slack, and questioning whether trans is immutable. That link also takes you to a bunch of commentary on our very popular episode with George Will, plus more reader dissents over immigration. We also share a heart-rending tale of a reader’s son who lost his three-legged dog, and I have an update on Truman’s first trip to Provincetown. I also have a fond remembrance of the late great David Boaz.

“Milwaukee, where we are having our convention, is a horrible city,” – Donald Trump.

“Now imagine a bunch of judges, lawyers, and jurors trying to decide whether someone’s speech or action was motivated by an emotion reached the level of ‘detestation or vilification’ or was ‘stronger than disdain or dislike.’ Can we get a chart of emotions rank ordered by their degree of hatred please?” – Colin Wright on the very subjective standards of Canada’s Online Harms Act.

“The more people came to know gay people and understand the aims of the movement for gay marriage, the more accepting they became of it. The more people come to know trans people and understand the aims of the transgender moment, the more skeptical they become of its claims,” – Wesley Yang on new polling.

“These [DEI] requirements are screwing everything up. It’s all a mess,” – a senior staffer at the Department of Transportation on why it’s built only seven EV charging stations over the past three years — out of its 500,000 goal by 2030.

“Members of academic communities are now supposed to maintain an elaborate false consciousness. They must insist that affirmative action was the only thing keeping the ivory tower from reverting to its lily-white antecedents but deny that any individual student or faculty member ever benefited from it. They should support admitting students with weaker academic qualifications but professors can be fired for noticing if those students struggle more with coursework,” – Megan McArdle.

“We have concluded that a properly regulated, legal immigration system is in the national interest. … Immigration is not a right guaranteed by the US Constitution to everyone, anywhere in the world who thinks they want to come to the United States. Immigration is a privilege. It is a privilege granted by the people of the United States to those we choose to admit,” – Barbara Jordan, Democratic icon, in 1995.

“The best place to relax is near water. After just 2 minutes of viewing water outdoors, blood pressure and heart rate drop. It’s more calming to look at a lake, pool, or stream than trees or grass. Beaches are popular for a reason. Wider bodies of water bring more tranquility,” – Adam Grant on a study.

Provincetown, Massachusetts, 5.27 pm

A reader pushes back on last week’s column:

I cannot speak for what happens in Canada, the UK and EU, but you’re getting several things wrong on the immigration debate. It has been the REPUBLICAN establishment that enabled Trump, not the Democrats. During the Obama administration, we had an immigration deal. It wasn’t perfect and wouldn’t have solved all our problems, but remember who killed that deal: Republicans.

Biden and the Democrats then went to Republicans this year and basically had them write another bill. Guess who killed that one? Yep, Republicans. Why? Because they want to bash Biden on immigration instead of fixing the problem. Republicans will ALWAYS choose to bash Democrats on the border, use hyperbolic attacks to make a point, and then refuse to cut any deal because it’s not good enough. This has been the tradition my whole young life.

The border wasn’t solved under Trump, it won’t be solved under him again (or at least with any permanence in mind), and it’s all entirely a cynical ploy to bash Democrats. You are falling into that trap by spending your days bashing Biden instead of remembering who called up his lackeys in Congress and demanded they kill their own bill so they would have an election issue.

Sigh. I don’t disagree that the GOP has been cynical and shameless on this, repeatedly. But they have been right to focus on enforcement and border security — and it need not have taken Joe Biden three years to realize that. Look at Europe. It’s coming here if we don’t act.

Another dissent:

I agree with your column in spirit, but not in substance. I have no doubt that mass migration is eroding Americans’ tolerance for migration, but it’s a systemic issue that politicians in both parties are loath to actually tackle.

I have no doubt that the numbers under Trump were lower — but he had a year of Title 42 to bring that down. Once the pandemic emergency was over, Biden had no choice but to reverse course. I recall the “migrant caravans” during Trump’s term, and his tough migrant policy did nothing to stem the waves of people showing up at the border until Title 42 was put into force. You also point to the May 2020 poll about migration being a lower concern for voters during a time when people were disinfecting bags of Doritos and hoarding toilet paper, so I don’t blame Biden for that shift. He is also facing a greater number of migrants attempting to cross the border than Trump did, and CBP is simply overwhelmed.

Another reader feels that my vote is turning:

C’mon man, are you now going to be a Trump supporter over this? You wrote: “All that means, it seems to me, is that if you care about the issue at all, as more and more Americans do, then Trump is the obvious choice this fall.”

Trump utterly failed on immigration, albeit not nearly as bad as Biden. The actual “border” was no more secure then than it is today. Yes, WAY more people are crossing now, but the actual border isn’t any less secure than it was then. Do you actually think Trump will be able to get anything real done on the border? Unless he has 60 senators, he won’t pass any legislation. The best legislation we had was what he killed so he could campaign on the issue, which tells you everything you know about who he really cares about.

I agree that it’s a major failure on Biden’s part, and the polling is surprising — especially with Hispanics moving so far on it. But there’s literally nothing worse for America than Trump 2.0. He will be so focused on revenge that he won’t get anything real done on the border, especially when it comes to legislating long-term solutions for it. The country can survive four more years of Biden or a sane Republican.

My dream is that Biden finally bows out before the convention. Maybe if he fucks up the debate badly, other Dem leaders will start leaning on him. I was a huge supporter, a volunteer, and a maxed-out donor of his, and I’ve written him multiple times asking him to step aside. His legacy is going to end up being the guy who gave the country back to Trump, and I don’t think we can recover from that.

Another vents:

I’m tired of your BS. Your continual negativity towards Biden is just sad now. It’s a binary choice: Biden or Trump. Keep piling on President Biden and you will help elect Trump.

I somehow don’t think my Substack musings are going to affect this election in any way, to be honest. But it would be delinquent of me not to note the flailing candidacy of Biden, and what I have long thought as his core liability: he’s too old now, let alone in four years’ time. This reader doesn’t see a binary:

Maybe I missed it, but I don’t know why voting for RFK Jr. isn’t considered more on platforms like yours as a viable alternative to Narcissist vs. Zombie. I resent the two choices put before me. I don’t consider all of Kennedy’s positions as resonating with my own, but between the petulant fornicator and the living dead man, RFK is a blast from the past of cogent candidates. He’s articulate, healthy, younger, and can think on his feet, like his papa. And I agree with his take on fill-in-the-blank industrial complexes taking over our civilization.

I plan to vote for RFK, even if it’s a write-in. Even though I doubt he will win. Because I want to register my disapproval of the corporate party’s choices of Itchy vs. Scratchy.

One more reader for now:

The US needs immigrants more than ever. Baby Boomers are retiring by the millions and the country needs more workers. My last employer was forced to lay off hundreds of workers in 2020 during Covid and it still has not rebuilt its workforce. Many departments are less than 70% of full employment capacity, and the Boomers who quit during Covid are not coming back.

We have people literally begging to get into the country for work, and we should let in most of them as long as they stay employed and don’t commit serious crimes.  Unemployment has been at or below 4% since January 2022 and many businesses are being forced to reduce services or hours because they cannot hire fast enough. Put down the computer and talk to business owners on Cape Cod this summer and see how much difficulty they have in staffing up.

This is the classic conservative case for mass immigration: cheap, imported labor, regardless of the social consequences. I think most Americans have decided that this isn’t in their interest; and they are not entirely wrong about that.

More tough dissents over immigration are on the pod page, and I respond throughout. Please keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Playing a piano while paragliding over the English countryside:

• Hunter’s gun conviction denies MAGA media a conspiracy theory (at least in theory). Jay Caruso doesn’t understand why doing drugs should override the 2nd Amendment.


• Ann Coulter is furious that MAGA is going after a Republican who has a good shot at winning at Senate seat in deep-blue Maryland.


• “The far right is no longer a marginal movement,” observes Yascha Mounk after the European elections.


• An understatement from Christopher Gage: “Prime Minister Sunak had a dreadful week.” The Tories could come third next month.


• Eli Lake largely debunks the civilian casualty stats coming out of Gaza.


• An update on the number of black lives lost since the 2020 “reckoning”.


• The great blog debate between Coleman Hughes and Radley Balko continues.


• Freddie reads the interminable NYT profile of Ibram X Kendi so you don’t have to. Christopher Ferguson calls it a “professional obituary.” Yes please.


• Please God no: “Will Trump Trigger a Second Great Awokening?”


• Ben Dreyfuss and Katie Herzog maintain their sense of humor in the face of woke madness.


• The “patriarchy” is very ill compared to women.


• Copyranter compiles the “most creative, effective anti-smoking ads” of the past 20 years.


• Is the left going to start pressuring the developing world to curb climate change?


• Why are the birth rates in East Asia so low?


• Glenn Loury sighs, “There actually WERE more two-parent black families under Jim Crow.”


• Johann Kurtz makes a Biblical distinction: “You’re called to love your neighbor, not everyone.”


• Deep reading will “save your soul.”


• Ayaan and Dawkins have it out over “political Christianity.” Be sure to check out her new substack.


• Welcome, Gareth Roberts!

Where do you think? Email your entry to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. Proximity counts. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a View From Your Window book or two annual Dish subscriptions.

See you next Friday.