In response to Noah’s assertion that Ron DeSantis’s stated desire not to have U.S. troops in Ukraine is “not an option on the table because no serious American policy-maker has advocated such a course,” Michael writes:
Not true. Last year tons of well-credentialed advisers and policy-makers put out a letter calling for the U.S. to create a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The idea became a political football, and there was lots of whining when J. D. Vance called out two of his primary opponents for supporting versions of a Western-led no-fly zone, and saw his polls start to take off. Hawks were upset that the one ruling out a no-fly zone won. Wonder why.
Readers can judge for themselves the pedigree of the list, whose plea has been, at any rate, ignored. Instead, let’s focus on Michael’s account of the 2022 Ohio Republican Senate primary, which is inaccurate. Michael is referring to an exchange that happened at a March 2022 debate. The question of a no-fly zone was raised. Josh Mandel initially said he would support it “if the Europeans can create a no-fly zone,” but said, “I do not think we should be putting Americans . . . in the air.” Mike Gibbons said, of Ukraine, “We need to arm them to the teeth [but] I don’t want to see American soldiers/boots on the ground in Ukraine” and that any no-fly zone “can’t be American pilots.”
Vance, who had said before hostilities began, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” naturally made much of these confused, unstudied responses. He cast his opponents as “reckless” “neocons” who “want to blunder us into WW3” and maintained that supporting Ukraine is not “in the vital national-security interests of the country.”
It is a debatable question whether Vance’s stance helped or hurt him in the Republican primary. Indeed, Michael did debate it at the time, with John McCormack. As Vance ultimately won, it’s fair to say it didn’t irreparably harm his candidacy. But did “his polls start to take off” after he voiced this view? No. The RealClearPolitics average had Vance in a distant third in that race before that debate. It’s a position in which he remained until April 15. That is when his polls started to take off.
What happened on April 15? Donald Trump endorsed J. D. Vance. This was Vance’s hope all along. In the past, Vance had quite famously, and repeatedly, denounced Trump, saying he was an “idiot,” “noxious,” “reprehensible,” and a possible “Hitler” offering voters “cultural heroin” and policies ranging “from immoral to absurd.” (You can find more here.) But as Vance started his run for Senate, he apologized for these remarks, saying, “I regret being wrong about the guy.” In an interview with Time magazine, he went even further: Trump is “the leader of this movement, and if I actually care about these people and the things I say I care about, I need to just suck it up and support him.”
Vance had strong incentives to distance himself from these past remarks. Donald Trump, gearing up for the first midterm cycle since his defeat, wanted to show that he still had political power, and wanted his endorsement to matter. There might not have been a real primary at all, if Trump had gone with his initial instinct to endorse his handpicked state party chairwoman Jane Timken. Why didn’t he? Well, when they met, Trump reminded Timken that she initially defended Ohio Republican representative Anthony Gonzalez for voting to impeach Trump after January 6. Trump’s initial hesitation meant that the primary transformed largely into a contest for his favor. Candidates made trips to Mar-a-Lago seeking it. Vance went there with billionaire Peter Thiel, Vance’s mentor and (generous) campaign backer, in tow. Vance also made sure to befriend Donald Trump Jr.
In public view, Vance cottoned to the issues most important to Trump. Before he announced, he told Steve Bannon that the 2020 election should be investigated “as much as possible.“ He told a local newspaper in October 2021 that “there were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis.” The same month, he co-wrote a New York Post article with failed Arizona Senate candidate and fellow Thiel acolyte Blake Masters arguing that “in 2020 our oligarchs used their power and money to do everything they could to steal an election.” At the National Conservatism conference in November 2021, as news of Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial victory began to circulate among the crowd while Vance was speaking, Vance said:
I heard somebody say he won. I remember a similar feeling about a year ago — certain that my guy won, and it turned out that there was some toilet problems in the late-night counting. So I certainly hope that Glenn Youngkin wins, and frankly if we lived in an actual first-world country, we would know by 11 o’clock tonight, and I will be toasting Glenn Youngkin’s victory this evening.
If Vance was careful enough to stay in motte-and-bailey territory on this topic, Trump either didn’t notice or got the message anyway. In his endorsement of Vance, Trump called him “a warrior on the Rigged and Stolen Presidential Election.” For good measure, Vance also made sure to defend Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene’s decision to speak at a conference organized by internet antisemite Nick Fuentes. (He had Greene speak at an Ohio rally, held in suburban Cincinnati the afternoon the Bengals made it to the Super Bowl.) Vance’s repeated appearances on his friend Tucker Carlson’s show surely didn’t hurt either.
In an Ohio primary electorate then still dominated by what Yuval Levin has called the “Trump faction,” Trump’s endorsement secured a primary win for Vance (with 32 percent of the vote) and made him a general-election favorite. Trump did not forget the debt Vance owed him, telling the crowd at a rally (with Vance in attendance), “J.D. is kissing my ass he wants my support so much.” Vance, with the help of $32 million in Mitch McConnell money, did end up winning that election, albeit in somewhat-unimpressive fashion, underperforming Republican candidates across the Ohio ballot to a degree that challenges somehow unique to his race cannot fully explain without admitting weaknesses to his candidacy.
After the election, Vance did not forget the debt he owed Trump. As Republicans were reckoning with the obvious reality that Trump was a drag on the party, Vance declared that “any effort to pin blame on Trump, and not on money and turnout, isn’t just wrong. It distracts from the actual issues we need to solve as a party over the long term.” And in January, Vance endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid.
The Ohio Senate primary turned on Donald Trump’s endorsement, and therefore on flattering his whims. About a month before earning Trump’s endorsement, Vance captured this contest’s bizarre nature. “I’ve made my pitch to the president. I continue to make my pitch to the president,” he said. “But we also have to make our pitch to voters because I think there’s a chance he stays out of it.” Dwell a bit on that “also.” For the candidates in the race, voters and issues were an afterthought.
The most defensible version of Michael’s claim is that Vance’s position somehow uniquely endeared him to Trump and thus was key to his eventually earning Trump’s favor. But Ukraine was not mentioned in Trump’s endorsement. (Trump’s actual position on Ukraine was hard to determine at the time.) Regardless, J. D. Vance’s distinguishing comments about Ukraine were not when he “saw his polls start to take off.” The occasion for that rise was the endorsement of Donald Trump, the man in whose thrall Vance remains, and in whose thrall he would like the Republican Party to remain.