Based Camp - J.D. Vance VP Pick： How Trump's Choice Will Permanently Transform the Republican Party

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone. It is so exciting to be here with you today.

00:00:03.600 Again, the world has changed and in an incredibly positive direction.

00:00:09.500 I should think so.

00:00:10.720 In a previous episode, I had said that there are two paths Trump could take with his VP pick.

00:00:17.320 And which path he takes is going to show which team he is on.

00:00:23.240 And it is going to set the future of Republican politics in this country.

00:00:28.360 Would you like to know more?

00:00:31.060 And right now, there are two core Republican factions that are like cultural groups.

00:00:39.780 One is the GOP, Inc. remnants.

00:00:43.620 This is the theocratic faction, which believes in a deontological theocratic morality and wants to enforce that morality on the general public.

00:00:55.120 In other words, we're talking like performative cultural conservatism, what a lot of people think about when they think about traditional conservatives, like religious and typically very Christian.

00:01:08.320 No, the other faction is religious and Christian as well.

00:01:11.500 Yeah, but in a very different way.

00:01:13.100 Yeah, that's what I that's why I didn't say religious, because that's not the important part. 0.94

00:01:17.360 The important part is that they are theocratic and morally deontological.

00:01:21.960 So what I mean by that is these are the types of people that wants to do things like you saw in Project 2025 in their mission, ban pornography, force young men to do programs that basically put them on military enlistment lists.

00:01:35.500 This is very different from the ideology that Trump represents, right?

00:01:41.500 Yes, it's much more socialist leaning, much less libertarian, much less classically liberal, too.

00:01:47.460 Yeah, but yeah, it's very much like the government's role is to enforce a moral system.

00:01:53.220 Yeah.

00:01:53.360 And this was the party that Mike Pence, his last running mate, represented very, I can't be in another room with a woman without my wife there sort of stuff.

00:02:05.060 Oh, the horror of this.

00:02:06.600 And it's not that we have anything against being in an alliance with this group or anything like that.

00:02:10.800 But there is always or up until I would say really just two days ago, there was always a chance that the conservative party post-Trump reorganized around this group.

00:02:23.460 OK, but then there's been a new conservative faction growing.

00:02:27.600 This is the faction that's represented by individuals like Elon and Vivek and Kamath, and they are the tech conservatives, I guess some people would call them, where they're-

00:02:43.360 Peter Thiel's in there, too.

00:02:44.420 Yeah, Peter Thiel's in there.

00:02:46.120 They've been around for a while, but they have been growing in terms of their ability to actually interact with mainstream conservative politics.

00:02:54.020 And I think that if Elon wasn't a foreign national, he would be the obvious person to take over American conservatism after Trump.

00:03:04.460 He's just very lined up to do that in terms of public sentiment these days.

00:03:09.220 Now, talking heads don't think, though.

00:03:11.340 But I think when I talk to the base, I see much more, yeah, way to go, fight the man, you be you, which is also the difference between these two factions.

00:03:19.860 The theocratic faction is very much we should have an authoritarian system or authoritarian in the way it relates to the people, culturally speaking.

00:03:28.960 It's just we don't like who's running it now.

00:03:31.360 Like when we were at NatCon, something we kept hearing is bureaucracy is good.

00:03:34.920 It just needs to be a conservative-controlled bureaucracy enforcing conservative cultural values. 0.86

00:03:39.780 Yeah.

00:03:40.240 They just want to be the man.

00:03:42.320 Yeah, they just want to be the man.

00:03:43.740 Then you have the other faction, which is much more fight the man.

00:03:46.640 It's an anti-authoritarian faction where it does implement controls.

00:03:52.480 The controls are generally designed to prevent authoritarian cultural overreach.

00:03:58.500 So they would promote ideas like there should be some restrictions around what schools should teach and show children when that stuff is literal pornography or literal like brainwashing.

00:04:09.580 Yeah.

00:04:09.840 OK, you're trying to mess with people's kids and stuff like that.

00:04:13.940 But anyway, so there were these two large factions.

00:04:16.400 They have different ideologies.

00:04:17.720 We will lay out this divide more in another episode.

00:04:21.820 But Trump really had the choice.

00:04:24.060 Which faction is his successor faction or crowned as his successor faction?

00:04:29.200 Right.

00:04:29.400 In his VP, he chose J.D. Vance, the writer of Hillbilly Effigy.

00:04:36.440 Elegy.

00:04:36.960 And in doing this, he basically threw in 100% with the tech faction.

00:04:47.520 Thank goodness.

00:04:48.300 In a very interesting way and in a way where a lot of people, when they look at what Trump is doing right now, they're like, how could he support this guy?

00:04:59.760 This guy said Trump was a Nazi. 1.00

00:05:01.860 This guy said he hated Trump, that he was an idiot. 1.00

00:05:04.700 This guy said all sorts of horrible things about Trump. 1.00

00:05:06.800 And Trump said horrible things about him.

00:05:08.500 And I would note here that when I first heard of this guy, when I first heard that he had been elected to office, I was mortified because I hated him from my first impressions of him.

00:05:21.000 Who, Trump or J.D. Vance?

00:05:23.620 He hated J.D. Vance.

00:05:25.120 So my first introduction to J.D. Vance was through NPR segments on Hillbilly Elegy.

00:05:33.980 Oh, wow.

00:05:34.440 I saw him, and this is who he was.

00:05:37.600 He was the real East Coast elite type guy going into the environment where he was born, because he was born into these poorer communities.

00:05:48.400 He was raised in rural Ohio, right?

00:05:51.280 Mostly by his grandmother.

00:05:53.060 Mom was out of rehab.

00:05:54.520 Dad wasn't really super there.

00:05:56.380 He was translating this experience to the NPR audience. 0.98

00:06:01.720 To help them understand how anyone could have ever voted for this fascist monster Trump in their eyes. 0.98

00:06:10.520 Trump is obviously not that. 0.83

00:06:12.040 He is fighting against fascism, I think, in terms of everything I see.

00:06:15.300 Yeah, but he was, essentially the role that he played at the time that Trump was elected was to explain to the NPR Americans, the liberal educated elite that was out of touch with middle America, why less educated white voters could possibly vote for Trump.

00:06:33.760 Yeah, and he, I believe, was thoroughly dehumanizing of these groups in the way that he saw them. 1.00

00:06:41.240 It was like, how could anyone possibly be this stupid? 0.99

00:06:43.620 Now, I, so I disagree, because I actually read Hillbilly Elegy while we were in Peru. 1.00

00:06:49.060 Tell me about it.

00:06:49.860 In 2016.

00:06:50.520 Tell me your take.

00:06:51.160 It's an autobiography.

00:06:52.060 He talks about his life growing up.

00:06:53.180 He talks about the stories and everything.

00:06:55.000 And he leans heavily into that Scots-Irish culture, which is, in some ways, pretty freaking awesome.

00:07:00.640 Part of our cultural background as well.

00:07:02.400 Yeah.

00:07:03.000 You know, like a little crazy, a little.

00:07:05.020 Yeah.

00:07:05.360 So just, she's not talking about Scots-Irish culture more generally.

00:07:08.220 She's talking about the backwoods, Scots-Irish culture, as described in Albion's Seed.

00:07:14.060 Yeah, which ultimately became hillbilly culture.

00:07:17.280 Modern, when people refer to hillbillies, like the progenitor of that culturally in the United States was this wave of Scots-Irish immigration in the early colonies.

00:07:27.200 But anyway, to take a step back here.

00:07:28.740 So I genuinely think who he was when he first hit the public spotlight was a detestable person.

00:07:35.760 Here's the thing.

00:07:36.700 All right, Malcolm.

00:07:37.200 I just want to, let me lay it out for you, just how poetically and narratively perfect this combination is.

00:07:43.120 So what do we have now on the ticket for the Republican Party for the 2024 election, all right?

00:07:49.580 We have got a man who is masquerading as a classy billionaire, who in the end is ultimately super trashy by like WASP-y standards.

00:08:00.060 And we have a super WASP-y guy, Princeton Law grad, ex-military, the perfect politician, extremely WASP-y coded, essentially, who's cosplaying and masquerading as a hillbilly.

00:08:13.580 And they're both these like classic American stereotypes, the billionaire businessman, the backwoods hillbilly.

00:08:19.800 But they're also both classically American and that they're cosplaying these roles that they actually don't hold in the name of political or commercial expediency.

00:08:30.420 I just find that really satisfying.

00:08:33.680 I agree.

00:08:34.140 But I think that it's more than that because there's also an understanding of how did he transform into somebody who today I actually really see myself as culturally aligned with.

00:08:46.140 Because I look at J.D. Vance today and I'm like, he is one of the major players of this tech conservative faction.

00:08:54.660 How did and I think the only really big one who held the currently high office, which made him the perfect pick for the ticket.

00:09:02.700 So how did he make this transition?

00:09:07.300 And I think that this transition was pushed by a few things because he's not the only person who made this transition.

00:09:13.300 When Trump was first running, did Elon support Trump?

00:09:16.340 Oh, and they still cast shade at each other.

00:09:18.640 I don't think you'd see Vivek supporting Trump in his first run.

00:09:21.700 I don't think you'd see Chamass supporting Trump in his first run.

00:09:24.660 The cultural situation has changed.

00:09:27.480 The urban monoculture, Trump basically saw what was happening and one spoke to the real conservative base.

00:09:34.400 And once the tech faction learned and began to understand the real conservative base, they realized they had much more in common with them than they thought.

00:09:43.620 So the old conservative base, the old theocratic conservative base, this basically like socialist, deontological ethical system thing that still exists within many upper echelons of the Republican Party, they were very much about control and motivated by disgust.

00:09:58.520 Like, this grosses me out, stop it.

00:10:00.200 The new conservative base is motivated primarily by anti-authoritarianism and a feeling that their lives are being controlled, their children are being taken from them.

00:10:11.160 And they don't like the way the government has stepped in and attempted to erase their personal cultural autonomy and their ability to raise their family and live the ways that they want to live.

00:10:23.360 And when they began to realize, and I think that this has been a realization process, it's been for me as well.

00:10:30.700 Like, I was very suspicious of Trump the first time he ran.

00:10:33.080 But now, as I understand who he represents and what he is, I was like, wait, those are things I can get behind.

00:10:41.500 That is a cultural movement that I 100% support.

00:10:45.900 And I think that transition is where he's like, oh, wait, I still was so influenced by the urban monoculture.

00:10:53.620 I still had this lingering trust in legacy media that I believed aspects of their narratives and framings about Trump, which breaking yourself out of a cult is hard.

00:11:05.180 And the urban monoculture has become a cult.

00:11:07.740 It is very hard and it's a transitional process to break yourself out.

00:11:11.980 Now, it's getting easier now as they are becoming more extremists.

00:11:16.900 When I say that this is an anti-fascist faction, what is the urban monoculture?

00:11:20.980 We've done other videos on this, but, like, literally Nazism reinvented at this point.

00:11:26.740 They are a group that ranks humans into a class system where different ethnic groups are deserving of different levels of human dignity.

00:11:33.540 You saw this, for example, in PA, our home state, where the COVID drugs that they believed were saving lives were given to people not based on their need, but based on how historically discriminated their ethnic group was.

00:11:45.920 So they were literally allowing people to die to play this game of some human ethnic groups deserve more dignity than other ethnic groups. 0.95

00:11:53.860 And at the bottom of this pyramid recently is the Jews. 1.00

00:11:57.460 Like, they are just, like, literal Nazis now. 0.86

00:11:59.720 They want to use the government to promote their ideology.

00:12:02.680 And they have specifically called out, if you look at what a lot of people are like, they're not out there rounding up people yet.

00:12:10.840 And it's, yeah, but they're calling for it.

00:12:13.060 They just tried to assassinate a president.

00:12:15.720 They hit him with a bogus felony charge.

00:12:18.380 Like, this is, like, third world country stuff that we're dealing with now. 0.99

00:12:22.540 This isn't what America used to be.

00:12:24.880 This assassination attempt didn't come out of nowhere.

00:12:27.260 It came out of more than a decade at this point.

00:12:31.460 This guy was 20, so he was 12 when Trump was first elected.

00:12:34.300 All of his formative years, he was in an educational system and exposed to media that tried to frame Trump as an existential threat to our democracy when he is a 50% support of, like, the American public.

00:12:46.120 And somebody who historically was a progressive New York lefty and his positions really haven't changed that much from those days.

00:12:57.140 It's the progressive party that has changed pretty dramatically.

00:13:00.900 Isn't that wild?

00:13:03.080 But anyway, what are your thoughts on this?

00:13:06.140 What I find promising about, also, the sort of vanguard of which J.D. Vance is a part is that it isn't monolithic in its stances.

00:13:18.300 I would say it's more pragmatic in its stances.

00:13:20.160 And to say that you couldn't just be like, these are the party's stances, I think it's much more selective and targeted.

00:13:30.200 For example, when you look at J.D.'s foreign policy stances, while he has been against intervention in Ukraine, he has been in favor of intervention to protect Taiwan, for example.

00:13:43.380 Because he has differing opinions on the utility for the United States on those stances.

00:13:48.660 And it's nice to see that someone's not just categorically yes or no to foreign government.

00:13:52.480 I'd also add some nuance to his Ukraine stance.

00:13:56.000 His Ukraine stance has been framed by some individuals as anti-giving them support, when it is much more focused on ending the conflict as quickly as possible, through land grants, stuff like that.

00:14:09.040 Which is a stance I personally don't think it's in our best interest.

00:14:13.500 I can understand it from a human cost perspective.

00:14:16.380 Whereas he's also taken, because I do think you could get peace in that region, through some form of compromise, that would be meaningfully lasting due to the demographics of that region.

00:14:27.580 Russia just can't afford, demographically speaking, another war.

00:14:31.300 All these people who are like, oh, they'll attack NATO.

00:14:33.260 They will not.

00:14:33.960 They don't have the people anymore.

00:14:35.440 They haven't exhausted themselves.

00:14:36.660 Whereas you contrast his comments on things like Israel, where he goes, you cannot long-term have a safe Israel and a Gaza. 0.84

00:14:45.620 And that is, I think, for people who are being realistic, probably true.

00:14:51.000 Yeah.

00:14:51.340 No, and I think that's really interesting about many of his stances.

00:14:53.940 Like, when I read some of his stances at face value, I'm like, oh, what?

00:14:57.340 Like, he, at one point, was in favor of a higher minimum wage. 1.00

00:15:02.560 But then, when you dig deeper, you're like, oh, shit. 1.00

00:15:05.880 Like, you're just hardcore. 0.99

00:15:07.200 Because apparently, he's like, of course, this means that McDonald's, for example, will just fire more people and just have a lot more kiosks.

00:15:13.360 And that the people who are left will have a lot more responsibilities.

00:15:16.260 But that means those people who get fired will get retrained and have new jobs.

00:15:19.140 And it's just, oh, he gets it.

00:15:20.740 Like, he understands the policies.

00:15:22.580 Whereas most people who are in favor of, for example, raising minimum wages are like, well, you just need better pay for the workers.

00:15:28.620 They don't realize that a bunch of people are going to get laid off when that happens.

00:15:32.940 And he's like, oh, I know.

00:15:33.760 I know they're going to get laid off.

00:15:34.740 It's fine.

00:15:35.200 It's fine.

00:15:36.040 Yeah.

00:15:36.320 And I think that's really interesting.

00:15:37.820 He does.

00:15:38.440 He shows that he thinks through things.

00:15:39.820 And that, I think, is more of the, it's more indicative of this class of politician.

00:15:44.220 Now, keep in mind, he, like Vivek, has been involved in investment.

00:15:47.020 He's done venture capital investing.

00:15:48.740 Yeah, like us.

00:15:49.580 And so when you have someone who has been trained professionally to look at second and third order consequences about long-term impacts, about how markets will be affected, and they're doing this from the perspective of a more long-term perspective.

00:16:03.920 And also, like, you are directly punished if your long-term bets don't play out, which totally is not how politics works, right?

00:16:10.020 Everything's, like, very short-term.

00:16:11.580 Like, either you get reelected or you don't.

00:16:13.860 Either you immediately get blowback or you don't.

00:16:15.920 Either the political machine spits you out or it doesn't.

00:16:18.260 Like, it's, none of the incentives are aligned properly.

00:16:20.580 You've got this different political class in this faction that is trained around that.

00:16:25.000 And I find that so exciting and promising.

00:16:26.880 And, of course, he does show a lot of the things that we highly agree with.

00:16:29.660 Like, he's one of the few politicians out there, especially among the conservative party, that's in favor of trust busting.

00:16:35.460 And I love that.

00:16:36.180 Which we are super aggressive about.

00:16:37.720 Yeah, and he's pro-nuclear.

00:16:39.320 He's in favor of building more natural gas pipelines, of course, as green as possible, but not going too far.

00:16:43.940 He's in favor of reducing regulatory burden.

00:16:46.220 Like, this guy, now, of course, when someone's a vice president, I feel like the role that I would most like, his first lady, and then the second role that I would love is vice president.

00:16:55.940 Because, like, it's the most, like, chill role ever.

00:16:58.780 I'm going to get you there one day, Simone.

00:17:00.200 You will be vice president one day.

00:17:01.980 Oh, that'd be cute.

00:17:02.980 That'd be super cute if a husband and wife ran this. 1.00

00:17:05.840 That'd be so adorable.

00:17:07.760 Either that or, like, brothers, I think could be really good.

00:17:10.200 Oh, that'd be great.

00:17:10.880 But anyways, another thing I want to note here about him is there is an episode that this episode is unfortunately going to be superseding that's on the history of the internet atheist community and how the community basically fractured into the community that cared about what was true and what was good.

00:17:26.900 And the community that just hated conservatives and was into dunking on them.

00:17:31.400 And that's where Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye went into that community.

00:17:34.660 And then you had Armored Skeptic and a bunch of the early, like, internet voices that moved into this other community and ended up being very influential in the anti-feminist community, which then spawned the Red Pill movement, which then spawned a lot of what became internet conservatism today.

00:17:50.120 And that is why I think that transition is what pulled and generated this sort of tech conservative mindset, because a lot of these individuals have become increasingly red-pilled over time about many things, including religion.

00:18:09.160 As you've seen, if you look at, like, the foreheartsmen of the atheism, like New Atheist Movement, the ones who didn't go woke are now unanimously saying religion is a good thing and it was bad to roll it back.

00:18:20.680 And then you have individuals like us who are moving from the young, angry atheist phase to religion was good after all.

00:18:29.180 I've got to play my Starship Troopers thing here.

00:18:32.080 God is real.

00:18:33.240 He's on our side and he wants us to win.

00:18:36.000 He wants us to win.

00:18:36.500 Across the Federation, federal experts agree that A, God exists after all, B, he's on our side, and C, he wants us to win.

00:18:46.860 And moved back into genuinely a place of religious fervor.

00:18:51.160 Some people are like, you guys actually come off as genuine Bible-thumping fundees. 0.66

00:18:55.360 And the interesting thing, too, is you also see this with J.D. Vance, where he became a Catholic, what, in 2019 or 2021?

00:19:02.160 He didn't just become a Catholic.

00:19:03.400 He pointed out that he had an angry atheist phase.

00:19:06.640 He started, when he was moving into all this, I'd bet when he wrote the hillbilly eulogy.

00:19:12.120 Elegy.

00:19:14.020 Elegy?

00:19:14.900 Okay, yeah, elegy.

00:19:16.000 Hillbilly elegy.

00:19:17.320 Effigy.

00:19:17.940 Hillbilly eulogy.

00:19:19.280 Hellbelly effigy.

00:19:20.300 Like, how many variations of this are we going to do?

00:19:22.800 I don't know, I don't know.

00:19:23.580 But anyway, big words, I don't like them.

00:19:25.040 But he was writing that, and when he first hit the public faith, I think he was still in this angry atheist phase. 0.76

00:19:30.660 And he has been transitioning, and recently he converted to Catholicism, which was not his birth religion, interestingly.

00:19:35.960 Because he said he was convinced that it was true.

00:19:38.600 And I think that this is something we're increasingly seeing, is people developing their own religious beliefs or reconnecting with religious communities because they see the value in them.

00:19:50.780 And that's really what you had from this old atheist community, which was the faction that sorted for truth.

00:19:55.620 And at first it pushed them away from religion because they were like, I can't see how this is logical.

00:20:01.940 And then they realized largely, oh, society is worse without religion.

00:20:06.740 What were we doing?

00:20:07.920 That was illogical.

00:20:09.520 And then there was the other group that's just like urban monoculture, let's dunk on conservatives, right?

00:20:14.580 Even if it means we have to take insane stances.

00:20:17.760 And so there's been this reconvergence.

00:20:19.760 And that's also really interesting that he has followed this journey that's so similar to ours, venture capitalists or former venture capitalists, former angry atheist phase.

00:20:30.820 And then we begin engaging with this culture.

00:20:33.100 You start off being very suspicious of Trump, or in his case, outright hating Trump, and begin to realize, oh, Trump is really the savior of our country.

00:20:42.860 And the one sort of political hope we have of uniting the various factions in opposition to the urban monoculture right now.

00:20:50.940 But yeah, and you could say, why does it matter so much who's Trump VP pick was?

00:20:57.160 Like which faction he came from?

00:20:58.920 And it's because Trump's VP pick is by far the candidate most likely to win or be running as the Republican presidential candidate in the next viable election cycle.

00:21:12.860 Which means that the party is going to naturally be coalescing around this mindset.

00:21:17.900 Now, he is going to really LARP the traditionalist parts of his perspective, because I think he feels he needs to.

00:21:27.500 But it's also-

00:21:27.840 I think, no, I think he's going to code switch.

00:21:29.160 I think he's going to do both.

00:21:30.100 He's going to do tech elite when he's with the tech elite.

00:21:32.040 He's going to do hillbilly when he's with the hillbilly, so they don't call themselves that anymore.

00:21:35.200 And that's something that's really favorable about him as a candidate.

00:21:39.320 And he's not going to speak as much to this old guard, conservative, performative, traditional Christian, or as you say, GOP, Inc.

00:21:49.400 But GOP, Inc. is already bought in to voting Republican.

00:21:53.820 Trump may have disavowed Project 2025, but they're still, well, maybe he's not that organized and he'll use it anyway.

00:22:00.100 A lot of people are so-

00:22:00.960 And we'll probably apply through it.

00:22:02.200 I would love it if it works out.

00:22:03.340 I think it was started with a good mindset.

00:22:06.700 They just are a little disconnected from the base.

00:22:08.780 But we've talked to the Heritage Foundation.

00:22:10.120 They're open to reconnecting with the base.

00:22:11.720 They're very curious.

00:22:12.980 It's just that they were isolated due to the way the conference system works.

00:22:16.320 But the other thing I want to note on the point that you're making here is who does J.D. Vance specifically appeal to?

00:22:24.080 He appeals to the people who were critical and scared of this change that Trump represented when Trump was first coming in, particularly from a progressive perspective.

00:22:37.400 And I think he's going to pull a lot of them over because he can think and model like them.

00:22:43.560 And he is the person who explained to them why people were voting for Trump in a way.

00:22:48.520 He did what Louise Perry did in the U.K. and to a certain extent in the U.S. before she did it.

00:22:53.080 In that there are these people who sort of act like these emissaries from the other side that speak articulately to progressives and honestly speak much more to progressive audiences than they will ever speak to conservative audiences.

00:23:06.820 And I think we also need to consider the integrity that Trump showed in choosing somebody who had spoken so derisively about him historically.

00:23:16.660 That required, I think, swallowing a lot of pride on Trump's part.

00:23:20.960 And I think a lot of people thought him incapable of doing something like that.

00:23:25.960 And I think it shows his character.

00:23:28.080 But I also think it's new Trump, which is something that's been noted in our discord and we've noted it in the debate video is this is not the Trump from two cycles ago.

00:23:36.940 It is he's much more aligned with his base than he was historically.

00:23:40.880 He really seems to understand them now.

00:23:43.260 He he understands the tomfoolery of the old GOP intellectual classes, and he's not going to stand up for it unless they are willing to actually serve him instead of their own secretive agendas.

00:23:54.800 He is really not over bombastic this time.

00:24:00.720 He still knows how to play to a crowd, but he is not he doesn't come across as unhinged.

00:24:06.400 And I don't even think the unhinged narrative works anymore because no one's really afraid of that anymore.

00:24:10.600 And he's also playing to an audience now that is much more open to how aggressive media manipulation has been.

00:24:19.840 Yeah, I agree.

00:24:23.960 Yeah, it's promising.

00:24:25.220 It's a good development.

00:24:26.380 I'm excited for it.

00:24:27.600 And again, just narratively, because I'm the kind of person who loves a VP and president pair that is cute and narratively poetic.

00:24:39.040 I think this is great and the fake classy businessman.

00:24:43.540 There's also the other thing to note about this that was really shrewd of Trump if you're thinking about the long term health of the Republican Party is J.D. Vance's age.

00:24:51.640 Could have chosen a lot of old people who may have had more mainstream.

00:24:55.340 And he's one year older than you.

00:24:57.100 J.D. Vance is just one year older than you.

00:24:58.960 Yeah, he is.

00:24:59.460 Not to make you disappointed in your lack of being a VP right now.

00:25:03.400 Sorry.

00:25:04.660 You know that annoys me, Simone.

00:25:06.480 I'm sorry.

00:25:07.020 I should not have.

00:25:07.600 I'm sorry.

00:25:08.220 I shouldn't have done that.

00:25:09.180 That was bad.

00:25:10.040 I will be president one day.

00:25:12.640 I will.

00:25:13.200 It's a long game, Malcolm.

00:25:14.260 It's a long game.

00:25:14.840 We're playing the long game here, okay?

00:25:16.720 Yes.

00:25:17.200 But I do.

00:25:18.300 Look, we've been gaining public traction.

00:25:20.700 We've been gaining public mind share.

00:25:23.520 Inch by inch, we will get there one day.

00:25:26.500 And I know that things will play out.

00:25:28.440 And I see this as a largely positive sign.

00:25:30.480 But it was very shrewd of Trump because to choose a contemporary of you and me means that Trump is choosing to uplift people who relate to younger conservatives and this new conservative movement and who can run things when he's gone.

00:25:50.380 And I think that if Democrats don't do that, if Biden sticks with Kamala, who is detested by the young base, she is really just there as a diversity play and because she follows orders.

00:26:03.560 Yeah, but not even like just a diversity play that nobody's wanted. 0.96

00:26:06.660 It is so stupid that they are forced into choosing her if Biden's not the one running because she does not appeal to anyone. 0.98

00:26:14.820 She is Hillary plus. 1.00

00:26:16.680 But they can't do anything at this point because they weren't thinking long term and in the best interest of the party.

00:26:23.040 And I feel like almost to an extent, Trump hurt his electability a little bit with this decision.

00:26:28.640 I think it was the right choice.

00:26:30.560 Because he's too techno VC elite?

00:26:33.580 I think that there were other choices he could have made.

00:26:36.520 So I think that J.D. Vance helps Trump's odds of getting elected when contrasted with someone like Pimbs.

00:26:41.100 But when contrasted of all potential VPs Trump could have chosen, there were probably better choices.

00:26:46.560 But I cannot imagine a better choice if what you were optimizing for was the long term health of the Republican Party in this country.

00:26:54.000 And that was really smart.

00:26:56.520 But I also think this shows Trump recognizing rightly the people who Mike Pence appeals to are no longer a politically relevant faction.

00:27:10.240 They'll vote conservative no matter what at this point.

00:27:12.800 And they're not as big as they were historically.

00:27:15.420 And they're especially not big among the youths votes.

00:27:18.740 And actually, this is something I was having a really interesting conversation with a Mormon about today.

00:27:22.620 Because I don't even think they matter from a fertility standpoint.

00:27:26.140 Like they're just not going to exist in the future.

00:27:28.300 He was saying that for a while, so people who aren't familiar with Mormon history, Mormon culture, because they believe in this sort of iterative prophecy idea, that you would have a group of like philosophical elite Mormons who were having this discussion.

00:27:42.820 And that discussion determined what the most recent Mormon theology was.

00:27:49.240 And then Mormonism went through this period of intense hardship from like the 20s to the 50s, where it was hemorrhaging members.

00:27:57.120 It almost went extinct as a church.

00:27:59.480 And what ended up happening was during that period, they transitioned to a completely hierarchical system where like the only one talking from God was the prophet or was the head of the church.

00:28:12.240 And it was not this active philosophical conversation.

00:28:14.960 It was like this commandment system.

00:28:16.800 And instead of every Mormon basically being commanded, like in the old Mormon church, to be like, or at least the Mormon males, to be like part of this, even on the fringes, this active philosophical theological conversation, it was much more, you know, here's what's ethical, here's what's not ethical.

00:28:33.060 They moved to this deontological system.

00:28:35.400 And during a period where that deontological system worked really well.

00:28:39.440 We see this in terms of Catholic fertility rates during this period, which was operating off of a deontological system as well during this period.

00:28:45.780 And it was just very easy in this sort of before modern contraception and stuff like that to motivate really high fertility rates with this system.

00:28:54.140 But the problem is it is a uniquely susceptible system to the urban monoculture and the type of people who genetically seem to really have a strong disposition towards it are uniquely susceptible to like all of the rules that come with modern wokeism and seem to deconvert at a higher rate.

00:29:11.780 And it has just been completely ravaged in terms of low fertility rates within those communities.

00:29:18.480 And we were talking about how what he was noticing was in the Mormon culture, you see this new rebuilding of the active theological conversation.

00:29:25.720 And those communities are the ones that are the ones that are doing really well fertility rate wise in the modern Mormon movement and the ones who were seduced by this deontological. 0.59

00:29:36.760 And so people wonder, they're like, what's an example of a deontologically moral old Mormon? 0.96

00:29:42.600 Girl Defined, I think, represents a perfect example of this.

00:29:45.980 She was constantly using this deontological signaling.

00:29:48.640 We hate X, don't do X, live like this, live like this, live like this.

00:29:54.040 Instead of do this with these consequences for God, it was like this set of rules that you had to really strictly follow.

00:30:00.260 And what are they doing now?

00:30:02.240 They're in the process of deconverting.

00:30:04.080 That is what happened to those individuals when it was follow these rules without the active theological engagement of let's understand these rules.

00:30:13.260 And so I think we're probably going to also see something in the Catholic system is a reemergence of the active theological conversation, because these are the Catholics I know that still have a lot of kids.

00:30:24.540 It's not the old deontological ones like Nick Fuentes, right?

00:30:27.860 It's the new ones who are just like really studious and interested in the actual theology.

00:30:35.060 Converts like J.D. Vance can represent, I think, a good part of this conversation, because he seems like the type of person who would be part of that.

00:30:45.320 And I forgot why I originally was making this point. 0.96

00:30:48.140 But, oh, yes, it's this old deontological system that ruled in the age of the GOP, Inc. theocrats, in the age of the satanic panic, in the age of gays, ick. 1.00

00:30:59.860 Therefore, we can't, even if it helps us win an election, say, OK, it's OK if you guys, I might think gay marriage is immoral, but if it helps me win an election, it's OK for gays to marry. 0.97

00:31:09.300 That doesn't affect me.

00:31:10.400 They're part of a different cultural framework, right?

00:31:12.660 I don't need to adjudicate their salvation using the state government because that doesn't even get them into heaven.

00:31:18.100 They need to actually believe.

00:31:19.400 So all of this other stuff doesn't help.

00:31:21.520 Adjudicating morality doesn't help the country.

00:31:24.000 And as we've shown, it actually seems to lower fertility rates in the countries that are more prone to doing it.

00:31:27.840 And I think this transition is necessary for most of the conservative cultural frameworks that are going to survive fertility rate wise.

00:31:37.740 And it is actually very shrewd from that perspective as well.

00:31:41.600 Instead of clinging to the pearl clutchers, moving to the people who are working on solutions and actual tactics to beat the urban monoculture before it castrates our kids. 0.81

00:31:53.760 Yeah, yeah.

00:31:56.480 And he just got to go back to to J.D. Vance.

00:32:00.380 He definitely seems to be one of these people who's very tapped in to the danger of modern culture.

00:32:07.740 He met his wife at Yale, I think, in a social club talking about America's social decline.

00:32:14.220 Yeah, he absolutely represents a recapturing of this sort of person and bringing them over to the new conservative party.

00:32:20.320 He knows about it. Yale bibliology is also largely about this.

00:32:23.180 Culture is broken in the United States.

00:32:25.420 A lot of things aren't working.

00:32:26.900 So, yeah, he seems to be very awake to it, very aware.

00:32:30.320 It's more what he represents, obviously, because vice presidents don't do anything.

00:32:34.760 But whatever.

00:32:35.380 You know, a vice president is the next person running in an election often.

00:32:38.420 It's who's in the world.

00:32:39.200 Yeah, and that's a good tone setter.

00:32:41.180 It'd be great to see him, you know, run in a new state law and stuff.

00:32:46.060 But he also seems like he would be very competent within the administration and pretty loyal to Trump and his base agenda, given this personal transformation that he has undergone this last decade.

00:32:58.260 And keep in mind, it's been a decade since he came out against Trump.

00:33:01.360 About.

00:33:02.180 Yeah.

00:33:03.380 That's a lot of time to have this sort of personal transformation.

00:33:07.260 By the way, he has three kids, I believe.

00:33:08.780 Yeah.

00:33:09.720 Yeah.

00:33:10.440 Yeah.

00:33:10.680 And they're all about, like, our kid's age.

00:33:12.500 His youngest was born in December 2021.

00:33:15.120 So, we should put them in the index.

00:33:17.400 Not that he would ever respond to our emails.

00:33:19.540 But, you know.

00:33:20.080 I think the odds of us getting positions in the administration have risen dramatically with J.D.

00:33:26.640 Their names are good.

00:33:28.260 It's Ewan, Vivek, and Mirabelle.

00:33:30.640 Nice.

00:33:31.040 I actually like the name Vivek.

00:33:32.120 I was thinking about that.

00:33:33.240 Yeah, it's a good name.

00:33:33.940 But I was also going to say, one thing that I hope that we can continue to become for this new faction is become sort of what Curtis Yarvin was for the last iteration.

00:33:44.580 Before we move into large, hard politics positions, work on pushing the philosophical envelope and better understanding sort of the game plan, how we win and how we beat this monolithic, basically Nazi group that has taken over our country. 0.91

00:34:02.920 And taken over our school system and taken over media, particularly children's media, which is what's most disturbing.

00:34:09.180 And has led to the cultural rot of our country.

00:34:10.980 One thing I'd say is that you watch videos today, you watch movies, you watch what's coming out of Hollywood today, and there's just no light behind their eyes anymore.

00:34:17.940 It feels so soulless, is the only way to put it.

00:34:22.100 And yet we live in Pennsylvania.

00:34:23.300 You go talk to Amish people, and they have this spark in them.

00:34:26.300 And it's something that we're just not seeing that much in society anymore.

00:34:30.720 And I think that the only people who can reignite it, because the force that's blowing out the candle is the urban monoculture, is this progressive force.

00:34:38.840 And so if we want to carry the light through the darkness of the frontier, we need to go all in and ensure that they can win this election cycle.

00:34:47.700 And obviously we're doing our part with running right now and offering our services to anyone who's working on campaign stuff.

00:34:53.140 And we're talking to the various campaign groups.

00:34:54.660 And I think that we've seen divine providence, I think, being shot through the ear.

00:34:59.660 If Trump had his head turned, even just like this, just a little split, he would be dead now.

00:35:04.660 And that is, I think, divine providence.

00:35:06.960 And you know what he was looking at that saved his life?

00:35:09.740 Was a graph of immigration statistics, illegal immigration statistics.

00:35:15.180 So illegal immigration saved Trump's life.

00:35:19.460 There you go.

00:35:20.260 Well, I mean, I would see it as sort of, you could argue, a divine blessing or approval of his plan on illegal immigration policy.

00:35:33.120 A god wink, if you will.

00:35:34.740 Yeah, a god wink.

00:35:35.600 Because I've seen some people in our comments are like, I hate this plan he has to allow immigrants who get advanced degrees in the U.S.

00:35:41.700 And has God personally done something like that for you recently?

00:35:44.780 I think that incredibly strict immigration restriction combined with allowing and becoming a brain drain, especially of countries that we have conflict with.

00:35:55.140 I don't know if we should do it for everyone who gets a degree, but especially if you get a degree at a top 10 college in the U.S., like it is nuts that we kick out like our Harvard PhDs.

00:36:04.080 Like, why are we doing this?

00:36:05.300 That's insane, especially in STEM degrees.

00:36:07.840 Maybe not the liberal arts.

00:36:09.200 Kick them out if it's anything other than a STEM degree.

00:36:11.300 I'd also say, like, our immigration policy, one area where I think Trump could do better on the immigration policy, is I think patrolling the southern border is unrealistic.

00:36:23.100 And it's unnecessary, given that we have net migration out from Mexicans specifically right now.

00:36:30.040 I should note that this trend actually reversed recently, and I misspoke.

00:36:35.000 While we did have a period of net migration out of Mexican immigrants, we are now dealing with a migration in of Mexican immigrants, but small when contrasted with other countries, likely due to the cartel violence right now.

00:36:48.660 Instead, we should work with the Mexican government and patrol their southern border because, one, they hate immigration as well, and it is a much, much easier border to police.

00:37:00.060 And I would also argue that we should work with Panama to develop a U.S. military base at the Durian Gap to prevent immigrants from going through there, which would cut off a huge chunk. 1.00

00:37:14.360 Because right now, a lot of our Latin American immigration is actually coming from South America.

00:37:18.520 So if you can cut off the Durian Gap, which is actually very easy to do. 0.99

00:37:23.980 Sorry, I just realized that some listeners might not have any idea what the Durian Gap is or why it would be so easy to cut off.

00:37:31.220 But between Panama and Colombia, there is an area that has no infrastructure and no roads.

00:37:38.800 That is called the Durian Gap.

00:37:40.960 As to why it has no infrastructure and no roads, it's an incredibly hard area to build in.

00:37:46.880 So there is actually no direct infrastructure connection between Central America and South America.

00:37:55.200 It is considered the hardest part of the South American migration route.

00:38:00.160 And it would be, it's also a very, very tight choke point that would be very, very, very, because the actually viable path through the Durian Gap are few.

00:38:11.080 There's only, like, four viable pathways through it.

00:38:14.480 It would be very easy to cut off.

00:38:16.880 If you've cut off something like 30% of the immigration, you cut off then further the southern Mexico border, then we can begin military intervention against the cartels, which I think is going to one day be necessary for the U.S. to do.

00:38:33.740 And let's just get it handled right now before it spirals out of control and we need to do it because of some sort of mass killing in the U.S.

00:38:42.320 I think that's where we need to go.

00:38:44.580 And then people will be like, so you think that Mexico should live as a basically United States run police state?

00:38:51.160 And I'd say, I think you need to realistically look at the situation on the ground in Mexico these days, the ways that people are being tortured and killed, what's happening, and ask, would that genuinely be better or worse?

00:39:04.720 It would be cheaper for us and it would help more people.

00:39:07.620 And Mexico, by the way, in Arizona, when we freaked out about the progressives, we're like, how dare you do an immigration policy where the cops can just ask for your proof of birth at any time?

00:39:21.340 That's racist.

00:39:22.240 And I was like, when they were freaking out about that, when they were freaking out about what was his name, sheriff, whatever, immigration plan and him being this racist guy, that was actually less strict than Mexico's exact same policy at the time.

00:39:35.720 If we begin to adopt more of Mexico's immigration policy, which I think would be optically an interesting path to go is say, let's stop immigrants at the Mexican southern border and then adopt Mexico's immigration policy, which progressives don't know is actually extremely strict compared to America's immigration policy.

00:39:54.500 I think that we could realistically and at a real cost snuff out most of the illegal immigration of low-skill immigrants that are coming into this country, which I do think is where we need to target. 1.00

00:40:08.440 Because that's just an economic drain.

00:40:10.180 If we're having people come in on, actually, somebody tried to get me for this.

00:40:13.960 They were searching for quotes from my grandfather.

00:40:17.520 Context, my grandfather was a Republican congressman.

00:40:19.980 And they found one of him using a term that was commonly used to describe Hispanic immigrants at the time, but today is not.

00:40:28.640 And he said in the quote, because they didn't tweet the full quote, they were trying to say that, oh, this is proof that Malcolm's family is just the worst.

00:40:35.960 And we've spent generations fighting racism.

00:40:37.480 Like, we're obviously not racist.

00:40:38.740 He said, you cannot have porous borders and social services at the same time.

00:40:45.180 You cannot have a socialist-like system and porous borders because it's just economically unfeasible.

00:40:50.680 It will cause tons and tons of unproductive immigrants to come into the country. 1.00

00:40:54.620 And he was saying this before the Republican Party was anti-immigration.

00:40:58.800 This was actually a pretty spicy take at his time.

00:41:02.680 And I was just reading this being like, way to go, granddad.

00:41:05.520 Like, seeing this coming before it hit us.

00:41:08.200 Maybe using language at the time.

00:41:09.920 I should note here, we have an episode that we filmed that goes over all of our political positions, but we filmed it three times already, and just none of them really caught us.

00:41:18.400 Because I want it to be a really, really solid, tight, punchy, like, this is our entire political philosophy.

00:41:24.660 And so we haven't fully gone into our perspectives on immigration in any of the videos.

00:41:29.580 And I think that people can misinterpret, because we're pro-pluralism, that we are pro-unconstrained immigration, which we are absolutely not.

00:41:38.940 I think it's common sense that you cannot have lightly constrained immigration in any system that offers social services, like Social Security, Medicare, police protection, etc., because those cost money to deliver.

00:41:56.380 And you also cannot have uncontrolled or immigration that is overly politicized in a system where recent immigrants can vote, as we have seen progressives pushing for again and again and again, because then you have a political motivation to promote immigration, which is a bad thing to bring into a country. 0.66

00:42:17.140 And in a world where we have any form of social services in our countries, we need tight restrictions on unproductive immigrant groups. 1.00

00:42:27.040 So basically, any immigrant who's not going to come in and be an active and large participant in our economy, that's just going to hurt everyone. 1.00

00:42:36.100 You know, it's insane. It's insane.

00:42:38.500 But that doesn't mean that we are anti-immigration entirely.

00:42:40.920 If somebody is going to be paying tax dollars, especially more tax dollars than me that are paying for my social services, yeah, sure, I'm fine with that.

00:42:50.440 And in that case, we are open to high-skilled immigrants, particularly people with elite STEM degrees.

00:42:58.200 And in addition to that, we are open to policies that would allow people to immigrate into the United States while voluntarily adopting more aggressive personal tax schedules.

00:43:13.220 No one has seriously pushed this forward yet, and I'm kind of surprised because I think it's a good idea.

00:43:19.660 I.e., you know, you opt to pay – you show, one, that you are a decent earner, and two, you opt to pay, you know, 25% more in taxes than a natural-born citizen, and you get a fast track to becoming a citizen.

00:43:34.360 I think a lot of people would take that, and I think that's a very fair trade.

00:43:37.520 If your pushback to this proposal is, yeah, but what about the culturally – the cultural dilution effects of these high earners?

00:43:46.300 If you know they won't integrate or assimilate well with the native population, I would just ask you to think about the immigrants you know who assimilate quickly and the ones who assimilate poorly. 1.00

00:43:57.860 It's almost a direct line graph on how productive they are.

00:44:02.660 Individuals who are more economically productive assimilate very quickly.

00:44:06.780 It is actually fairly rare for an economically productive immigrant to not assimilate within two generations, whereas it is – if you look at the immigrants who just are not assimilating at all, often the thing that allows them to not assimilate is not being an active participant in the local economy. 0.99

00:44:26.560 I love that they tried to get me to disavow him.

00:44:28.920 I was like, imagine you live in a world where you have to disavow your grandparents because you hear a racial slur from them.

00:44:34.440 That's like normal grandparent stuff.

00:44:36.400 Like, everyone knows the grandparents do that, and you're like, okay, we don't talk like that anymore.

00:44:41.260 But anyway, sorry, that really got me.

00:44:43.160 This idea that people are disavowing their heritage like that.

00:44:47.740 Not everyone.

00:44:49.300 Not everyone.

00:44:49.840 Just some people.

00:44:51.220 I love you, Simone.

00:44:52.020 You are a picture of human perfection, and I cannot wait for the day when you become vice president.

00:45:03.000 I'd much rather be first lady, too.

00:45:07.280 Okay, okay.

00:45:07.960 I'll work on it.

00:45:08.600 I'll work on it.

00:45:09.200 Vice first lady.

00:45:10.520 I love this vice word.

00:45:12.820 We can put the vice in president.

00:45:15.100 You want to put the vice in vice president? 0.89

00:45:17.380 Yes.

00:45:18.160 Let's do that.

00:45:18.700 We're already running against a party that dedicates an entire month to one of the seven deadly sins.

00:45:23.880 You know, pride month, right? 1.00

00:45:26.640 You got to fight back, okay?

00:45:28.140 We'll find a way.

00:45:29.060 All right, Malcolm.

00:45:30.180 I love you.

00:45:30.940 Love you to death.

00:45:33.660 By the way, what do you want for dinner?

00:45:36.000 What do you suggest?

00:45:37.420 I can make you, we can use your leftover miso soup.

00:45:39.800 I can heat that up in a pan and make you potstickers. 0.96

00:45:42.680 I can make...

00:45:43.700 Ooh, miso soup.

00:45:44.600 Potstickers would be good, but I feel like I want to use the onions and tomatoes.

00:45:47.400 Would you like to use that stir-fried chicken from Trader Joe's?

00:45:50.620 I can do that with white rice with you and miso soup on the side.

00:45:53.240 Why don't I use the things that I made deep fried and then we froze?

00:45:57.840 And then I'm going to cook that up with some onions and tomatoes and put it on rice.

00:46:01.700 We did like a three-day deep cooker.

00:46:04.200 We shared it with guests and then you froze.

00:46:05.680 Oh, the slow cooker meat.

00:46:06.900 Yeah, the slow cooker meat.

00:46:09.580 Okay, I can micro-wip it to thaw it and then you want to stir-fry it.

00:46:12.660 Okay, let's put some in the fridge to saw and then tonight what I'll have is miso soup and gyoza.

00:46:19.040 Okay.

00:46:20.620 Love you.

00:46:21.140 Love you.

00:46:23.140 Bye-bye.

00:46:25.480 Bye-bye.

Based Camp - July 17, 2024

J.D. Vance VP Pick： How Trump's Choice Will Permanently Transform the Republican Party

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