Thread by @alexaronson

🚨 Mega 🧵🧵on JD Vance, Trump's far-right VP pick, highlighting the extreme dangers he poses to American democracy, values, and our shared prosperity.

Vance is an election denier, and specifically stated that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have blocked certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

abcnews.go.com/Politics/jd-va…

He said: “We are in a late republican period” and has promoted a MAGA agenda and way of operating that pushes beyond precedent, tradition, and norms. To Vance, this is a counter-revolution to reverse the social and economic progress of the 20th Century.

commondreams.org/news/2022/05/0…

By his own admission, Vance is WAY outside the "conservative" mainstream, saying: “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

He's deeply connected to Project 2025, and pledged that the Heritage Foundation “is going to play a major role in helping us figure out how to govern, at the White House, at the Senate, at the House, and all across our great country.”

Vance champions Project 2025’s most extreme proposals. For example, he has proposed mass firings of federal civil servants, saying Trump should “[f]ire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant” and “replace them with our people.”

nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Invoking Andrew Jackson, Vance has called for outright defiance of the Supreme Court if it tries to stop this agenda: “And when the courts stop you,” he said, “stand before the country, and say — ‘the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

Vance is closely aligned with the GOP's farthest-right extremists. In response to Rep. Marjore Taylor Greene’s endorsement, Vance tweeted: “Honored to have Marjorie’s endorsement. We’re going to win this thing and take the country back from the scumbags.”

https://x.com/JDVance1/status/1485989782475919371

Again, Vance has been a prominent election denier, claiming that “There were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis,” an assertion that has been repeatedly debunked as false.

vindy.com/news/local-new…

Vance has pushed for Trump to fully politicize and weaponize the DOJ, tweeting “This idea that we need to end the administrative state gets our problem totally backwards. America will have a justice department no matter what […] Take it over.”

https://x.com/JDVance1/status/1667540619164545027

Vance has also downplayed the risks of Trump returning to power while encouraging punishment of judges and experts who would thwart the threats Trump’s authoritarian agenda poses to American freedom and stability.

vance.senate.gov/wp-content/upl…

In response to a @washingtonpost journalist's reporting on the increasing odds of a Trump dictatorship, Vance called for DOJ to criminally investigate the reporter for merely exercising the freedom of the press to investigate in the public interest.

static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/co…

Vance’s political positions have been influenced by his close relationship with far-right billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who gave $15 million to a pro-Vance super PACs.

fec.gov/data/receipts/…

Railing against Big Tech, Vance is a hypocritical pseudopopulist. He has disclosed millions of dollars worth of investment stakes in private companies, bitcoin, and public equities.

efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/

Vance claims to be the first outside investor in Rumble, and while he wants to eliminate Section 230 immunity for “Big Tech,” he wants to protect “alternative” platforms like Rumble from shouldering the same liability.

techtransparencyproject.org/articles/j.d.-…

Beyond his connection to Thiel, Vance is also connected to the FedSoc judicial capture architect Leonard Leo. (We just learned today that Leo selected Trump's SCOTUS picks in collaboration with the Heritage Foundation, which is leading Project 2025.)
newyorker.com

Vance belongs to Leo's Teneo Network, a secretive, exclusive group dedicated to spreading a right-wing ideology throughout cultural, political, and educational institutions and ensuring its version of religious rules permeate all aspects of civil society.

propublica.org/article/leonar…

Vance’s economic and domestic policy positions include climate crisis denial. (“No, I don’t think there is, either.”)

independent.co.uk/climate-change…

He also vehemently opposes supporting Ukraine in its fight for survival against Vladimir Putin, saying “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another”

.businessinsider.com/gop-candidate-…

Vance routinely smears immigrants as prone to drugs and crime. He has pushed the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, saying “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more democrat voters pouring into this country”

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/…

@nytimes reported on Vance’s plans to seek revenge against progressive immigration policy, advocating for the Trump Administration to “seize the assets of the Ford Foundation” and redistribute them to people suffering from “radical open-borders agenda.”

nytimes.com/2021/10/19/mag…

In 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Vance also cast doubt on science and vaccine efficacy, claiming “Vaccine mandates infringe on our basic liberties, even as they fail to solve our COVID problem.”

cincinnati.com/story/opinion/…

Vance has blamed America's problems on "the childless left" and is a hardcore marriage traditionalist, praising Hungary's Viktor Orban's traditionalist marriage policies.

theguardian.com/us-news/2021/j…

So much for Trump's efforts to distance himself from Project 2025. In selecting Vance, Trump has officially made this a Project 2025 election.

This man should be nowhere near the West Wing. Learn more here.

project2025admin.com/personnel/jd-v…