Inside the creepy push to make JD Vance America's 'Christian Prince'
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance is a jerk. The Ohio senator is a feckless liar and inveterate blowhard whose squinty-eyed smirk only flashes after he’s delivered a line that he thinks will cause someone pain. There’s a very good reason why Vance is the most disliked figure on either party’s ticket this election year: He’s an unmitigated asshole.
But there’s a group of white men who believe that he may be something more. They see Vance’s ugly attacks on women, immigrants, and others as points to be celebrated. And they see him as the leader they’ve been looking for, a kind of anti-diversity messiah—a “Christian Prince” for a white nationalist America.
As Mother Jones reports, these men pore over Vance’s words, searching for hidden signals with a kind of fervor usually reserved for “Bible code” numerologists. When Vance says America is “a group of people with a shared history and a common future” they don’t hear patriotic pablum. They hear a clear message that America was created for them and only them—and everyone else needs to go.