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Incompatible With Democracy

Trump, Vance, Project 2025

Zack Beauchamp over at Vox reflects on his encounter with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) in 2022. In 20 words or less: “He was friendly, thoughtful, and smart — much smarter than the average politician I’ve interviewed.”

Also, Vance’s “worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy.” Donald Trump selected Vance as his election-denying 2024 running mate on Monday. A mere 18 months into his first-ever elected office, Vance is another in the line of “best people” Trump has selected, and ready to step into the Oval Office when Trump is gone.

A second Trump administration, Vance suggests, should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” And if a court objects, Trump should ignore the law. It’s a king’s divine right.

Vance is an admirer of authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He is, according to inmate Steve Bannon, “at the nerve center of this movement.” He would enable Trump’s worst instincts and place his interpersonal and intellectual skills at Trump’s disposal.

Beauchamp elaborates:

Vance’s ascendance represents the death of this “adults in the room” model. Backed by people drawn from the lists of loyal staffers being prepared by places like Heritage, Vance would not only support Trump’s radical impulses but seems likely to spearhead efforts to implement them.

He would be a direct conduit from the shadowy world of far-right influencers, where Curtis Yarvin is a respected voice and Viktor Orbán a role model, straight to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In 2004, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean described himself as hailing from “the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.” If the GOP under Trump has indeed evolved into an authoritarian party, then Vance hails from its authoritarian wing.

An alarm bell in the night

“Some of the most fervent and ruthless authoritarian apparatchiks started as opportunists,” William Kristol and Andrew Egger observe of Vance at The Bulwark:

Vance has been more consistently and fervently America First in foreign policy than Trump. He’s more committed to ethno-nationalism and anti-“elite” populism than Trump. He’s been more committed to destroying any non-political civil service than Trump. He’s more contemptuous of the norms, institutions, and mores of liberal democracy than Trump.

Trump is a con man, a liar, and a demagogue with authoritarian tendencies who might be said to have stumbled into leadership of an authoritarian movement. As a result, Trump’s opponents have at times failed to take him seriously. That’s been a mistake.

But not to take the current Trump-Vance moment seriously would be a bigger mistake.

By 2028 (if Trump wins), Vance will

… have Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and all the wannabe leaders of American-style fascism organized behind him.

The selection of J.D. Vance confirms that the Trump movement now is a full-on authoritarian movement. There are no excuses for the many varieties of acquiescent Trump supporters and enablers failing to see that.

Vance’s selection is “an alarm bell in the night.”

Court Accountability Action (CAA) offers a rogues’ gallery of dossiers on Project 2025 players including Vance.

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