JD Vance is happy to tell you about his Machiavellian politics

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Americans have become plenty familiar with Machiavellian politics during the Donald Trump era. The president is certainly a practitioner, regularly ignoring morality, facts and the law in his pursuit of raw power and other goals.

And Vice President JD Vance is cut from the same cloth.

The main difference is that Vance will operate that way and then happily explain how that’s exactly what he’s doing.

The most recent example is Vance’s remarkable defense of Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s widely panned ad featuring the estranged mother of his opponent, Democrat Amy Acton. The ad is controversial because Acton has said she hasn’t seen her mother since she was 12 years old, when her stepfather was indicted for sexually abusing her and her mother stayed with him.

The ad basically amounts to politically weaponizing a family trauma involving alleged child sex abuse.

Many Ohio Republicans are practically climbing over one another to distance themselves from it. They include Gov. Mike DeWine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Sen. Jon Husted, who is on the ballot alongside Ramaswamy on November 3.

But not Vance. He stepped forward Wednesday to urge Republicans to put on their big-boy pants and do what it takes to win.

“Well, I’ll be honest with you: Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” Vance began, citing a bunch of alleged offenses Democrats have committed against Republicans.

“Politics is a tough business, and my message to my fellow elected Republicans,” Vance added, “is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”

At a later campaign rally in Ohio, Vance said the ad “calls it out like it is, and calls Amy Acton a liar.”

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Vance’s defense of Ramaswamy included plenty of whataboutism. But his comments also came with a healthy dose of amorality — i.e. saying he was indifferent to the propriety of the ad.

Trump is no stranger to that kind of shamelessness. And he can be pretty blunt about it, too. But Vance has more of a tendency to explain his political calculations and say why he’s downplaying moral considerations.

And he’s done it a lot.

His comments Wednesday sounded like another major defense he offered of a highly controversial campaign tactic: the false 2024 claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing and eating people’s pets.

In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash back then, Vance said he was willing to “create stories” to draw attention to the negative impact of mass migration on places like Springfield.

When Bash pressed him on that phrasing, Vance didn’t concede that the particular “story” he and Trump were telling was false. But he argued that the ends (drawing attention to an important issue) justified the means (surfacing wild rumors).

Vance offered a similar calculation a few weeks later while defending Trump’s false claim that a Venezuelan gang had taken over large swaths of Aurora, Colorado.

When ABC’s Martha Raddatz noted that the GOP mayor of Aurora had called the claims “grossly exaggerated,” Vance responded: “ That means there’s got to be some element of truth here .”

He again suggested Trump’s wild, false claims were usefully drawing attention to the much smaller kernels of (arguable) truth behind what he was saying.

After the Trump administration admitted it had wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia last year, Vance exaggerated the evidence that Abrego Garcia was tied to a gang, which remains unproven. He added that it was “gross to get fired up about gang members getting deported while ignoring citizens they victimize.”

Amid GOP debates over whether to more forcefully denounce antisemites like Nick Fuentes and to distance the party from Tucker Carlson, Vance refused to take a side.

Vance said around that time that “antisemitism and all forms of ethnic hatred have no place in the conservative movement.” But he also delivered a speech in which he said he didn’t “bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.” He added that “we have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”

And after revelations last year about young GOP leaders in a group chat saying vile, racist things , Vance signaled he would ignore the issue because of what Democrats had done.

He specifically pointed to violent text messages from then-Democratic Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones.

“This is far worse than anything said in a … group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance wrote on X . “I refuse to join the pearl-clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

(It’s worth noting that many Democrats had , in fact, denounced Jones’ very ugly text messages.)

It was a far cry from how Vance used to talk about these issues.

Back in 2017, some Republicans defended Trump’s controversial comments about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville , Virginia, by pointing to supposed extremism on the left.

But Vance urged them to get their own house in order.

“I think we need to be able … to point the finger at that evil and name it without trying to point the finger at somebody else,” Vance said on CNN at the time.

Nine years later, the potential 2028 presidential hopeful has not only embraced a much more zero-sum view of politics; he’s also copped to it — and repeatedly so.

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在唐纳德·特朗普时代，美国人对马基雅维利式的政治手段已习以为常。这位总统无疑是这种政治手段的实践者，为了追求赤裸裸的权力和其他目标，他经常无视道德、事实和法律。

副总裁JD Vance也和他一样。

主要区别在于，Vance会那样做，然后乐于解释他究竟是如何那样做的。

最近的例子是万斯为俄亥俄州州长候选人维韦克·拉马斯瓦米（Vivek Ramaswamy）备受诟病的竞选广告辩护。该广告中出现了拉马斯瓦米对手、民主党候选人艾米·阿克顿（Amy Acton）疏远的母亲。这则广告之所以引发争议，是因为阿克顿曾表示，自她12岁起就没见过母亲。当时，她的继父因性侵她而被起诉，她的母亲便留在了继父身边。

这则广告本质上是将一起涉及儿童性虐待的家庭创伤事件政治化。

许多俄亥俄州共和党人几乎争先恐后地与此事划清界限。其中包括州长迈克·德瓦恩、州务卿弗兰克·拉罗斯以及参议员乔恩·赫斯特德，后者将与拉马斯瓦米一同参加11月3日的选举。

但万斯却不同。周三，他站出来敦促共和党人拿出男子汉气概，采取一切必要手段赢得胜利。

“说实话，这则广告是否合适并不是我真正关心的问题，”万斯说道，并列举了民主党人对共和党人犯下的一系列所谓罪行。

“政治是一门艰难的生意，我想对其他当选的共和党人说，”万斯补充道，“如果你真的相信你所说的那些事，就别再抱怨一则广告了，去赢得13天后的选举吧。”

在后来于俄亥俄州举行的一次竞选集会上，万斯表示，这则广告“直言不讳地揭露了真相，并称艾米·阿克顿是骗子”。

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范斯为拉马斯瓦米辩护时充斥着大量的诡辩。但他的言论也带有相当程度的道德缺失——也就是说，他声称自己对这则广告是否合宜漠不关心。

特朗普对这种厚颜无耻并不陌生，而且他在这方面也毫不掩饰。但万斯则更倾向于解释他的政治考量，并说明他为何淡化道德因素。

而且他经常这样做。

他周三的言论听起来像是对一项极具争议的竞选策略的又一次重大辩护：2024 年，他错误地声称俄亥俄州斯普林菲尔德的海地移民偷窃并吃掉了人们的宠物。

当时，万斯在接受 CNN 记者达娜·巴什的采访时表示，他愿意“编造故事”，以引起人们对大规模移民对斯普林菲尔德等地造成的负面影响的关注。

当巴什就此措辞追问万斯时，万斯并未承认他和特朗普所讲述的那个“故事”是假的。但他辩称，为了达到目的（引起人们对重要问题的关注），可以不择手段（散布谣言）。

几周后，万斯在为特朗普关于委内瑞拉团伙占领科罗拉多州奥罗拉大片地区的虚假说法辩护时，提出了类似的计算。

当 ABC 的玛莎·拉达茨指出奥罗拉的共和党市长称这些说法“严重夸大”时，万斯回应道：“这意味着这里面肯定有一些事实成分。”

他再次暗示，特朗普那些疯狂的、虚假的言论，反而有助于人们注意到他所说的话背后那些微不足道的（有争议的）真相。

去年特朗普政府承认错误驱逐基尔马·阿布雷戈·加西亚后，万斯夸大了阿布雷戈·加西亚与黑帮有关联的证据，而这一说法至今仍未得到证实。他还补充说，“对黑帮成员被驱逐出境感到愤怒，却对他们所侵害的公民视而不见，这种做法令人作呕。”

在共和党内部就是否要更强烈地谴责像尼克·富恩特斯这样的反犹分子以及是否要与塔克·卡尔森划清界限展开辩论之际，万斯拒绝表明立场。

当时，万斯表示，“反犹主义和一切形式的种族仇恨在保守主义运动中没有立足之地。”但他随后又发表讲话称，他“并没有列出一份要谴责或封杀的保守派名单”。他还补充说，“我们有比互相攻击更重要的工作要做。”

去年，有消息披露，一些年轻的共和党领导人在一个群聊中发表了卑鄙的种族主义言论。鉴于民主党人所作所为，万斯表示他将对此事置之不理。

他特别指出，当时的弗吉尼亚州民主党总检察长候选人杰伊·琼斯曾发送过暴力短信。

“这比在群聊里说的任何话都糟糕得多，而且说这话的人有可能成为弗吉尼亚州的总检察长，”万斯在X上写道。“当有权势的人呼吁政治暴力时，我拒绝加入那些义愤填膺的抗议者行列。”

（值得注意的是，事实上，许多民主党人都谴责了琼斯那些非常恶劣的短信。）

这与范斯过去谈论这些问题的方式截然不同。

早在 2017 年，一些共和党人就曾为特朗普关于弗吉尼亚州夏洛茨维尔白人至上主义集会的争议性言论辩护，他们指责左翼存在所谓的极端主义。

但万斯敦促他们先管好自己的内部事务。

“我认为我们需要能够……指出这种邪恶并为其命名，而不是试图将矛头指向其他人，”万斯当时在 CNN 上说道。

九年后，这位 2028 年总统候选人不仅接受了更加零和的政治观，而且还承认了这一点——并且一再承认。