I really didn't like JD Vance's appearance on Megyn Kelly

Minority Report

Just wanted to write something about this because I don’t think a lot of people understand this perspective.

Earlier this week, Vice President Vance appeared for an interview on Megyn Kelly’s show. Although the interview was nominally to promote Vance’s new book, the interview seemed to me to be (and was widely understood as) an attempted olive branch to the rightwing podcast/influencer sphere, which had become hostile to Trump and the Trump administration in the months following the 2024 election. This hostility was greatly accelerated by the botched rollout of the Epstein files, kicked into overdrive by the Charlie Kirk assassination, and finally developed into a clear break during the Iran War, which has hopefully this week settled into a lasting peace.

The interview itself was largely unremarkable. Vance gave a well-spoken defense of the recent Iran deal. The reaction that I saw on Twitter was pretty much entirely positive, outside of Israel shills freaking out about the Iran deal and Vance’s dovish foreign policy instincts more generally. The most praise seemed to be directed to this short clip that contained the following exchanges alluding to the oft-discussed “MAGA Civil War”:

Vance: We have a constituency right now that is saying that ‘We’re going to send boots on the ground.’ They want Donald Trump to send hundreds of thousands of ground troops into Iran… [W]e need people to be pushing back from inside the tent.

Kelly: ‘Some of us push back and then we’re told, ‘Those who speak ill of Mark Levin are not MAGA.’

And then later

Vance: The frustration that I’ve had with the non-interventionist side has been that the attitude seems to be that ‘We disagree with the President on this particular policy’ look, we can have that debate, but fine, you disagree with the President on this particular policy that doesn’t mean you can give up on the entire enterprise… I don’t like this idea of ‘the President did something I didn’t like, so I’m out.’ I think that’s a very immature way to approach the political process and it’s a very good way to ensure that your enemies always win.

Kelly: I agree with you

I don’t disagree with anything Vance said here. There is a powerful constituency that is very upset with the recent Iran peace deal and was pushing for unending escalation at every stage of the conflict. Likewise, there is a large constituency that has, under the guise of non-interventionism, advocated for a withdrawal from politics all together (which would only mean their certain defeat).

My objection is that Megyn Kelly, and many other large figures in the Influencer sphere, were not merely pushing back on the Iran War or merely advocating for a withdrawal from politics.

Just in the past 30 days, I have watched Kelly nod along to Sean Ryan claiming that core MAGA is now the “pedophile supporting Israeli lobby” and Buckley Carlson saying that there would be no difference if former Socialist Rifle Association officer Graham Platner became the Senator for Maine, rather than a Republican who votes with her party roughly 94% of the time. Kelly even proclaimed that “The line between Left and Right is merging… There’s something rising out of the middle of that that is far less partisan… People think of me as a Republican, but I haven’t been a Republican in over 20 years.” She insisted that Trump was cheating on his wife and described the (widely known to be retracted) rape allegations against Trump from his ex-wife. Kelly even bemoaned the fact that disgraced ex-National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who apparently leaked the late Charlie Kirk’s text messages to Candace Owens and said he’d be willing to testify for the defense at the trial of Tyler Robinson, had resigned from his position in government rather than staying on to leak to her.

I think Kelly is part of a circle of media personalities that was working to secure a Democrat victory in the midterms in order to expand its influence within Republican politics. I don’t think that these people didn’t understand what they were doing. I don’t think that they were representing their motivations honestly. In many cases, I don’t think that they genuinely believed the things that they were saying. In essence, I think that these are not good faith critics of Trump and the Trump administration.

I know that Vance is on a book tour now, and that Megyn Kelly has a large platform to promote his book. However, I think the obvious attempt here to bring someone like Kelly (presumably along with other figures in her orbit) “back on board” is a big mistake and betrays a misunderstanding of the situation that has been created by these people.

After Charlie Kirk’s murder, Megyn Kelly became an outspoken defender of Candace Owens. She claimed that Owens had not accused Erika Kirk of killing her husband, even though the implications of what Owens was saying were obvious. As Owens’ attacks on Erika Kirk and TPUSA staff escalated and objections to these attacks became louder, Kelly bragged that “[Owens] and I actually have only gotten closer over the past couple of months as people try to make me attack her.”

It was this closeness, born at a time when Candace Owens was claiming that Kirk had been killed by virtually everyone except Tyler Robinson, who was caught on video entering and leaving the scene, turned in by his own parents, and confessed to the crime, that allowed Kelly to broker an extremely ill-advised “detente” meeting between Owens and Erika Kirk. Unsurprisingly, Owens’s attacks on Erika Kirk only accelerated after the meeting. Owens is now campaigning to free Charlie Kirk’s murderer.

Owens was a bad faith critic. She says things that aren’t even plausibly true while concealing her true, deeply cynical, motivations. Megyn Kelly helped launder this behavior to her audience. I am still today just as disgusted by this clip of Kelly and Tucker Carlson laughing about how Candace Owens really upsets certain people and claiming that she’s just “asking questions” about potential Israeli involvement in Kirk’s murder as I was when I first saw it.

This bitch is a complete disgrace. It’s really shameful how many figures acted after the Kirk murder. You should treat the people who indulged Candace Owens’s harassment campaign targeting Erika Kirk and TPUSA after the murder as though they have engaged in cannibalism. If you merely interact with these people without hostility, I do not have very much respect for you. If you think there is any kind of future for the Right where this stuff is tolerated and widespread, you are very wrong.

It is currently tolerated and widespread because of people like Megyn Kelly. It is crazy to me that the people who helped to create this problem are treated as regular participants in political discourse. There is no kind of whataboutism that you can come up with to explain away the total loss of standards and normalization of demented behavior on the Right. Theo Von makes a joke about Candace Owens’ theory that Erika Kirk helped murder her own husband and then posts a picture of Owens at his Easter Party. The very next week, Vance recommended that people listen to Von’s podcast. Is this stuff OK? Do any of these people actually add very much? I don’t think so.

As I wrote in my very brilliant recent retrospective on Year 1 of the Second Trump Administration:

Oftentimes the problems that these people are reacting to are very real, but they certainly won’t be the ones to solve them. The issue is no longer what these influencers are saying at any given moment, but that our peculiar rightwing influencer class even exists. Good things happen only in spite of them now.

Bringing figures like Kelly back on board is not a noble venture. I do not give anyone credit for negotiating a détente with someone who was engaging in bad faith. In fact, I blame the “peacemakers” for whatever damage these characters manage to do when they inevitably fall back into their old patterns of behavior, with the added credibility that weak people have given them by signaling to others that their earlier behavior was not disqualifying. Someone who acted in the way Kelly has during the last few months should never be trusted again. In fact, interacting with this woman as though she were still a respected journalist is an endorsement that she does not deserve.

I see it as trying to launder her bad behavior. If you don’t object to Megyn Kelly being brought back into the fold, what kind of objection are you going to be able to muster against a similar rehabilitation of all the people who she’s been thick as thieves with for the past few months who have been declaring that Trump is the anti-Christ, a supernatural deceiver who abandoned his domestic agenda after being blackmailed by the kikes into starting WW3 because he was caught up in a pedophile conspiracy? Do you think Kelly is going to stay your friend when you have to keep these guys out? All of them are replaceable. None of them bring anything particularly new or interesting to the table. Normies can and will find different morons to listen to if you simply stop throwing these people bones after they cross lines that were crossed a long time ago.

If you want to know why the Trump administration seems to have lost so much ground with young men, it’s because lots of big figures have been lying about the Trump administration constantly, and the Trump administration and its surrogates have failed to hit back with the necessary force because the lies nominally had “based” intent. Bad faith attacks are responded to with shrugs and sheepish grins. Malignant figures are indulged forever, even when they begin openly pushing for real-world political victory for liberals. This weakness allowed lies to become common knowledge. If you won’t defend yourself, you shouldn’t expect anyone else to.

No one likes hearing this perspective. There are lots of friendships and favors and financial relationships that make cutting ties hard. It’s tough to close yourself off to what seem like valuable resources and to ignore people who are saying all the right words. “Don’t you understand we have to beat the neocons!” Yes, I do, I’ve opposed those people for a long time. Figures like Megyn Kelly were really late to the party on many of the issues that seem so important to them now. These morons associating good views with their indefensible and counterproductive behavior is the greatest gift that Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham ever received, even if those legacy figures’ decline and eventual extinction is still already baked into the cake.

Unfortunately, the only way to end the “MAGA Civil War” is to win it. The impulse to compromise or make peace is very harmful here. The people who did these bad things to hurt us should not be given any more spins of the wheel. Whether they’re saying good things or bad things, you have to be willing to simply not care and keep them out.

Vance is almost certain to be Trump’s successor. This became true the second that Trump announced him as the Vice Presidential nominee. I do not believe any reports that Trump is considering endorsing Marco Rubio, who I do not think has any chance of even running if Vance does. Figures like Cruz or Massie have no chance at all of even being competitive. Barring some huge break with Trump, Vance is going to win the 2028 primary in a landslide. I think he’ll probably be a great candidate in the general and a great President after that.

Vance does not need Megyn Kelly’s permission to win. He does not need access to Megyn Kelly’s audience (this is why I don’t care about Vance making a more combative appearance on The View on the same day as his Kelly interview), Megyn Kelly viewers were certainly already primed to listen to the Republican Vice President. These media figures are not actually powerful in their own right. They are dependent on credibility from others. As Trump has demonstrated many times before, if you actually fight back when you need to, the illusion is shattered and audiences begin to slip away. Vance does not need to fight these people right now, he doesn’t need to condemn people who he’s had long running friendships with, but he really shouldn’t help them after what they did.

Because no article is complete without a tenuous Russian Revolution connection: Those adamant that the Retard Right be rehabilitated after months of pushing for defeat in order to guard against a supposed future resurgence of the neocons should examine the fate of leftwing Prime Minister Kerensky after he let the Bolsheviks, disgraced and imprisoned for plotting to overthrow the government, out of jail in order to fight against a supposed rightwing coup. The rightwing coup ended up being imaginary. It was the newly freed Bolsheviks, who had already proven they couldn’t be trusted, that ended up overthrowing Kerensky and taking all of Russia down with him. Unlike the Bolsheviks, I don’t think the Retard Right has any chance of taking power in its own right. They might, however, deliver power to the Left if they are given the ability to do so by people who should have stopped indulging them a long time ago.

Dragging all of these people into the future is unnecessary and harmful. Pitmommy politics on the Right must come to an end. We don’t just have to up with your retarded piece of shit dogs. Towards the end of the interview Vance says, “The coalition that made Donald Trump the President of the United States… It was Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. It was also Mark Levin and John Podhoretz.”

Perhaps this is true, but I don’t think any of these people actually have much to add anymore. Mark Levin is a fucking idiot. It’s a problem that anyone still listen to him. You’re never going to break this cycle by anointing some other idiot to act as your champion against him. If Vance wants to push back against Levin, he should do that himself, directly, or at least not through empowering surrogates with their own baggage like Kelly. You do not need Kelly to sell peace in the Middle East; this is something that is already very popular. You do not need Kelly to sell the Trump administration; this is already something that is far more popular than any podcast retard ever could be. All the good things that we are going to do and all the bad things that have been prevented flow through Trump, not the people who are trying to steer the ship by sinking it.

Anyway, sorry for the extended rant. I hope you were listening to this on Substack’s text-speech-program, I just saw a bunch of people praising this thing that I thought was actually really bad. We can’t all just get along. I’m not going to forget the last few months or in many cases the last few years. I have seen continued indulgence of bad faith actors or malignant characters ruin groupchats, social circles of a few hundred people, and eventually Twitter dot com. This behavior is something that I pointed out would become a problem in an article released at 2AM the night that Trump was reelected in 2024, when everyone was talking about a vibeshift. Most people are too weak-willed to tune out the noise and just say “No.” It’d be a shame if this stuff was allowed to ruin rightwing politics (and, from that, America) at a time when we have more opportunities to fix things than ever before.