The Megyn Kelly Show - J.D. Vance on Trump, Addiction, and Family

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00:00:30.980 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.700 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and this bonus weekend episode.

00:00:47.780 With Senator J.D. Vance being named former President Donald Trump's vice presidential nominee,

00:00:52.100 we wanted to look back at the time J.D. was on this show.

00:00:55.520 Back in episode 29, we were just little babies at the time.

00:01:00.640 We were only audio at the time as well. No video.

00:01:04.140 It was November of 2020. We had launched the show in September.

00:01:07.920 It was a very different time in our country, quite tumultuous as you may remember.

00:01:12.160 Just weeks after President Biden was elected. Think of that.

00:01:14.980 And J.D. was just a mega best-selling author back then.

00:01:19.940 He hadn't even done anything in politics.

00:01:23.100 Certainly not a U.S. senator or a vice presidential nominee.

00:01:25.960 We talked for two hours more about a wide range of topics from the 2020 election,

00:01:32.560 to his family, to our interview for NBC back in 2017,

00:01:36.180 to some blind spots that the Democratic Party has,

00:01:38.720 and yes, whether he might get into politics.

00:01:42.380 It's a great window into who he is and super fun to listen to now that you know

00:01:46.580 where life took him over the next few years.

00:01:50.140 Enjoy, and I'll see you Monday.

00:01:56.080 Thank you so much for being here.

00:01:57.960 Thanks for having me.

00:01:58.840 You're a good person to have on right now as we watch this election appear to come to its close.

00:02:03.260 The Trump voters right now are angry.

00:02:07.420 They're ticked off.

00:02:08.780 They do believe there was funny business in connection with this election.

00:02:14.360 And I was thinking about you because Hellbilly Elegy tells us the code to follow

00:02:18.980 when one feels that one has been wronged.

00:02:21.540 And that code is to fight, to fight.

00:02:25.360 So how does that manifest now?

00:02:27.780 Yeah, I think there's, first of all, a lot of frustration over the perceived hypocrisy.

00:02:35.120 I think, in fact, the real hypocrisy, if I'm laying my cards on the table, right?

00:02:39.100 So you had this election in 2016 where Trump won.

00:02:42.540 It was very upsetting to a lot of people in the establishment press and other institutions.

00:02:49.100 And for basically, you know, like two weeks, there was this period where all of these people

00:02:53.600 asked themselves, oh, have we gotten something wrong?

00:02:55.940 Have we missed an important part of the country?

00:02:58.960 You know, we're going to go read Hellbilly Elegy or some other book to try to understand

00:03:01.660 people in the middle of the country.

00:03:03.620 And then that just stopped.

00:03:04.800 And it was all about Russia.

00:03:06.160 It was all about Trump's problems.

00:03:07.720 It was all about how the election, in some ways, was illegitimate.

00:03:11.900 And I think there's just this real frustration that for four years, we've had this constant

00:03:19.620 sense and messaging from certain quarters that the Trump presidency is illegitimate.

00:03:26.980 And, you know, we're three weeks after the election, and there are these legal challenges

00:03:30.180 working their way through the courts.

00:03:31.840 And people are just preoccupied with Trump needs to accept the legitimacy of the election.

00:03:37.100 So I think that hypocrisy, the fact that nobody accepted his election and his supporters are

00:03:42.640 supposed to accept the election so quickly after it's done, I think just causes some real

00:03:48.340 frustration.

00:03:49.960 I don't think, I mean, you look at the last three weeks, you've had a lot of court filings,

00:03:55.260 you've had a lot of peaceful protests, you've had a lot of people complaining on social media.

00:03:58.980 But I really don't see any reason to think that this is going to become violent or chaotic.

00:04:05.220 I think, you know, people certainly feel that they need to fight and they need to see this

00:04:10.160 through to the end.

00:04:10.860 I think they're supportive of the president continuing the litigation.

00:04:14.160 But I also don't think, you know, frankly, these are the sorts of people who are going to go

00:04:17.680 burn up stores and set cars on fire and make life a living for hell for everybody.

00:04:24.160 I think that when Biden is inaugurated, people will, you know, more or less accept it.

00:04:27.980 And it'll be on to the next fight.

00:04:30.360 Yeah, exactly.

00:04:31.060 The fight can take many forms.

00:04:32.760 It doesn't have to be looting.

00:04:34.140 It can be opposing Biden's policies and making sure that they don't get forgotten again, that

00:04:40.000 the working class stays in the forefront of one's mind, which wasn't the case during the

00:04:45.220 Obama years.

00:04:45.860 I mean, I think as we've been told so many times by, you know, these sort of elite media

00:04:51.560 types that Trump supporters are all, they're Neanderthals, they're Nazis, they're racist, they're

00:04:57.440 awful.

00:04:58.440 It's no one actually stops it to pay attention to what Trump did for these guys in the Rust

00:05:05.300 Belt.

00:05:05.560 What's happened to the Rust Belt?

00:05:06.980 Why did he win four years ago, Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin?

00:05:11.180 There was, as you point out, a period where people want to take a hard look at that.

00:05:14.500 And then and then they didn't.

00:05:16.120 Then they just decided to dismiss everybody as awful, as just bigoted for voting for the

00:05:20.780 guy.

00:05:21.260 And I just wonder whether these folks are, you know, in a uniting mood right now, as

00:05:26.880 we're as we're being told we must unite around Biden's agenda.

00:05:29.980 No, I don't I don't think they are.

00:05:31.740 I don't think the country is in a uniting mood.

00:05:33.620 And frankly, this idea that we're all just going to come together over the new Biden

00:05:36.960 presidency is a little bit of a joke.

00:05:39.340 I think certainly people will let their political passions subside a little bit.

00:05:43.640 Election seasons are always a little bit exhausting for people who are engaged in politics and

00:05:48.420 pay attention.

00:05:50.080 But but no, I don't think people are just going to let bygones be bygones, because to

00:05:54.180 your point, you know, the two consistent threads that have come from the mainstream

00:05:58.260 press since Trump's election in 2016 have been, you know, one, the election was stolen

00:06:04.060 in some way.

00:06:05.440 You know, Russians hacked the election.

00:06:06.780 If you look at public polls, a pretty large share of Democratic voters think that Russia

00:06:11.500 actually like hacked into voting machines and changed the tabulation.

00:06:15.400 And so, you know, there's been this sort of the sense of illegitimacy focused around

00:06:19.920 the Russia issue, but it's other issues, too.

00:06:22.740 But the second, and I think in some ways, frankly, the more pernicious instinct that's

00:06:27.120 existed in our politics is, to your point, you know, turn the Trump voter into this evil,

00:06:33.300 malignant force in American politics.

00:06:35.260 And I, you know, I'm 36 years old now, and I can't think of any period where the winner

00:06:41.040 or the loser in a presidential election has spent the next four years obsessing about

00:06:46.600 the character defects of the other side of the country, right?

00:06:49.720 This idea is like, oh, we lost these people.

00:06:52.400 We're going to try to appeal to them, maybe even in a fake way.

00:06:55.460 Maybe we're going to lie to them, but we're at least going to try to pretend that we care

00:06:58.520 about their votes.

00:06:59.240 That's how it works in a democratic society.

00:07:01.080 That just didn't happen at all over the last four years.

00:07:04.020 There's just been this idea that these people are Neanderthals or deplorables or racist.

00:07:08.480 And I, you know, obviously sort of coming from this community, Megan, sort of, you know,

00:07:13.800 white working class community with a lot of Trump voters, I really, really am bothered

00:07:19.060 by this.

00:07:20.280 And, you know, one of the threads that came out was this idea that Trump voters are animated

00:07:26.800 by an extraordinary amount of racial resentment.

00:07:30.480 And to dive into the details just a little bit, the way that's usually measured, you call

00:07:34.100 people up and you ask them, you know, what do you feel about this issue?

00:07:37.640 What do you feel about that issue?

00:07:39.960 And there are two really interesting things about these academic studies that identify

00:07:44.840 Trump voters as overly racist.

00:07:46.980 The first is that they're basically just asking people to discuss race issues in the parlance

00:07:55.020 of modern woke politics, right?

00:07:56.960 So if you talk about racial issues as a modern college-educated urban millennial, then you get

00:08:04.380 low on the racial resentment score.

00:08:05.940 And if you talk about race issues in a way that most non-college educated people are going

00:08:10.820 to talk about them, even if you are not yourself racist, just the fact that you don't have the

00:08:16.280 same sort of, you know, verbal rules that you're following, they're going to get you tagged as

00:08:21.940 high on the racial resentment score, which allows people to dismiss you.

00:08:24.900 And related to that, one of the things you pretty consistently find is that if you look at white

00:08:30.960 voters and you give them, or white working class voters, you give them a high score on

00:08:34.800 this racial resentment index, you know who else gets really high on the racial resentment index?

00:08:39.620 Black voters and Latino voters as well.

00:08:41.840 And so there's been this sort of ignorance that there's just like a basic disconnect in how

00:08:47.940 American elites and the rest of the country talk about racial politics questions.

00:08:53.720 And Trump voters, I think, have been made out to be the villain because they don't use the sort of

00:08:59.840 modern woke dialogue.

00:09:02.200 And I just think that's, you know, one, it's unfair.

00:09:05.580 Two, obviously people are going to feel put upon if you just call them racist because, you know,

00:09:09.960 being called a racist can get you fired.

00:09:12.040 It's sort of, you know, one of the marks of not being welcome in polite society.

00:09:17.200 And then the third piece of it is just that it's created a society where we're not actually

00:09:22.180 trying to listen to or understand where these folks are coming from.

00:09:26.340 There's just, again, no even pretense that we're going to try to understand these voters' concerns,

00:09:32.360 make their lives better, make an appeal to them.

00:09:35.040 And I think that's just very dangerous.

00:09:36.540 And you can't expect to run an election like that and then just have these folks,

00:09:39.960 come back to the table, willing to unify with the people who were calling them racist just

00:09:44.800 a few months ago.

00:09:46.020 Absolutely.

00:09:47.040 It's a and as you look at sort of how the election has shaken out thus far, Trump improved

00:09:52.980 his margins largely with Hispanic voters, a little with black voters.

00:09:58.180 I mean, what do you think those folks are trying to say to the people who are telling everyone

00:10:02.940 you have to speak about race and ethnicity in the way we want?

00:10:06.620 Otherwise, you're bad and you have to hate Trump.

00:10:08.860 Otherwise, you're bad.

00:10:10.480 You know, the narrative got turned on its head in when we actually saw voting results.

00:10:15.260 Yeah, I think this this is a really important question.

00:10:17.540 And, you know, so much is represented in the language and the rhetoric.

00:10:23.380 I just think that there's this obsession among professional class Americans to talk about

00:10:28.760 these issues in a particular way.

00:10:30.140 And if you don't, you're a bad person.

00:10:31.840 And the perfect representation of this is this this phrase Latinx or Latinx, which is

00:10:38.580 supposed to be a a non-gendered way of talking instead of saying Latino.

00:10:43.640 It's a non-gendered way of talking about that ethnic group.

00:10:48.420 And one of the things you find with public polling is that the people who never use that

00:10:54.520 word are actual Latinos.

00:10:56.000 Latinos and the people who use that word all the time are white Americans with professional

00:11:01.720 degrees.

00:11:02.920 And so, again, there's just this weird class diversions in how you discuss these issues.

00:11:07.160 And I just think of it as like this ultimate example of elitism, because you're basically

00:11:14.880 telling Latinos, you know, I know a number of Latinos.

00:11:18.660 A lot of them are very proud of the language, whether it's their first language or their second

00:11:23.040 language, Spanish, you're telling them that the language of their home, the language of

00:11:27.260 their families is somehow discriminatory and that you, the white person with a law degree

00:11:33.320 from Harvard or Yale, you know how to modify their language in a way that's going to make

00:11:37.560 them more politically correct and more acceptable in polite society.

00:11:41.700 And I don't think it's surprising at all that a lot of folks looked at that.

00:11:45.000 A lot of listeners looked at that and said, not for me.

00:11:47.700 No, thank you.

00:11:48.580 And they went for Trump in pretty surprising numbers.

00:11:51.540 And it's, you know, I think that people who have looked at the exit polls on this stuff

00:11:55.620 have actually underappreciated how powerful the Latino shift to Donald Trump was.

00:12:01.700 You know, the exit polls are always very unpredictable.

00:12:05.940 But there are counties along the Rio Grande River Valley that are like 95% Hispanic, where

00:12:12.660 Trump didn't just win more than he won.

00:12:14.420 And he didn't just win more than he won in 2016.

00:12:17.760 He actually won a majority of the overall vote.

00:12:20.760 So we're talking about a pretty dramatic shift to the president and to the Republican Party,

00:12:25.860 which I think if Republicans can hold on to, it would be great.

00:12:28.920 But I think Democrats really should wake up to the fact that the way in which the professionally

00:12:35.880 educated leadership class of the Democratic Party just discusses these issues comes across

00:12:41.120 as condescending and frankly, just a little bit weird.

00:12:43.860 Like, I mean, how many times have you listened to these people talk, whether it's about racial

00:12:48.360 politics or economic issues or gender and sexuality, and just thought to yourself, like,

00:12:53.740 who are these weirdos and where do they learn how to talk about that?

00:12:56.580 I think that's a big problem.

00:12:57.320 Totally.

00:12:58.060 Well, I can relate to the Latinx thing as a woman, because I was told by TED Talks that

00:13:03.700 we need to say women, like, I don't even know how you pronounce it, but it's W-O-M-X-N,

00:13:09.400 W-O-M-X-N.

00:13:12.080 If I don't say that when speaking about my gender, I'm a bigot.

00:13:16.420 I'm a transphobe.

00:13:17.680 Well, screw you, TED Talks.

00:13:19.480 Women, women, women.

00:13:20.700 W-O-M-E-N.

00:13:21.720 There, I said it, and I'm going to continue.

00:13:23.040 I said, I don't need TED Talks to tell me how to spell my gender in some new way to be

00:13:28.580 inclusive.

00:13:29.040 And it is annoying, and it's actually motivational.

00:13:32.500 I can see it turning a Latina or Latino into a Trump voter because they don't want to be

00:13:39.520 whitesplained, too, right, by my neighbors here on the Upper West Side.

00:13:43.960 And then, you know, what we get is a situation where four years ago we had Hillary Clinton

00:13:48.360 calling them all deplorable, and then Trump won, and people said, oh, we better not do

00:13:53.060 that.

00:13:53.340 That was bad.

00:13:54.020 She shouldn't have said that.

00:13:55.000 That alienated people.

00:13:55.960 And instead of actually taking their own advice, we got four years of Democrats and

00:14:02.240 media amping it up.

00:14:04.260 They've gone from deplorables to Nazis.

00:14:07.120 And we have a little soundbite, J.D., that we put together, including, I think it kicks

00:14:11.180 off with Christiane Amampur, who just two weeks ago, 10 days ago, doubled down on this.

00:14:18.300 She was ultimately forced to apologize, though her remarks sat out there uncorrected for a week.

00:14:23.300 But take a listen.

00:14:24.040 This week, 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened.

00:14:28.140 It was the Nazis' warning shot across the bow of our human civilization after four years

00:14:33.320 of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump.

00:14:36.600 I'm going to use an extreme example.

00:14:38.580 Think about Hitler.

00:14:39.660 So many stunning parallels to what Hitler was doing.

00:14:43.600 In describing Hitler's psychological profile, and this only pertains to Adolf Hitler, there

00:14:48.020 is so much that is resonant of the Third Reich in this administration.

00:14:52.220 Many tendencies like Adolf Hitler.

00:14:54.260 Does this look like Germany in 1932?

00:14:57.580 We're getting close.

00:14:58.640 And this only pertains to Adolf Hitler and pertains to nobody else.

00:15:01.620 90% of what he says, I'm like, this guy gets it.

00:15:05.040 If you've read anything about the rise of the Third Reich and Adolf Hitler, you will see

00:15:09.240 the parallels.

00:15:10.000 Donald Trump is a true psychopath.

00:15:12.040 He's like Hitler or Stalin.

00:15:13.380 That sounds a lot like a certain leader that killed members of my family and about 6 million

00:15:17.700 other Jews.

00:15:18.920 Oh, my God.

00:15:20.040 That was put together by the Washington Free Beacon.

00:15:22.260 But it really brings it home.

00:15:23.440 They're not going to stop.

00:15:24.600 As they're telling us that we're healed and we're unified, there's been no accounting for

00:15:28.860 any of that.

00:15:29.380 In fact, there won't be because that is what they think.

00:15:32.080 That's what they think of Trump's voters, 74 million people, and especially the white working

00:15:37.380 class who will never be forgiven for putting him in office to begin with.

00:15:41.400 They were supposed to be Democrats.

00:15:43.240 They turned on their party.

00:15:46.100 Yeah.

00:15:46.200 I mean, you know, first of all, you owe me for having forced me to listen to that.

00:15:50.520 The, the, the, yeah, I mean, it really drives home that there is a core component of the

00:16:01.100 leadership of the country, the leadership of the Democratic Party that really isn't interested

00:16:04.800 in unity and, you know, fraternity.

00:16:11.100 They're interested in submission, right?

00:16:12.840 When you talk about people like that, when you call them Nazis, when you compare them

00:16:17.780 to people who murdered 6 million innocent people, you're not making a play for them

00:16:22.840 to come to the table, meet as equals, hash out our differences and move forward as a

00:16:27.640 country together.

00:16:28.420 You're basically asking them to submit.

00:16:30.960 And I don't think people should be surprised that a very proud group of people who feel

00:16:34.980 rightfully so, like they had a huge part of helping to build this country, are going

00:16:39.300 to submit.

00:16:39.700 But they're, they're just not going to do it.

00:16:41.440 And so I think we're going to have a pretty chaotic politics from this point forward.

00:16:45.020 The other thing I just want to say, reacting to that video is, you know, I'm not a history

00:16:50.360 expert, but I understand the Kristallnacht was pretty violent.

00:16:52.940 Obviously the Holocaust was like the most violent thing imaginable.

00:16:56.620 A hundred thousand front voters gathered in DC a couple of weeks ago to protest.

00:17:00.960 And the violence was primarily from like left-wing paramilitary groups against them.

00:17:07.340 They maintained an incredibly peaceful presence despite a very heated topic and a very heated

00:17:13.760 time in our country.

00:17:14.920 So I just, the comparison and the treatment of these guys is like these violent criminals,

00:17:20.460 violent thugs.

00:17:21.060 It's just, it's just bizarre because they're actually just not right.

00:17:25.480 They're angry.

00:17:26.040 They're frustrated.

00:17:26.920 And there are a lot of people who are expressing their views, but they're not doing it violently.

00:17:31.000 And that, that's just often completely missed when people compare these folks to, you know,

00:17:36.920 violent, violent extremists of the past.

00:17:39.500 You know, I go back to the end of Obama's second term.

00:17:42.160 And I was talking with folks close to the white house about sitting down with him because even

00:17:48.800 then this is before Trump had even secured the nomination on the Republican side, Obama

00:17:54.840 was regretting not having paid more attention to this group of voters.

00:17:59.460 He, he's smart and he understood they were unhappy and his policies had not helped them.

00:18:05.940 And this could be a growing force in American politics.

00:18:08.260 And I think he had genuine regret over not considering them and their needs more.

00:18:15.120 And certainly they had the final say in the election of Donald Trump.

00:18:18.740 But I wonder what's going to happen now because there's a reason, of course, these folks voted

00:18:25.520 for Trump and a lot of the white working class still voted for Trump.

00:18:29.380 Most of them still voted for Trump this time around.

00:18:31.700 His, his share of white, white men went down a little, but, um, they still were on team

00:18:38.920 Trump, even though he lost those states more because of suburban voters and seniors.

00:18:44.600 And it could, it was, looks like it was largely related to the pandemic and the way Trump talks

00:18:48.940 for those voters.

00:18:50.280 But looking back at what Trump did, you know, one of the reasons he was elected was he promised

00:18:55.240 he was going to roll back a lot of these regulations Obama had put in place that he was going to

00:19:00.280 be for the working class.

00:19:02.620 And, you know, Obama wanted environmental regulations over, over any sort of industrial

00:19:08.140 revival.

00:19:08.980 Trump was exactly the opposite.

00:19:10.540 You know, he, he tried to reduce, well, he did reduce corporate taxes.

00:19:15.580 He, he tried to encourage the return of production to the United States where he would try to shame

00:19:19.360 any company that was going to take its plant overseas.

00:19:22.200 He, he went after China and their unfair trade practices.

00:19:25.840 He, he did reach new trade agreements with Canada, with, with Mexico, with South Korea,

00:19:30.660 all trying to favor more domestic production, not to mention tariffs he put in place to help

00:19:36.520 industry here.

00:19:37.180 And we had a boom in oil and gas production.

00:19:39.460 This is like, this is all stuff that this group of voters loved, but now you've got not

00:19:44.400 just any Democrat, but Obama's number two, Joe Biden in there.

00:19:48.080 And I just wonder what, what you think the sense is right now amongst those voters in

00:19:52.800 terms of what's about to come their way.

00:19:54.860 Yeah.

00:19:55.000 I mean, just as a preliminary point, I do think that one of the lessons for Republicans, there

00:20:00.940 are obviously a lot of, a lot of lessons for Democrats.

00:20:02.880 We'll talk about it.

00:20:04.080 One of the lessons for Republicans from 2020 is that they maybe took the white working class

00:20:08.900 for, for advantage a little bit.

00:20:12.340 I think that, you know, you should have expected that group, frankly, to go even more stronger

00:20:16.100 for Trump, more strongly for Trump than they did in 2016.

00:20:19.540 There was a little bit to your point of a stagnation, not really reversal, but certainly

00:20:23.620 a stagnation.

00:20:25.180 And I think that, you know, my read on this is that where Trump, you know, governed as

00:20:31.140 a populist, where he really hammered China, the trade issue, the immigration issue is where

00:20:37.200 he was most popular.

00:20:38.280 And, you know, when, when he governed as a traditional Republican, I do think that he

00:20:43.040 probably, you know, led to some stagnation in that voting bloc.

00:20:48.140 And so I think that's, that's one of the lessons to take away from this.

00:20:51.520 Because he did ultimately cut a deal, a deal with China.

00:20:53.720 I mean, he did ultimately cut a deal, which they may not be happy about.

00:20:57.460 Yeah, he cut, he cut a deal with, with China.

00:20:59.800 And it was funny that the, the, the tax plan, which there were a lot of things I liked about

00:21:04.320 and some things I didn't like about it, I think to the extent that that was really focused

00:21:09.180 on bringing capital and investment back to the country and cutting middle-class taxes,

00:21:15.160 it was really good for him.

00:21:16.160 And to the extent that it looked like something that Mitt Romney would have done, it frankly

00:21:19.780 wasn't that, that popular.

00:21:21.000 And so there was this really, you know, interesting push and pull between the Trump instinct within

00:21:26.140 the White House and, you know, the more establishment instinct within the White House, which is, of

00:21:29.820 course, you know, something that a lot of other folks can talk to better than I can.

00:21:33.380 Um, but, but I, I think on, on the Biden question, you know, what, what would worry me and, and

00:21:40.980 what I think a lot of folks are, are concerned about is sort of a reversal on the China issue.

00:21:49.100 Uh, so, so I think the China issue is probably the, the most substantial of Trump's, uh, wins

00:21:56.800 as a president.

00:21:57.580 I think he totally changed the conversation on China.

00:21:59.820 And if, if you think about the environmental issue as related to the China issue, so, you know,

00:22:05.460 we think of environmental issues like, okay, fuel standards, reducing emissions here at

00:22:09.660 home, but the way in which our environmental policy can be most destructive is actually

00:22:14.640 on industrial power questions.

00:22:16.820 Because if the Chinese are allowed to pollute as much as they can, then they can build and

00:22:22.500 make things and manufacture things much more cheaply than we can.

00:22:26.020 And so if you're going soft on China, which I think frankly, Biden's secretary of state

00:22:31.460 looks like a soft on China guy, while at the same time, putting America under stricter

00:22:38.160 environmental regulations than the Chinese, then what you could have is a real stagnation

00:22:44.380 in a manian American manufacturing output.

00:22:46.960 Which of course is, is sort of what you need to actually build a thriving, working and middle

00:22:52.500 class in the country.

00:22:53.300 You have to have a viable manufacturing sector.

00:22:55.460 I think that's the, the lesson of Germany.

00:22:57.140 It's the lesson of Switzerland.

00:22:58.460 It's certainly the lesson of the United States in the last 20 or 30 years.

00:23:02.580 Um, and so there is this, this fear that a lot of the wage growth that you saw over the

00:23:10.260 last four years is going to get reversed in this preoccupation with, instead of building

00:23:18.980 a viable manufacturing sector for the middle class, with this idea that you can just transition

00:23:25.100 the existing middle class to the jobs of the future.

00:23:28.300 And I think that's an important piece of the puzzle, but there's just no way.

00:23:32.980 And I think if you actually listen to, for example, Rahm Emanuel talk about the economic

00:23:38.080 prospects of the Midwest, you know, Rahm Emanuel said, I think it was on CNN or some other

00:23:42.300 network a couple of weeks ago, well, these folks just have to learn to code.

00:23:45.100 They lose their manufacturing jobs.

00:23:46.520 They have to learn to code.

00:23:47.900 And I'm a very big fan of investing in the future of the economy, but you can't tell tens

00:23:54.480 of thousands, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing workers.

00:23:57.100 They're just going to have to go back to school when they're 52 years old and learn to code.

00:24:00.600 It's ridiculous.

00:24:01.480 It's unrealistic.

00:24:02.600 A lot of people aren't going to be able to do that.

00:24:04.780 And so if that is your orientation, let's just focus on the technology sector instead

00:24:10.300 of really rebuilding and reinvesting in American manufacturing.

00:24:14.180 I think a lot of people are going to get left behind and a lot of the progress we made over

00:24:18.080 the last few years is going to stagnate.

00:24:20.200 And I do worry about that.

00:24:21.940 No, Forbes reported that employment grew in manufacturing jobs by almost half a million

00:24:27.780 under Trump after falling by 200,000 under Obama.

00:24:33.300 So, I mean, that's a pretty big swing and that's the kind of swing that can turn numbers

00:24:40.020 in an election.

00:24:41.300 And so if Biden gets in there and starts re-implementing these regulations on manufacturing, on, you

00:24:47.940 know, trying to protect the environment at the expense of the American worker, it could

00:24:52.320 have real life consequences in terms of our electoral politics and in terms of lives.

00:24:57.040 You know, I mean, you talk about, learn to code is so absurd for most people.

00:25:01.040 I mean, I'd be one of them, but Hillbilly Elegy takes a hard look at sort of the malaise

00:25:08.260 happening in these communities in the Rust Belt, almost the lack of agency a lot of these

00:25:14.560 workers have.

00:25:16.400 There isn't this, let's go get them kind of attitude.

00:25:20.080 I can do anything.

00:25:21.040 I will learn to code.

00:25:22.080 You're talking about guys who like took four lunch breaks and they stretch from 20 to 60

00:25:26.920 minutes over the course of time.

00:25:28.060 And ultimately they get fired.

00:25:29.380 It's not all about what the government can do for you.

00:25:33.580 A lot of it has to do with attitudes that have been cultivated in these communities that

00:25:38.420 might not lend themselves to brilliant careers as coders.

00:25:44.120 Yeah, I think there's a lot of, you know, the way I'd put it is that there's a lot of

00:25:46.800 hopelessness in these communities and they've been battered in a lot of different ways for

00:25:50.780 the past, you know, not 30 or 40 years, but 50 or 60 years.

00:25:54.300 And there, you know, there's something like grandma, grandpa has used to told me, he was

00:25:58.020 sort of an old, you know, union steel worker voted for a Democrat pretty much every single

00:26:02.720 election of his life.

00:26:03.940 I think he voted for Reagan once in 1984, otherwise voted for Democrats his whole life.

00:26:09.340 And, um, you know, he, he told me that, you know, look, there are people who just aren't

00:26:16.400 doing very well, right.

00:26:17.280 And every, in every community, in every place, you know, there are people and you, you know,

00:26:20.880 these politically incorrect guys who said deadbeats, right.

00:26:22.820 There's deadbeats in every community, like the difference between the 1950s when, you

00:26:28.600 know, Middletown, our hometown had a really viable manufacturing sector, you know, really

00:26:32.860 robust private sector unions, um, because the jobs that supported private sector unions actually

00:26:39.460 existed and hadn't been all shipped to China and Mexico.

00:26:42.980 Uh, but yeah, they were deadbeats back then, but they were enveloped in a community that could

00:26:48.320 actually get them back on the right path.

00:26:50.140 Right.

00:26:51.000 When you take a community where all of those sort of support structures have been weakened,

00:26:55.420 where, you know, the churches have been weakened, the jobs don't exist anymore.

00:26:59.620 The people who, if you were slacking on the job in the 1950s would have said, Hey man, you

00:27:04.100 got to get your head back in the game.

00:27:05.720 Let's figure this out.

00:27:07.100 Those people just aren't around in the same numbers as they were 40 or 50 years ago.

00:27:11.460 And so you just have much weaker, what I call community infrastructure.

00:27:15.460 It's not all about government supports.

00:27:16.960 It's about everything that exists in the community where you actually live and you take that stuff

00:27:21.940 away.

00:27:22.800 And it's just really hard for people to get back on their feet.

00:27:26.820 Um, you know, yeah, some of them are not making good choices.

00:27:29.640 That is a fact of life.

00:27:30.800 I don't shy away from that in the book.

00:27:32.160 I don't shy away from talking about that, uh, in, in my life, uh, but if you're going

00:27:37.460 to actually help those people, I think we should help people, uh, whether they're ambitious

00:27:41.920 or not, whether they want to learn to code or whether they just want to work in a simple

00:27:45.620 manufacturing job and be able to earn a living wage is you've got to have a viable and robust

00:27:53.140 set of institutions.

00:27:54.080 And one of those institutions is good manufacturing oriented jobs.

00:27:58.300 Um, you know, we can talk about this question of cultural versus economics.

00:28:03.040 I think it's, it's obviously a pretty controversial thing that the book dives right into.

00:28:07.300 You know, I've, I've always thought that the economics and the culture are related, right?

00:28:11.300 If the culture starts to go South, it's harder to sort of maintain economic productivity.

00:28:16.360 Uh, if the economy starts to go South and the jobs disappear, then people become hopeless.

00:28:20.720 And that sort of starts to affect the culture.

00:28:22.780 And I think these things are all related.

00:28:24.500 And if your solution to this problem, your solution to these communities,

00:28:27.900 is, Hey, uh, you guys just need to go to Ohio state or the university of Cincinnati and pick

00:28:35.840 up C plus plus software programming.

00:28:38.180 Uh, then you're not actually going to help people.

00:28:40.320 You're making yourself feel better by ignoring them, uh, but you are ignoring them.

00:28:43.920 And I think we should just be honest about that fact.

00:28:46.060 The other important points to make here, and it's, it's, it's like the third rail of American

00:28:51.720 politics is this question of immigration.

00:28:54.980 And there's always the, you know, what, what are we talking about when we're talking about

00:28:58.240 immigration?

00:28:58.700 Are we talking about wage competition among the lower class?

00:29:02.140 I think that's actually a big driver of why a lot of Latinos in the Southwest went to Donald

00:29:06.860 Trump is because he was a little bit, um, stricter on immigration.

00:29:10.540 Um, there's this question about, is it, is it culture or race?

00:29:13.460 Is it people just don't like Latinos?

00:29:15.060 They don't like Mexicans.

00:29:16.040 They don't like Guatemalans.

00:29:17.120 Um, you know, I, I really don't think that's part of the story, but the third thing that

00:29:21.920 we just don't talk about on the immigration side is the opioid epidemic and the effect

00:29:27.820 that having this really porous border has.

00:29:30.600 And we know that probably 80 or 90,000 pretty young Americans are going to die of an opioid

00:29:37.960 overdose.

00:29:38.580 Uh, that has been pretty consistent, uh, for a long time, but one of the ways that those

00:29:45.180 drugs are getting in, especially fentanyl, uh, which is a very powerful opioid that pretty

00:29:49.700 much instantly, you know, gives you an overdose.

00:29:52.500 If you take a sufficient dose of it, um, fentanyl is being manufactured in China and primarily

00:29:58.320 coming across the Southern border.

00:30:00.140 And so when, when we, you know, I think we're going to have a big reversal of Trump era immigration

00:30:05.740 policies for the Biden administration, you know, but if they're listening to me and they

00:30:09.420 probably aren't, I would say, whatever you do on the Southern border, make it as hard

00:30:14.680 as possible to bring fentanyl into American streets, because you want to talk about hopelessness

00:30:19.100 in towns like mine, talk about the meth and the fentanyl that are coming into these communities

00:30:24.500 where even if you have people who are working good jobs, they get snared up in this stuff

00:30:29.460 and it's just over.

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00:31:20.820 You talk about culture versus economics and the effect on a community and, you know, the

00:31:31.020 absurdity of the learn to code message to these coal miners, let's say.

00:31:35.500 Think about if they turned around, if, you know, Trump's administration turned around to

00:31:40.480 black America in Chicago and, you know, where you talk about blight, right?

00:31:45.920 And said, learn to code the outreach that we would get in that message.

00:31:52.880 You know, yes, we do have to talk about agency and willingness to get off the couch and fix

00:31:58.160 your own life for sure.

00:31:59.340 That's a that's a massive piece of it.

00:32:01.880 But we also have to be realistic about what the economics look like and what's really realistic

00:32:09.100 and expecting of these people.

00:32:11.040 And I just think you can't if you can't do it with the black community, you can't do it

00:32:14.940 with the white community.

00:32:15.680 And what we're really talking about is people who are lower socioeconomic status and how

00:32:20.440 to lift them up.

00:32:21.260 And you've got to look at both of these things.

00:32:23.100 What's their attitude and what's what's potentially available to them?

00:32:26.400 Yeah, there's there's a sociologist who's actually a very liberal guy.

00:32:29.940 And I've gotten to know him a little bit.

00:32:31.060 And I cited him a few times in the book.

00:32:32.900 His name's William Julius Wilson.

00:32:35.260 And, you know, very much a guy on the left, but just incredibly thoughtful about these problems.

00:32:41.080 And, you know, he's he's been pretty influential in how I think about this interplay between

00:32:46.260 cultural and economics, because you're right.

00:32:48.660 You've got to take people who are sitting on the couch doing nothing and you got to get

00:32:51.280 them off the couch.

00:32:52.000 You got to get them into good jobs, you're hopefully able to support families, able to

00:32:55.900 raise those families and stability and comfort.

00:32:57.780 And then you create a virtuous cycle from generation to generation instead of, you know, the vicious

00:33:02.660 cycle that we sometimes have in families that are struggling with joblessness and addiction

00:33:07.860 and so forth.

00:33:09.060 But, you know, one of the things that's going to motivate people to get off the couch, of

00:33:13.520 course, is the existence of a good job, right?

00:33:15.360 That's an important piece of it, but it's not the only piece.

00:33:17.960 Another thing that's going to motivate people to get off the couch is when their neighbors

00:33:22.060 and friends are also getting off the couch, right?

00:33:24.280 When you're in a community where there just isn't a lot going on, where a lot of people

00:33:30.600 are doing drugs, a lot of people aren't finding good jobs, even the guys who want to go

00:33:34.840 and work and find good jobs, it creates this sort of mentality where why try, right?

00:33:41.380 I call it, you know, learned helplessness.

00:33:44.540 You know, hopelessness is a good way to think about it.

00:33:47.040 But if you want to actually improve people's lives, you can't just say, well, here's some

00:33:54.280 money, right?

00:33:55.320 Here's a check from the government, spend it well, or here's a good job, go and apply.

00:33:59.600 But you've got to create the community infrastructure that makes people feel like it's possible.

00:34:06.280 And if they try, something good is actually going to come from it.

00:34:09.340 And we've got to feel pressure, too.

00:34:10.880 I mean, you know, I've certainly been, I'm sure all of us have been in moments in our

00:34:15.060 lives where we're feeling a little bit lazy, a little bit shiftless, unsure what we want

00:34:18.700 to do.

00:34:19.480 You know, one of the things that helps break you out of that pattern is somebody in your

00:34:22.880 life saying, hey, you know, do something else here, right?

00:34:26.320 Um, you know, go, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's your wife who says you need to do the

00:34:31.120 dishes or help out a little bit more.

00:34:33.180 Maybe it's somebody in your family who said you need to go and apply to that job.

00:34:36.780 You know, those things matter.

00:34:38.680 But like, I think about my own life and all of these little influences that helped get

00:34:44.540 me on the right path.

00:34:45.860 You take those influences away and it's just me trying to figure this stuff out on my own.

00:34:50.640 And I think things just don't, don't go as well for me, right?

00:34:53.100 If mamaw wasn't telling me you need to go get off your ass.

00:34:56.320 And apply for that job and work hard.

00:34:58.880 If, if I didn't have, you know, my, my sister and my aunt and my mom saying, you know, if

00:35:04.600 you want to have a good job, you may need to go get an education.

00:35:08.340 If I didn't have people in the Marine Corps saying, you know, here's what you need to

00:35:11.740 do.

00:35:11.960 Here's how you need to apply for financial aid.

00:35:14.100 Here's how you need to sort of structure your life so you can actually succeed in school.

00:35:17.720 You know, all of these weird little community influences are what I think the building blocks

00:35:22.980 of success ultimately are.

00:35:25.020 Um, and, and, and those, you know, that, that's sort of, as I see at the interplay between

00:35:29.780 culture and economics is it's not just the good job.

00:35:32.860 It's also the full spade of community actors that make it seem both possible and available

00:35:40.100 to you to actually get off that couch and go do something.

00:35:43.160 Um, and that's what's, you know, that's, what's ultimately missing when you're, when

00:35:46.580 you've got people, um, who, who, who are really, really left behind and, and really don't see

00:35:55.240 a path forward.

00:35:56.600 I also think that's the thing that's missing the most is people in their lives who can actually

00:36:00.440 help them.

00:36:01.140 Right.

00:36:01.620 It's, it's back to the old, if you can see it, you can be it.

00:36:04.080 You know, it's, it's very helpful to see role models around you who have done it.

00:36:08.040 But I also think this is one of the problems with identity politics because the messaging

00:36:12.140 from people who are obsessed with their gender, their skin color, their sexuality, uh, is you,

00:36:19.580 the reason you can't do it is because of these immutable characteristics.

00:36:23.080 Like you can't, you, the American dream is not possible for you because the system won't

00:36:29.040 allow it.

00:36:29.600 And it completely takes away a person's agency and, and they do openly crap on the American

00:36:36.080 dream.

00:36:36.840 It's not possible for you.

00:36:38.460 America itself is not what people say it is.

00:36:41.700 And this anti-American sentiment cropping up, I think is another thing that motivates

00:36:46.140 a lot of voters, but it's, they're basically challenging the notion that anyone, no matter

00:36:52.620 their circumstances can achieve success in this country.

00:36:55.600 What, one of the things that I think so beautiful about your book, your story, and the reason why

00:37:01.540 many on the left hate it is that you're, you, you're an example of it being possible, even

00:37:09.560 under really tough circumstances, even for a kid who has almost no advantages other than

00:37:16.980 a grandma and, and grandpa who really loved him and decided to give him a little tough love.

00:37:24.160 Yeah.

00:37:25.000 I mean, the thing I always ask people when they talk about the structural and systemic

00:37:33.960 factors that make it hard or impossible for people to achieve is let's say you're absolutely

00:37:39.480 right.

00:37:40.560 Let's just say for the sake of argument that you're absolutely right.

00:37:43.940 Like what good is that message when directed at a kid who's struggling and trying to figure

00:37:50.060 out how to make their way.

00:37:51.120 Right.

00:37:51.540 So I, I'm not one of these people who says the people, you know, says that sort of poor

00:37:56.340 folks don't have any disadvantages.

00:37:58.680 Like I can't possibly look at my grandma's life and my grandma's upbringing and say, you

00:38:03.640 know, she had the same set of opportunities as someone who was born in a, an upper class

00:38:08.860 background in the 1940s in New York city.

00:38:12.480 I think frankly, she also had a lot of advantages, right?

00:38:15.080 She had, I think a lot of important cultural training that she wouldn't have gotten, but

00:38:18.720 obviously her life was hard.

00:38:21.320 I don't, I, I don't know who would look at my life and say, you know, JD had it easy relative

00:38:26.820 to a kid born of privilege, but so what in some ways is the takeaway from that to tell

00:38:33.640 a kid like me, when I was 12 years old, your life is unfair.

00:38:37.060 The deck is stacked against you.

00:38:38.740 There's nothing you can ultimately do.

00:38:40.640 So, you know, why isn't the message that I take from that ultimately, well, I should just

00:38:45.060 give off them, right?

00:38:45.920 If the deck is stacked against me, if there's no hope that I shouldn't even try.

00:38:49.840 And there's, there's just this weird strain of thought in American life right now, where

00:38:54.280 you can't hold two thoughts in your head at the same time.

00:38:57.360 And in this particular moment, I think the two thoughts, this particular question, the

00:39:02.520 two thoughts that we have to hold in our head at the same time are one, yes, life can be

00:39:07.180 hard for people who are born poor in tough circumstances, but two, it's still important

00:39:14.480 for them to see that they have agency and that they need to try anyway, right?

00:39:18.900 It might not always work out and we got to be honest about that fact, but the worst of

00:39:23.480 all possible worlds is where people are just told there's no hope.

00:39:28.220 There's no reason to try.

00:39:29.460 There's no reason to make anything of yourself.

00:39:31.340 And I do unfortunately think that's the message that a lot of people on the left are ultimately

00:39:35.620 giving to communities like mine.

00:39:38.120 I am, you know, my, you know, my, my grandparents were classic blue dog Democrats and I'm actually

00:39:46.440 sympathetic to a lot of the arguments that folks on the left make about, you know, certain

00:39:51.620 unfairnesses.

00:39:52.660 You know, especially when it comes to people who don't, um, who don't have a lot of money,

00:39:57.360 who grew up in traumatic homes, who've grew up in abused and neglected environments.

00:40:01.400 I don't think that they're wrong, that that creates special disadvantages, but you can't

00:40:08.040 just encourage people to wallow in everything that's gone wrong in their lives.

00:40:11.780 You have to be able to say on the one hand, you know, we as community leaders, as policymakers,

00:40:16.520 as media folks are going to try to make it a little bit easier for those who are disadvantaged

00:40:21.100 to have a shot at the American dream, while at the same time telling people who are struggling

00:40:25.640 to achieve the American dream, it's possible.

00:40:28.040 It is out there for you if you're, if you're willing to work for it.

00:40:32.080 Well, I think the other piece of it too, is once, once is once one achieves the American

00:40:38.040 dream, the response, the collective response from the left in particular should not be fuck

00:40:44.480 off.

00:40:46.000 That's the, one of the problems we're seeing is success has been so demonized in the country

00:40:50.440 now, even if you are self-made, just having it is a problem.

00:40:53.680 You know, they're, they'll, they'll hold it against you.

00:40:55.940 You've, you've, you must now see the rest of the country as less than you must not be

00:41:01.460 paying your fair share.

00:41:03.100 You have to give more of it back, you know, and the less you give the more of a miser and

00:41:07.560 awful person.

00:41:08.260 It's like, I don't know that I, I just think we've changed the messaging from good for you.

00:41:13.760 Maybe I could do it to help me understand how to screw you.

00:41:18.120 Yep.

00:41:19.080 Yeah.

00:41:19.580 There's definitely a way in which I think our country is really, I shouldn't say our

00:41:24.680 country.

00:41:25.040 I think that our leadership class is really uncomfortable with success and with people

00:41:28.900 who have achieved success.

00:41:30.280 So I saw this interesting poll just a couple of days ago and it was looking just at Trump

00:41:35.080 voters, college educated Trump voters versus non-college educated Trump voters.

00:41:38.920 And it was, the question was, you know, do you think that it's possible for a person to

00:41:44.160 achieve the American dream?

00:41:45.300 And I think it was 71% of non-college educated Trump voters said yes.

00:41:50.220 And I think it was, you know, 40% or something of the college educated Trump voters said yes.

00:41:55.320 And it was true for the, for the Biden voters as well.

00:41:57.640 I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was basically the people who didn't have college

00:42:00.740 degrees were actually more optimistic about their future and more optimistic about the

00:42:05.160 chances for the American dream than people who had gone to college.

00:42:08.420 And I, and I think that's because they haven't thankfully absorbed the message that their

00:42:14.960 lives are hopeless just because they don't have all the advantages in the world.

00:42:18.300 And that's, that's just an important thing.

00:42:20.260 And I, I, I worry about our, our country's inability to, you know, try to uplift those who

00:42:28.560 are struggling without treating those people as hopeless children who have no, have no agency

00:42:33.380 and no, no responsibility.

00:42:35.660 Um, you know, there's, can I ask you something about that?

00:42:38.400 Cause I, I, I wonder is the other piece of that, the people who are college educated saying,

00:42:44.160 eh, I don't know.

00:42:46.080 Is that, do you think born of, I, I made it.

00:42:51.700 It's not that great.

00:42:52.880 You're like, I have to work my ass off.

00:42:55.760 I never seen my family.

00:42:57.680 The government takes 50% of my dough.

00:43:00.560 Uh, you know, I, I kind of made it to the promised land and what do you think?

00:43:06.260 Yeah, I, I, I think there's, there's part of that going on, but the biggest, when I looked

00:43:11.580 at that poll, what I took away from it is that if you're a working class American versus

00:43:18.040 a professionally educated American, a person with, with post a bachelor's education, uh,

00:43:24.460 then you're, you're fundamentally living in, in two different media and information environments.

00:43:29.140 And I, I do think that, you know, our universities, uh, our elite media institutions have just grown

00:43:35.620 pretty pessimistic about the American experience, the American experiment, and consequently people

00:43:42.240 who have spent their lives in those academies, in those media environments.

00:43:47.040 I think they've just absorbed, uh, that things are, uh, more pessimistic and, and more, you

00:43:54.520 know, more negative than a lot of working class Americans believe.

00:43:58.100 Uh, I also, you know, I, I really do think that a lot of this is like ideology ends up trumping

00:44:06.180 people's ability to think because one of the more interesting dynamics is in, in, in, in,

00:44:13.600 in response to the book is that people who were, you know, really well-educated, who are

00:44:20.340 sort of the winners in American society, both in terms of their income and their prestige,

00:44:24.060 they really wanted to project their own political narrative onto the book.

00:44:28.780 And they wanted to sort of fit me into this box, right?

00:44:31.260 So if like JD said, this thing that I agree with, I'm going to ignore that.

00:44:34.720 I'm going to only, you know, attach myself to the things that I disagree with or, or vice

00:44:39.160 versa, right?

00:44:39.840 People would sort of, you know, had either very strongly positive or negative views.

00:44:44.120 And what I found, you know, is that working class Americans were actually better able to

00:44:49.440 hold two thoughts in their, their head at the same time.

00:44:51.720 They sort of got that.

00:44:53.260 I was, I was making both an argument about the fact that, yeah, sometimes life is unfair,

00:44:59.000 but you still got to try to work against that unfairness and make something of yourself

00:45:03.160 anyway.

00:45:04.460 And, you know, I think that's just because people who don't grow up in a particular media

00:45:10.720 environment are not constantly looking for alarm bells that a particular idea or concept

00:45:15.980 violates one of their, the sort of sacred tenets of their faith or ideology.

00:45:20.000 And so they're just more open-minded.

00:45:22.560 I think I predict with your movie, because the movie is now out about, you know, based on

00:45:29.420 your book, you're going to get slaughtered by the reviewers and you're going to get completely

00:45:33.800 loved by the actual viewers.

00:45:36.220 It'll be reviewers versus viewers, as we've seen in any film that, you know, that hasn't

00:45:42.360 a message like yours, which is the American dream may still exist.

00:45:46.320 It may not be perfect.

00:45:47.260 It may not be pretty, but it does still exist.

00:45:49.440 And that even shines a spotlight on this group of people, you know, people in Appalachia,

00:45:53.960 people struggling with the opioid crisis in a way that, that isn't entirely about woke

00:46:00.420 culture or victimization and how the country's bad.

00:46:03.160 That's what we've seen.

00:46:04.000 You know, it's, it's one of the reasons why Roseanne, the reboot was so successful, right?

00:46:07.760 Like they talked about these issues in a way that really resonated with real America, even

00:46:12.200 though the people who wrote about that, the reboot were like horrified or even before her

00:46:16.700 scandal, they were like, this is horrifying.

00:46:18.300 How could the show be succeeding?

00:46:19.480 And I saw this already, there was one review by the Washington Post.

00:46:24.880 That's, this is so perfect because that what their criticism of the book, the movie is that

00:46:29.460 they really wanted it to be more woke.

00:46:31.680 And this is a quote from one of the reviews.

00:46:35.180 Vance paints Appalachia as a near exclusively white space, erased our black residents and their

00:46:42.600 history in the region.

00:46:43.780 Missing are the many generations of Native American communities.

00:46:46.960 Ignored is a growing Latino population.

00:46:50.120 Disregarded are Appalachians who embrace racial justice and acceptance of their LGBTQ neighbors.

00:46:56.240 This is a personal story of your family.

00:46:59.640 Why did you get into all that?

00:47:01.840 Right, right.

00:47:02.840 Like if you imagine what a movie like that would look like, you know, where, where you're

00:47:06.880 trying to tell the story of a family, but you have to, you have to actually talk about

00:47:10.700 every other conceivable group, majority, minority, what have you, and present them on the screen

00:47:17.500 so that it satisfies this sort of woke obsession.

00:47:20.720 It's just preposterous, right?

00:47:21.160 With a little no justice, no peace sign in the background.

00:47:24.120 Yeah, it's, it's, it's just, yeah, it's, it's just totally preposterous.

00:47:27.880 Um, and anyway, as it happens, most of my family voted for Donald Trump.

00:47:31.940 Uh, my family is hardly politically monolithic.

00:47:34.200 My mom, you know, who, by the way, has been clean for six years now, is doing very well.

00:47:38.740 Uh, just, just saw her a few days, uh, just saw her a few days ago.

00:47:41.840 You know, my mom voted for Jesse Jackson in the Democratic primary in 1984.

00:47:45.820 Um, and, and then she's voted for Republicans and she's voted for Democrats since I, I just

00:47:51.500 think that there's this way in which elite Americans want working class Americans to be

00:47:58.680 more ideological and more woke than they actually are.

00:48:01.700 You know, one of my favorite responses to the book or to the movie, I can't even remember

00:48:05.980 which at this point, uh, but is, is that, uh, you know, JD Vance doesn't talk enough about

00:48:13.480 BIPOC, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA Americans in his sort of experience of Appalachia.

00:48:22.360 It's like, okay, so BIPOC is black indigenous people of color, LGBTQIA is lesbian, gender

00:48:30.720 non-conforming, bisexual, transgender, intersex, asexual.

00:48:34.860 And I read this and I'm like, you people are crazy.

00:48:39.520 Like truly the authentic, real Appalachians use these like 14 character pronouns every

00:48:46.840 time they talk about themselves.

00:48:48.920 And, you know, I, I just listened to this and I think, who, who are you kidding that

00:48:53.420 you think this is the way that Appalachians or frankly, anybody else, black, white, brown,

00:48:57.520 whatever talks about themselves and their communities.

00:49:00.780 This is a particular obsession of a particular upper class of Americans.

00:49:05.720 And I think it's insane, uh, but don't try to pretend that that's the real America because

00:49:11.420 you want it to be.

00:49:12.260 It just isn't.

00:49:13.080 Right.

00:49:13.580 A moment on the asexuals in the holler.

00:49:19.420 It's not going to happen.

00:49:20.760 You know, what, what, what am I, one of my good friends, just a, a, a side, you know,

00:49:25.660 he's sort of like a populist.

00:49:27.780 He calls himself a populist Reagan Democrat, but, um, he's, he's a professor.

00:49:32.080 I won't give his name because I don't want him to get fired, but, uh, he's, he's, you

00:49:36.740 know, he's, he's a gay man, uh, you know, in his, in his mid fifties, just a great, great

00:49:41.140 friend of ours.

00:49:42.480 And he sent me this tweet from Elizabeth Warren's campaign, a Twitter account back when she was

00:49:49.860 still running for a president.

00:49:51.740 And it was like something like, you know, we love all people who are intersex, asexual

00:49:58.420 and two spirit.

00:50:00.100 And this guy sends me this tweet and he says, look, man, we gay guys just wanted to be left

00:50:05.940 to hell alone.

00:50:06.660 You, you can have your two spirit.

00:50:10.400 There's, there's something about just this bizarre way of discussing these issues that's

00:50:17.800 alienating and dividing the country.

00:50:20.740 And I think, you know, ultimately it's going to be politically suicidal for Democrats if

00:50:24.700 they embrace it wide scale.

00:50:25.860 Coming up in a minute with JD, how does he think Glenn Close did in her portrayal of

00:50:33.580 Mamaw and what real life item of Mamaw's was Glenn Close wearing for her portrayal of the

00:50:40.060 role?

00:50:40.540 And also we're going to ask him what his mom Beverly has to say about the film.

00:50:45.620 But before we get to that, want to bring you a feature we call sound up, uh, which involves

00:50:50.280 sound bites, making the news or people in the news saying stupid, usually things.

00:50:54.440 Um, today we've got one stupid and one smart.

00:50:57.260 And the first is from governor Cuomo of New York, who has been honored with an international

00:51:04.760 Emmy.

00:51:05.560 You know, these are the awards you get for outstanding work on television and international

00:51:09.300 Emmy for his performance during the COVID quarantine.

00:51:15.580 Uh, they are celebrating how he did with his daily press briefings.

00:51:19.960 And it's insane because not only has New York just been just crushed by, by COVID and that

00:51:27.260 we have the highest death toll, which no one's blaming that in particular on governor Cuomo,

00:51:31.560 but what pals like my Janice Dean are trying to call attention to is the fact that he issued

00:51:36.880 an order during the COVID crisis, mandating that the nursing homes in New York state take

00:51:42.900 any COVID positive patients.

00:51:45.140 They were not allowed to turn them away.

00:51:47.280 And of course, inside the nursing homes are the most vulnerable population and 6,000 plus

00:51:52.100 COVID positive patients were placed in New York nursing homes and more than 6,000 died.

00:51:59.040 And it's directly as a result.

00:52:00.860 I mean, you can see that they put the virus in these homes and then thousands of people

00:52:04.820 died and the number is actually much greater than 6,000 because many had to be moved out

00:52:08.800 of the nursing homes, sent to hospitals, and they died there.

00:52:12.120 And as Janice has been pointing out, they're not counting the hospital deaths when they tally

00:52:16.440 up the number of seniors from nursing homes who died.

00:52:19.920 So this is a terrible thing.

00:52:21.520 And even JD has said she wouldn't be trying to blame anybody for any of this.

00:52:26.340 If Cuomo would just take some responsibility for it, if he would apologize, if he would

00:52:31.300 explain what the thinking was, but he won't.

00:52:35.260 He's blamed the nursing homes, the nurses, God, Mother Nature, the old people themselves,

00:52:41.540 old people, they die, he said.

00:52:43.640 He's been so callous and crass about it.

00:52:45.660 So for him to be given an award is pretty outrageous.

00:52:49.140 And it just speaks to how silent the press has been on his failures that a group like this

00:52:54.480 would even think it would be okay to honor him in this way.

00:52:58.440 So we're going to play for you first, Governor Cuomo, and then Janice on Fox and Friends

00:53:02.720 reacting.

00:53:03.460 Listen.

00:53:03.900 What an honor and pleasant surprise during these hard times.

00:53:07.320 I thank the International Academy and Bruce Paisner for this incredible award.

00:53:11.980 Thank you to all the members of the Academy.

00:53:14.800 Your work has brought smiles and hope and relief for so many people during these difficult days.

00:53:20.880 I wish I could say that my daily COVID presentations were well choreographed, scripted, rehearsed,

00:53:27.920 or reflected any of the talents that you advance.

00:53:31.400 They didn't.

00:53:32.380 They offered only one thing, authentic truth and stability.

00:53:37.200 But sometimes that's enough.

00:53:39.460 Every time we see this governor celebrating himself on television, it's just a reminder

00:53:44.900 of the people that we lost, partly because of his leadership.

00:53:49.420 So, Janice, this was a statement from the Academy.

00:53:53.340 They said the governor's 101 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created

00:53:59.140 television shows with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure.

00:54:05.140 What's your reaction?

00:54:05.920 I heard that to get an Emmy Award, you have to send videotape of yourself to the board members.

00:54:16.500 And so to think that the governor was going through some of his TV appearances talking about

00:54:22.300 deaths in New York and submitting those videos to the Emmy folks really makes me physically

00:54:30.020 sick.

00:54:30.980 He could start his award-winning speech by saying, I'm really sorry for your loss.

00:54:36.520 That's something we have never heard from this governor at any of his meetings or his PowerPoint

00:54:43.700 presentations.

00:54:45.420 Well said, Janice.

00:54:47.320 She made the point, well, this guy's going to be taking home his Emmy.

00:54:52.180 Janice and these other 6,000 families are taking home urns and caskets.

00:54:57.520 And this is no time for his victory lap with his book talking about leadership lessons during

00:55:04.040 the COVID crisis.

00:55:05.120 And it's certainly not the time for awards.

00:55:08.080 How crass of the international Emmys.

00:55:11.000 How callous and cold toward the families who are still suffering from these losses.

00:55:17.240 I mean, you can say Cuomo isn't entirely to blame for these deaths, but you certainly can't

00:55:22.700 say he did the right thing by issuing that order and by not showing any empathy for these

00:55:27.740 families.

00:55:28.220 And so to reward it with this kind of an award is just wrong.

00:55:32.620 It's just wrong.

00:55:33.300 So obviously I'm on Janice's side and I would be even if she weren't one of my closest friends.

00:55:38.420 Okay.

00:55:38.820 More on that as we get it.

00:55:39.860 By the way, Cuomo said we all have to not travel for Thanksgiving, but guess what he was

00:55:43.300 going to do?

00:55:43.800 Make his mom and some family members travel to him.

00:55:46.700 No problem.

00:55:47.440 He can do it, but we can't do it.

00:55:48.980 And then when he got outed for that, he had to reverse the order.

00:55:52.100 Aren't you sick of these politicians doing this?

00:55:54.000 Do as I say, not as I do.

00:55:55.480 Rules for thee, but not for me.

00:55:58.100 Anyway, back to JD.

00:56:04.100 Just so the audience knows, Hillbilly Elegy, you wrote it sort of on the side.

00:56:08.900 You were in law school and Amy Chua, Tiger Mom.

00:56:11.920 She wrote the book about, what's the name of her book?

00:56:14.800 The Battle Cry of the Tiger Mother.

00:56:16.920 Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, yeah.

00:56:18.680 She's got a couple of good books.

00:56:20.200 She's like an, yeah, she's, she's awesome.

00:56:22.280 I'm in love with Amy Chua.

00:56:23.320 You should read whatever she writes.

00:56:24.580 She's so open-minded.

00:56:25.840 She's like, she's got her very strong thoughts on how things should be, but she doesn't shut

00:56:29.860 down opposing viewpoints.

00:56:31.320 Anyway, she was your professor at Yale Law.

00:56:33.480 And so you write the book.

00:56:35.520 She encourages you to keep writing.

00:56:37.620 You wind up getting it published.

00:56:40.240 The initial order was for 10,000 copies.

00:56:43.000 And how many copies has the book sold now?

00:56:45.300 I don't know.

00:56:48.180 Um, but it's, it's, I think somewhere between two and 3 million at this point.

00:56:52.840 OMG.

00:56:53.940 I mean, that's huge, huge by any measure.

00:56:57.840 And in the book, it's, you're so honest.

00:57:03.260 You are very honest about growing up, um, in your younger, more formative years in Appalachia

00:57:10.760 in the holler, uh, where mamaw was and had a house.

00:57:14.280 And then you guys moved to Ohio and you had a drug addicted mother who went from man to man,

00:57:23.400 some of whom were abusive as was she.

00:57:28.540 And the moment you write about in the book, as I think one of the lowest is portrayed in

00:57:33.680 the movie, which is by Ron Howard.

00:57:35.680 And I think that was, you tell me, but I think it was the, the, the car.

00:57:40.380 Yeah.

00:57:40.560 Yeah.

00:57:40.740 There's, there's a scene where, um, you know, a scene in the movie, but a scene for my own

00:57:46.620 life where, you know, mom sort of loses, loses her temper in a car and, you know, threatens

00:57:53.000 to crash it.

00:57:53.700 And then, you know, eventually, um, you know, one thing leads to another and the cops come

00:57:57.860 and they arrest her and, you know, sort of sets off a pretty traumatic set of moments

00:58:02.220 in our childhood.

00:58:02.820 And, you know, I, I mean, I, I don't know if you got this from, from the book, Megan, but

00:58:07.240 you know, one of the things that I've always felt, um, is that, you know, I think people

00:58:15.440 sort of hear the word abuse and they think like sociopathic, you know, sort of constant

00:58:22.380 physical and emotional trauma.

00:58:24.880 And that's just sort of what's going on the whole time.

00:58:27.680 And, you know, by the standards of like an objective child psychologist, I certainly had

00:58:33.220 a traumatic childhood.

00:58:34.300 There are, you know, these ways you can measure it, you know, how many experiences of what

00:58:38.280 they call ACEs or adverse childhood experiences.

00:58:40.960 And, you know, certainly both mom and, uh, her children had a lot of ACEs when, when they

00:58:45.960 were growing up and when we were growing up, but I never felt like we had this sort of deeply

00:58:52.400 traumatic or unusual childhood, right?

00:58:54.760 I mean, that's sort of one of the points of the book is that, you know, yeah, we, we experienced

00:58:59.120 some ACEs, but, you know, a lot of kids in our neighborhood and a lot of families did

00:59:04.820 as well.

00:59:06.000 And, and I, I try to, you know, there's, there's this book that I read when I was a teenager.

00:59:13.180 I think it's called A Child Called It.

00:59:15.400 And you may have read this book, but it's about a, I think a truly sort of psychopathic,

00:59:20.080 almost torturing mother and the way that she treated her kid.

00:59:24.200 And that was just never how I felt about our family.

00:59:27.540 And it's certainly not how I feel about our family now.

00:59:29.700 I think that we definitely were a traumatic and chaotic bunch, but there was just a way

00:59:35.480 in which it was a little bit more normal.

00:59:38.100 And this sort of goes back to the culture point that I make.

00:59:40.500 It's, it's not that anybody in our family was, especially me.

00:59:44.420 And I mean, there are a lot of good things about, about mom, um, during my childhood and,

00:59:49.020 and we're, you know, very, very close today.

00:59:51.320 But there was just a weird way in which these sorts of moments that do leave their marks

00:59:58.320 on kids and do cause real problems later on, uh, were kind of normal.

01:00:03.580 And I think part of our challenge, if we actually care about, you know, the most disadvantaged

01:00:08.520 kids in our communities is that we've got to figure out ways to make that sort of stuff

01:00:13.460 a little bit less normal.

01:00:14.660 And I even see it, you know, to, to be honest with, with my, you know, we have two little

01:00:17.960 ones, a three-year-old and a nine month old, and they're both doing well, but I often have

01:00:22.980 to catch myself because just the natural way that I respond, you know, to my toddler going

01:00:27.900 completely insane, you know, I have to check myself and say, you know what, this, this is

01:00:32.600 not the normal way to do things.

01:00:34.180 This is not a good thing, but if you don't know that, and you don't have any sense of

01:00:38.280 what is normal and isn't normal, uh, then I think it can just be very easy to sort of fall

01:00:42.940 into that cycle where again, it's not an intense, aggressive level of abuse.

01:00:47.940 It's just a sort of baseline level of chaos and trauma that ultimately isn't good for

01:00:52.340 these kids.

01:00:53.380 Well, of course the consciousness of it is more than half the battle.

01:00:56.760 You know, the fact that you can stop and say, wait, is this a good instinct?

01:00:59.700 That's more than half the battle.

01:01:01.080 And it's what most people who do engage in that cycle of abuse do not have.

01:01:05.960 Um, and you've of course got Usha, who's amazing.

01:01:08.560 And we'll get to in a second, but your wife is spectacular and extremely accomplished and

01:01:13.060 smart and a great partner to you, which is another big advantage.

01:01:16.920 Um, but we talked about this a little when, when we met and I interviewed you on camera,

01:01:21.980 those, some of those, um, childhood experiences, those ACEs.

01:01:27.460 And I, I do wonder whether, cause abuse can cause in adulthood, you know, physical problems.

01:01:34.180 It can cause substance abuse problems, psychological issues like depression, anxiety.

01:01:38.560 A lot, a lot of people have those without having had abuse in their past, even if that abuse

01:01:43.140 was normalized within the community, you know, which may, maybe that takes away the element

01:01:46.300 of shame because everyone's having it.

01:01:48.180 You know, I, I, that, that would be an interesting thing to look at, but do you, have you felt

01:01:53.320 any of that?

01:01:53.880 Because not only did you have this tumultuous background, but then, you know, you're performing

01:01:59.480 at these elite levels now, you know, in venture capital first in San Francisco, now you've

01:02:04.480 got this other thing going on in Ohio.

01:02:06.440 So that's stressful in and of itself.

01:02:09.240 And I wonder if you're feeling any of that manifest.

01:02:12.160 You know, I, I think that, um, the way it manifests in me to the extent I noticed it

01:02:19.480 at all is that, you know, in, in sort of super stressful moments, I kind of get this

01:02:23.960 adrenaline rush.

01:02:25.120 And I talk about in the book, there's, there's been this documented sort of fight or flight

01:02:28.900 response.

01:02:29.400 I definitely kind of have this, this fight response when, uh, there, there's sort of

01:02:33.520 moments of, of, of high stress and high tension.

01:02:36.140 And so I think by and large, um, that serves me reasonably well.

01:02:41.340 And I think that the main thing is just your point.

01:02:43.380 I have to be self-aware sometimes and check, you know, maybe my, my most aggressive impulses

01:02:47.840 at certain times.

01:02:48.820 I'm getting to the point now where it's a little bit just more normal, where I've kind

01:02:52.700 of like accepted that there are certain instincts that I have that aren't necessarily super, super

01:02:57.640 positive.

01:02:58.100 And, and you sort of, you know, you, you check them in various ways before they really go

01:03:02.000 off the rails.

01:03:02.740 Um, I, I do, you know, there's there, you know, one of the, the pioneers in looking at

01:03:08.520 adverse childhood experience, this woman, uh, Nadine Burke Harris, who's a brilliant doctor.

01:03:13.780 And, um, I believe she's a psychiatrist, uh, working in, in, in California.

01:03:20.500 And, you know, Nadine actually has a really great book about this, which I, which I encourage

01:03:24.540 people to read, but, you know, I remember reading her book and there's a story where I, I don't

01:03:28.440 totally remember the details, but where she talks about this guy who had had a

01:03:32.720 pretty traumatic, chaotic childhood, had sort of achieved the American dream, had a pretty

01:03:37.740 stable, happy life, a happy marriage, and just like drops dead of a heart attack at 63.

01:03:42.840 And one of the things she talks about in the book is that you do have these, you know, even

01:03:46.460 for people who pretty much have their lives under control, who sort of, uh, you know, quote

01:03:51.660 unquote, escaped the trauma of, of their past.

01:03:55.000 They tend to have much worse health outcomes later on.

01:03:57.880 They have higher incidences of, of heart attacks, of pulmonary disease, even of cancer.

01:04:02.960 And so there's this weird, unexplained link between having a chaotic child and having these

01:04:07.560 negative physical health moments later on.

01:04:09.440 So there's definitely a part of me that worries, you know, that I'm, I'm sort of, you know,

01:04:13.340 I have, I have a, I have a, I have a little bit less time on the clock than you might otherwise

01:04:17.120 think.

01:04:17.620 And so I feel that pressure sometimes, but yeah, I wouldn't say that like emotionally or psychologically,

01:04:23.060 I still feel especially affected by it, by what happened when I was a kid.

01:04:26.460 And, you know, I'm 36 years old, it's been a long time.

01:04:28.760 It's over half of my life at this point where I've sort of been on my own.

01:04:31.340 Well, there was also a study out of UCLA that showed the presence of a loving parental figure

01:04:38.880 can provide protection to an abused child.

01:04:42.160 And, you know, I don't know if I want to use the word rescue, but at least it provides a

01:04:47.600 barrier to some of those negative effects.

01:04:49.360 And you had that, you had that in Mamaw, your maternal grandmother, who is the star of your

01:04:56.460 book, the star of your life, the star of this movie, uh, played by Glenn Close in the movie.

01:05:04.780 Spectacularly.

01:05:05.260 I mean, you knew Mamaw, but I'm just saying Glenn transformed herself in a compelling way.

01:05:10.740 And I thought, uh, I just, I was completely enthralled by the performance.

01:05:14.940 What, first of all, let's just start with Glenn and then we'll get to the real character.

01:05:18.200 How'd you think Glenn Close did?

01:05:20.240 I thought you did great.

01:05:21.860 Yeah, we, we, you know, we, we visited the set a few times and they, they filmed in, you

01:05:27.780 know, a little bit in Middletown and mostly in, um, Macon, Georgia and surrounding areas.

01:05:32.440 And, you know, I, I took my aunt, my mom and my uncle, um, and Usha down to, to Macon, uh,

01:05:40.340 for a couple of days.

01:05:41.220 It really was just sort of a family reunion kind of thing where we all got to hang out

01:05:44.980 together and it was a fun time.

01:05:46.740 But the first time that my aunt, my, my mom and my uncle saw Glenn Close in her full, her

01:05:54.440 full makeup and costume, uh, really was, was one of the more emotional moments of my life.

01:06:00.000 I mean, you know, my uncle was not an emotional man, but was speechless.

01:06:03.360 My, my aunt was sort of kind of like physically see her breath being taken away and it couldn't

01:06:09.220 really speak just because of how, how emotional she was.

01:06:12.940 And it's bizarre how much she looked like her and how much she acted like her.

01:06:19.260 You know, I, I, I think she did a great job.

01:06:21.920 It's impossible, of course, in a two hour movie to capture the personality that was mammal.

01:06:25.720 She really was just this larger than life figure, but there were these little things that I

01:06:31.600 can't believe that Glenn got right, that she did.

01:06:35.120 Right.

01:06:35.300 So mammal always, she held her cigarette in a particular way.

01:06:38.920 And when you see it, you know, it, and it's hard to describe.

01:06:42.540 She, she asked all of us, like, how did mammal hold her cigarette?

01:06:45.600 We tried to explain it to her.

01:06:46.960 Um, but she somehow sort of translated our confused ramblings about it into something that

01:06:53.800 was very good.

01:06:54.740 And, you know, mammal had this twitch that she did with her mouth when she would get really

01:06:59.680 annoyed at something.

01:07:00.880 And in Glenn got that right.

01:07:03.080 And there were just all these little things about her personality that, you know, even

01:07:06.460 though you can't capture it all in two hour movie, these sort of little things just made

01:07:11.060 such a, such a big impact on us.

01:07:14.700 And you talked about the movie reviews or I just have to say one, one more thing about

01:07:18.300 this, the most, you know, typically don't let this stuff get to me, but one movie review

01:07:23.780 called Glenn Close's portrayal, a caricature called Mammaw caricature.

01:07:29.040 And that really pissed me off because that's what Mammaw looked like.

01:07:33.120 And that's how she acted.

01:07:35.240 And the idea that she was a caricature, I think is just pretty insulting because she, she,

01:07:40.560 she was a big personality and she was, she was loud and she laughed, you know, with her

01:07:46.260 whole body and she loved to cuss.

01:07:48.700 But she was just this incredibly loving and positive person for all of us.

01:07:53.860 And she, she wasn't a caricature.

01:07:55.640 She was just a real person who was a really, really big and positive influence for our whole

01:08:01.320 family.

01:08:02.340 Honestly, you can't pay attention to those.

01:08:03.640 I do think some of these reviewers, this Hollywood reviewers, or even, even worse news

01:08:09.080 reviewers, but, uh, Hollywood reviewers can be the meanest soulless, most soulless people

01:08:14.000 in, in the business.

01:08:15.700 And I, they, they get off on writing hurtful things about, um, artistic products that don't

01:08:22.820 line up with their own ideology for whatever reason.

01:08:24.900 So please, I urge you to not pay any attention to that.

01:08:27.520 And, and by the way, I know I mostly stay away from it.

01:08:30.920 If they have any question about whether Glenn Close's portrayal is a caricature, they should

01:08:35.900 just stay tuned for the credits where there's actual video of Mamaw and you still think you're

01:08:41.320 looking at Glenn Close.

01:08:42.980 It's the same person.

01:08:44.480 I mean, and by the way, is it true that she actually wore Glenn actually wore Mamaw's glasses?

01:08:50.260 She did.

01:08:51.020 Yeah.

01:08:51.280 Yeah.

01:08:51.460 My, my aunt gave her, um, Mamaw's glasses to use for the movie.

01:08:55.880 And so those are actually Mamaw's glasses.

01:08:58.460 I met that aunt.

01:08:59.140 That's aunt.

01:08:59.620 We, aunt Lori.

01:09:01.100 Yeah.

01:09:01.500 Yeah.

01:09:01.660 That's it.

01:09:01.960 We, that's right.

01:09:02.880 Yeah.

01:09:03.280 She's awesome.

01:09:04.040 She's portrayed in the book and I had the pleasure of meeting her and some of your family.

01:09:07.500 So Mamaw is the star.

01:09:10.120 She, uh, she's somebody who said a woman ain't fully dressed without a gun.

01:09:15.520 And, uh, she was tough.

01:09:18.380 And then the book and the movie portray how she got after you.

01:09:22.900 It wasn't all like, JD, you're wonderful.

01:09:25.320 Not at all.

01:09:26.060 She was like, get it together and was tough on you when she needed to be.

01:09:30.400 But you told me once before, she just got me.

01:09:33.740 She just got me.

01:09:34.860 And, and I know you wrote in the book, thinking about it now, how close you were to the abyss.

01:09:39.020 It gives you the chills.

01:09:40.080 And you wrote, I am one lucky son of a bitch.

01:09:42.680 So how much of that had to do with Mamaw?

01:09:44.760 Oh, I mean, most of it, um, you know, a lot, of course, a lot of other folks in, in my life,

01:09:52.080 my sister, my aunt, mom, and, you know, her, her, her own way.

01:09:55.460 We're all, all just really, really important.

01:09:57.340 But Mamaw was really, I think the piece that held it all together.

01:10:00.740 Um, she was, you know, when I, I've thought a lot about me saying that she just got me.

01:10:08.800 And I think part of what she understood is that you don't really trust yourself until

01:10:17.560 you're sort of forced to experience a certain amount of stress or a certain amount of criticism

01:10:22.580 and you survive it.

01:10:23.880 Right.

01:10:24.340 And so what Mamaw, I think, tried to instill was a sense of resilience that she could be

01:10:30.520 a mean old hag.

01:10:32.380 She could criticize me.

01:10:33.820 She could tell me to get off my ass and do the dishes and help her.

01:10:36.840 She could do all those things.

01:10:38.140 And I didn't sort of buckle.

01:10:40.160 Um, it wasn't, I wasn't too emotionally frail for it.

01:10:43.200 And that kind of gave me this sense of, of strength.

01:10:46.520 And that was just a really, that was a really powerful part of the way that, that she and

01:10:50.540 I interacted that she could kind of, you know, give me, um, you know, give me these, these

01:10:58.300 little encouragements and these big criticisms.

01:11:01.580 And it would somehow all work in a way where the light bulb went on and I understood her.

01:11:07.120 Um, but I also gained some sense that, you know, yeah, I can, I can, I can stand up to

01:11:10.900 criticism.

01:11:11.220 I can deal with this.

01:11:12.120 And, you know, my, my Marine Corps recruiter once joked that, uh, you know, most kids really

01:11:18.600 struggle with the culture shock of bootcamp because you just have these drill instructors

01:11:21.800 yelling at you all the time.

01:11:23.020 And she, she, he was like, if the drill instructors aren't nearly as mean or as scary as your

01:11:26.980 mammals, you'll be fine.

01:11:27.960 He was right.

01:11:28.800 You know, when, when they, when they, you sort of realize these weird ways where they try

01:11:33.120 to get under your skin and mammal would do that too.

01:11:35.140 But once you sort of recognize it as such, it's a lot easier to deal with.

01:11:38.760 Hmm.

01:11:40.100 Well, I think one of the first things people wondered about you when we saw you making the

01:11:43.840 press rounds as this graduate of Yale law school, it's like this guy's writing a book

01:11:48.260 about Appalachia about, you know, life in the holler.

01:11:50.900 Like, how did he get from A to B?

01:11:53.280 I like how on earth did the kid who couldn't see it learn to be it?

01:11:57.640 How, how did it happen?

01:11:58.420 And, and my own takeaway was, let me introduce you to mamaw who took you into her custody

01:12:04.500 after one of the abusive incidents with your mom.

01:12:07.580 I think it was the car incident, wasn't it?

01:12:09.200 Where she took you in after?

01:12:11.320 Yeah, it was sort of a, it was sort of lumpy from, you know, that the car incident happened

01:12:15.800 around the time I was 12.

01:12:17.960 And then, you know, I was kind of back and forth between mom and mamaw's house until I

01:12:22.020 was about 14.

01:12:22.880 But it was, I was, it was 14 when I sort of more completely moved in with mamaw.

01:12:27.860 So that was, you know, it was four years that I was with her basically all through high

01:12:32.280 school.

01:12:33.380 And that's what did it.

01:12:34.220 Because after, after high school came the Marine Corps, which helped, you completed a

01:12:39.760 four-year education in two years at Ohio State.

01:12:42.780 And then came Yale Law.

01:12:44.080 Can I ask you, how did you get into Yale Law?

01:12:46.500 Did you have perfect grades at Ohio State?

01:12:48.240 Was it your, do you think your unique background helped you?

01:12:50.860 What, what was it that made you extraordinary?

01:12:52.640 Because you have to be extraordinary to get in there.

01:12:54.580 You know, I, I think it was a combination of an unusual story.

01:12:59.080 You know, I was a veteran.

01:13:00.220 There were only four veterans in my class.

01:13:02.440 Um, I, you know, I had good grades at Ohio State.

01:13:04.540 I had good test scores that, you know, it's, it's a little bit of luck.

01:13:07.660 I think, um, you know, you, you, you, you part of applying to law school or I guess really

01:13:13.280 any, any schools, you have to figure out how to market yourself a little bit.

01:13:16.800 And I think I just, you know, try to sort of tell a story of a kid from, you know, in

01:13:21.720 my essays of a kid raised by his grandparents from a non-conventional background who had

01:13:27.060 good enough grades and, you know, they, they let me in.

01:13:30.360 Um, but I, I don't know, I, I can't, I can't provide any more insight to that.

01:13:34.860 I think a lot of it is luck.

01:13:36.820 And, you know, what, what is probably the case is that if you get good enough grades and

01:13:41.580 you have good enough scores and you're not a, a total, totally terrible person, you can

01:13:46.600 get into a, a pretty good school and, you know, what determines whether you get into

01:13:51.120 a pretty good school or great school is a little bit of a chance.

01:13:56.220 Let's talk about addiction, uh, because that's another theme of, of the story, both on, on

01:14:03.520 the page and on the screen.

01:14:05.400 Uh, your mother is now thankfully a recovering addict, but she's been an addict for a long

01:14:11.580 long, long time.

01:14:13.520 And as somebody who's had this in my own family of origin, um, I thought the movie did a wonderful

01:14:21.620 job of showing how explosive this can be on a family that, you know, how drugs, they kidnap

01:14:31.580 your loved one.

01:14:33.680 And like a, like a true kidnapper, they, they demand a ransom that you can never really pay

01:14:41.460 off, you know, and that never really leads to the return of your family member as you

01:14:48.540 knew her.

01:14:49.300 Yeah.

01:14:49.700 That's an interesting way of putting it.

01:14:51.560 Um, it's one of those things where you try to make sense of it until you just realize that

01:14:56.980 you can't actually make sense of it because your mom was, and is, like I said, she's been

01:15:03.160 clean for six years.

01:15:04.180 She's so smart.

01:15:05.600 She's so funny.

01:15:06.560 She's just, you know, one of these like charismatic people, which is, it's true of a lot of the

01:15:11.220 folks in our family.

01:15:11.960 It's true of, of Mamaw.

01:15:13.360 It's, you know, true of, of my sister and my cousin, Rachel in their own ways.

01:15:18.120 You know, these are sort of people who can, you know, show up at a totally different family's

01:15:24.520 family reunion and get invited to give a speech to the whole family.

01:15:28.540 That actually, you know, that happened when we went to visit the set in Macon, Georgia.

01:15:31.780 Our hotel room was, sorry, this is a diversion, but our hotel room was in a hotel where this

01:15:39.340 big family was having like a 300 person family reunion.

01:15:42.540 And my whole family got invited to the family reunion because, you know, they met some of

01:15:46.500 my family and they were just so taken with them.

01:15:48.540 So taken with, with my uncle, with my cousin, with mom, with everybody.

01:15:53.160 And I think that's, that's sort of what is so difficult again, to understand or to try

01:15:59.240 to apply any reason to and like, mom is just this person with so much going for, why did

01:16:04.820 she kept on being, keep, keep on being attracted to the drugs?

01:16:09.220 Like, what was it?

01:16:11.020 And I, I think that, you know, part of it is, is definitely that I think her life just

01:16:18.060 didn't go in the way that she hoped it would.

01:16:20.160 She was a very promising student in her own right.

01:16:22.840 And, and things, you know, went off the rails, you know, got pregnant very young, had my

01:16:26.360 sister and, you know, that, that, that changes things and changes the calculus pretty quickly.

01:16:31.680 Um, but it's always just like, there was something that the rest of life couldn't provide some

01:16:39.480 sensations, some feeling that kids and partners and friends and family just couldn't quite

01:16:47.460 fill that void and she kept on, you know, she should have kept on returning to the drugs.

01:16:54.000 And there was a time when I was writing the book where I thought to myself, you know, is,

01:16:59.540 should I put this in there because mom's going to read it and, you know, people are going to

01:17:04.620 read this stuff about our family.

01:17:07.000 And I, I really just thought to myself, well, mom's not going to read it because she'll be

01:17:10.380 dead by the time the book comes out.

01:17:11.700 Um, and I was just confident that's how it would end, right?

01:17:17.240 That, that every call it six months, 12 months, because sometimes it might even go a little

01:17:22.640 bit longer, but there would always be a relapse.

01:17:24.860 It would always land her in the hospital.

01:17:26.580 It would always nearly kill her.

01:17:28.040 And eventually, uh, she was going to play Russian roulette too many times and she was not

01:17:32.140 going to come back from it.

01:17:33.780 And, and, and again, just as unreasonably as addiction takes hold of some people, uh, for

01:17:40.520 some people they're, they're just able to, to snap out of it.

01:17:43.720 And, um, I have tried to psychoanalyze and think about what it is, what it is that has

01:17:52.100 made mom six years clean.

01:17:53.600 And I really do feel this time confidence for the first time in my life, uh, that she, she

01:17:58.000 won't use drugs again.

01:17:59.880 And I think, you know, part of it is definitely just getting your life in order, having a good

01:18:04.980 relationship with your family and your kids, you know, not being stressed out about things,

01:18:09.480 job, money, husbands, whatever.

01:18:12.940 So just having your life in order in a way helps a lot, but there were times when mom

01:18:17.720 had her life in order and she went back to drugs and, um, she just hasn't this time.

01:18:22.720 And I don't, I don't get it.

01:18:24.200 I wish that I could say something more insightful about it, but the, the, the, the reason that

01:18:30.880 void exists is psychologically complex and really difficult to try to explain away using

01:18:38.000 rationality.

01:18:38.860 It's so much about feelings and so much about intuition.

01:18:41.860 Well, I, I understand what you said about, you know, she's looking for a way to feel

01:18:46.560 better about her life.

01:18:48.320 And there is a scene in the, in the movie that it confused me the way I felt it has her,

01:18:54.420 she's a nurse.

01:18:55.520 She stole drugs, uh, in the hospital and then puts on roller skates and is going through the

01:19:01.400 ICU on roller skates skates.

01:19:03.780 And she's totally joyful.

01:19:05.780 She's on drugs.

01:19:06.720 She's high, but she is smiling and she's laughing and you kind of get it.

01:19:12.240 I liked the way the film was done.

01:19:13.580 It's by Ron Howard.

01:19:14.540 I think if I didn't mention that, but if you kind of get, it's like, Oh my God, there it

01:19:20.360 is.

01:19:20.540 Some joy for this poor woman who in every scene faces one struggle or another and, and may

01:19:25.940 often have a good attitude about it, but you don't, you don't see a lot of joy.

01:19:29.280 And it's like, it kind of shows you how the drugs can be an escape to joy, to happiness,

01:19:34.460 if only for a moment.

01:19:35.640 And of course the bitter irony is the come down after and the real effect of drugs on

01:19:39.980 your life is anything but joyful.

01:19:42.740 And, you know, I thought Amy Adams did a great job of taking us there.

01:19:47.480 Her physical transformation was shocking, right?

01:19:51.000 Amy Adams looked nothing like herself.

01:19:53.460 And I thought it was perfect because having seen this happen to, you know, someone close to

01:19:58.620 me, the physical transformation can be dramatic, you know, the, the gray hair and the teeth

01:20:05.440 and just the, the weight gain or extreme weight loss one way or the other.

01:20:10.360 And I remember looking at my family member thinking she's in there, but where, where,

01:20:18.040 and, and if, if, and when I can get her back, what am I going to get?

01:20:24.280 And, you know, who, who will it be, you know, do you ever have that feeling?

01:20:29.300 Oh yeah.

01:20:30.020 Yeah.

01:20:30.340 I mean, I, you, first of all, the person is always there, right.

01:20:33.940 And it's even when they're at the peak of their toughest moments, you know, the book sort

01:20:40.660 of dramatizes the scene where, you know, mom has this, this overdose and I'm, I'm trying

01:20:45.780 to help her find a place to stay for the night.

01:20:47.580 And, you know, it's, it's not a totally perfect match with my life, but you know, there are

01:20:51.740 significant parts of it that are true.

01:20:54.060 And what I remember, sorry, sorry.

01:20:56.460 Yeah.

01:20:56.740 The movie dramatizes those parts.

01:20:59.060 Um, but fundamentally like they're, they're real and they're there.

01:21:03.660 Um, and what I remember most about that time of my life is actually not the stress of trying

01:21:14.420 to find mom a place to stay or sort of the uncertainty about what to do.

01:21:18.440 It was that mom was still like mom most of the time, right?

01:21:23.480 She was still sort of her funny self.

01:21:25.940 You know, you pull up to this hotel and she looks at it.

01:21:29.100 It's like, Oh, no, I really have to stay in this dump.

01:21:31.220 Um, or, you know, you, you, you walk by, I mean, this is like one of the more crystal

01:21:38.060 memories of my life because it was like, again, I got seen out of the movie.

01:21:41.840 I remember there was like a guy actually shooting up in the parking lot.

01:21:46.040 Um, the, the hotel was just sort of depressing and decrepit in a way that was pretty, you know,

01:21:52.500 pretty, pretty hard to believe.

01:21:55.600 And, you know, we chose it because they had an open room and because it was cheap enough

01:21:59.520 for me to afford.

01:22:00.180 And I was still, you know, at that point, I didn't have a whole lot of money.

01:22:04.480 Um, but you see, we, we, we walked by this guy, like doing drugs in his pickup truck and

01:22:09.120 mom's like, Oh, Hey, do you want to go say hi to Terry?

01:22:11.700 It's like, what?

01:22:12.380 You don't really know that person.

01:22:13.420 You know, she, she says, of course not.

01:22:15.200 Of course I don't know this person.

01:22:16.260 Right.

01:22:17.300 She, she, she, that's just who, that's like who she is.

01:22:19.980 Right.

01:22:20.200 Like this is how mom has always been.

01:22:25.260 And you're right.

01:22:26.000 Like she was always in there.

01:22:28.240 And I always just, as a kid wanted her, you know, desperately to sort of come out and figure

01:22:34.240 it out.

01:22:34.780 And of course there's a part of it where you feel inadequate yourself.

01:22:38.080 I don't know if you've, you've experienced this, but you wonder why you can't get that

01:22:42.860 person who's in there all the time.

01:22:44.460 It's because of something about you, something you've done, something you failed to do.

01:22:48.400 So you're always worried about that and trying to modify your behaviors in such a way where

01:22:54.180 you don't trigger them and you get to get the good person that you know is in there all

01:22:57.860 the time.

01:23:00.060 But I think eventually most people just get to the point where they kind of psychologically

01:23:04.560 give up with somebody who's chronically addicted.

01:23:06.840 You know, I've talked to so many people about it since the book came out and you know, what,

01:23:13.960 what I, what I always, it's just so true.

01:23:17.480 And it's so consistent and I hear it so many times that I think it's, it's nearly a universal

01:23:21.560 response is that everybody eventually reaches a breaking point where they just start grieving

01:23:28.040 for the person and they lose all hope that the person can ever come back.

01:23:33.200 And that loss of hope, I think it's sort of a protective, it's like a psychologically protective

01:23:40.600 measure because you want to stop investing yourself emotionally in this idea that this, this person

01:23:46.800 could get better.

01:23:48.260 And of course, what, what's so crazy about that is I feel like all of us have gotten

01:23:52.000 there with, with mom and then it just changed and things got better.

01:23:58.020 And again, it's, it's one of those things where I, I truly, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a practicing

01:24:03.880 Christian and there, there is a part of me that wonders, is it just like an act of God?

01:24:08.300 Is there just this moment where something supernatural happens?

01:24:13.520 Because that's the only way I can even try to explain it in my mind is eventually a switch

01:24:19.140 flipped that had never been able to, I'd never been able to flip before.

01:24:23.320 I've tried to flip it myself so many times before and I hadn't.

01:24:26.640 You know, people ask me actually about, about mom being clean is, you know, do you think the

01:24:30.020 book helped, right?

01:24:30.880 Do you think that, uh, the book made mom more sober or sort of at least opened up some lines

01:24:38.240 of communication and got her on the right path?

01:24:40.540 And I would love to say the answer is yes, but I don't think, I don't think it is.

01:24:44.140 You know, frankly, if I had known that when the book came out, mom would be, I think about

01:24:47.840 she was like two and a half years sober at that point, I probably wouldn't have published

01:24:50.880 it.

01:24:51.680 Because if anything, I think it's probably made it harder for mom to stay on the straight and

01:24:55.060 narrow, but to her credit, she has, um, you know, having all these stories out there

01:24:59.500 about you, it hasn't been easy.

01:25:01.060 Um, and I, I admire mom for kind of taking it on the chin.

01:25:05.520 Um, you know, there, there was actually a funeral for a family friend, not too long after the

01:25:11.120 book came out.

01:25:12.980 And, um, there were people posting about the book and whether, you know, I was going to

01:25:21.340 be there or sort of other people in the family were going to be there on Facebook.

01:25:25.060 And I think mom got on Facebook and said, basically, yeah, I'm the drug addict in the

01:25:30.400 book and I'll be there.

01:25:33.140 You know, there's, there's, there's, so anyway, the long way of saying, I don't think the book

01:25:37.720 has been, you know, at least all the way positive.

01:25:41.420 Maybe there've been some positive components and good conversations that mom and I had.

01:25:45.320 That's definitely true, but it's, it's also just been very stressful.

01:25:48.740 And so I don't think I can take any credit for it.

01:25:51.000 Um, I think if there's anything, you know, that, that I could take even indirect credit

01:25:56.480 for, it might be the grandkids, you know, when, when our son, Yoon was born, my sister's

01:26:02.300 oldest kid or sorry, my sister's youngest kid was, was a teenager at that point.

01:26:06.580 Um, and, and I think that, you know, having the relationship with her grandkids to work

01:26:12.700 towards and mom is just such a great grandma and the kids love her.

01:26:15.920 I think that was a really powerful thing and it has helped her a lot, but at a certain

01:26:21.540 level, I'm just trying to invent theories or explanations for, for a phenomenon that I

01:26:28.200 can't really reasonably explain.

01:26:31.320 Well, while you're, I know that mama wasn't the greatest mom to your mom, but she was a

01:26:36.620 great grandmother.

01:26:37.280 And so while your mom may not have had the best role model as a mom, she certainly got a

01:26:43.060 good role model and had to be a great grandma.

01:26:45.600 And, um, you know, you, you manifest that in both in the telling of both stories.

01:26:50.120 I mean, I love that scene.

01:26:51.920 They put in the movie of you with your mom in the hotel, because I think when you're dealing

01:26:56.580 with an addict for most of the time, you as the family member go through this, if I could

01:27:02.080 just, if I could just, and you're, you're deluding yourself that if you just gave this

01:27:07.760 money or offer this help or got her into this rehab or whatever, you're going to get

01:27:11.820 her over the bridge, she's going to bridge back to sober and normal and, you know, not,

01:27:16.880 not addicted.

01:27:17.900 And it takes years of doing that and failing for you to finally let go of, if I could just

01:27:25.880 and learn to just not walk away, but take care of yourself.

01:27:31.300 And that's what happened in that scene in the movie where, you know, the, your Amy Adams

01:27:35.500 wanted the fictional you to stay with her when the alternative was going and making this

01:27:41.940 really important interview.

01:27:43.200 And if you had stayed with her, you would have missed this interview.

01:27:45.840 You would have missed the chance to change your life and you leave, you, you do it, which

01:27:51.500 is an empowering moment in the films.

01:27:53.340 I think most people dealing with addicts finally have to get to the point of letting go of it.

01:27:58.240 And, and ironically, it can help the addict, you know, it can help them reach rock bottom.

01:28:02.420 It could help them realize they have to help themselves or what's, what they're about to

01:28:05.820 lose, you know, that the, the family's not going to save them.

01:28:10.000 Um, and I think it's amazing.

01:28:11.920 I, having now covered you for a couple of years and followed you, I love that Beverly is six

01:28:17.940 years sober.

01:28:19.760 That's such a game changer for you, your family, your kids, all of them.

01:28:25.280 And I, I read that she said, um, the quote I read, I think it was your, your cousin who

01:28:30.860 read an article as a journalist about, about this and said, she said, I'm going to stand

01:28:34.460 proud when this movie comes out.

01:28:36.340 It's, it is what it is.

01:28:37.760 And I am who I am and I'm okay.

01:28:39.740 And it's helped us all grow.

01:28:42.320 You got to feel pretty good about that.

01:28:45.480 Yeah, I do.

01:28:46.380 I do.

01:28:47.260 Um, you know, when, when you, when you grow up in a tough environment and you see so many

01:28:55.040 of these, these social problems and they kind of surround you, there's a part, at least

01:29:00.980 of me that wondered, like, is, is there just something wrong with us?

01:29:04.200 Right.

01:29:05.140 Is, is it, is it genetic?

01:29:07.900 Is it psychological?

01:29:09.340 Is it, you know, what, what makes this happen again and again?

01:29:16.500 And one of the things the book allowed me to do was take a much bigger view of this.

01:29:21.640 It wasn't just like, well, things were kind of crappy last year and they're crappy this

01:29:26.140 year.

01:29:26.400 And it seems like it's never going to change, but this ability to put the problems of our

01:29:31.120 family in this, this multi-generational context.

01:29:33.420 So like, you know, why are our families so traumatic?

01:29:36.380 You start to understand because that cycle of childhood trauma and chaos, it recreates and

01:29:42.460 replicates itself.

01:29:44.240 Um, you know, why was this the land of opportunity in the 1950s, but now it feels like a place people

01:29:49.700 are just desperate to get out of, you know, why is this addiction epidemic sort of taking

01:29:54.240 hold of our community, but specifically our family.

01:29:57.520 And I think kind of zooming out a little bit, which is what the book tried to do.

01:30:03.260 Um, obviously in the context of my own family did help us all understand these things a little

01:30:09.120 bit better and kind of start to appreciate the connections between what was going on, not

01:30:14.540 just in Mammal's life, but when Mammal was a childhood running or as a child running, uh,

01:30:19.940 from Jackson, Kentucky in the mid 1940s and how there was a through line, you know, 60,

01:30:27.080 70 years later to the way that I sort of instinctively react to conflict when a guy cuts me off when

01:30:33.460 I'm driving my kids around.

01:30:34.940 Um, and I think that, that context and that through line gave us a little bit more of an

01:30:41.640 anchoring, a little bit more of an appreciation and, and importantly, just led to a lot of

01:30:46.780 conversations.

01:30:48.400 Um, you know, we never talked about this stuff.

01:30:51.980 Um, the book sort of forced that and forced it in an uncomfortable way.

01:30:56.880 So I do think if there is a positive for the, to the book for my family, it's that it's just

01:31:04.680 given us a lot to think about and chew on together.

01:31:07.200 And that's been a little cathartic sometimes, right?

01:31:09.180 It's like, you know, we actually talk about this stuff and get it out in the open and even

01:31:13.940 yell at each other a little bit.

01:31:15.220 It kind of feels better afterwards because you've at least talked about things that people

01:31:19.540 are thinking and feeling.

01:31:21.660 Um, and, and that, that is, that is something I appreciate about the book and the experience

01:31:25.740 of writing and publishing as it's at least served as a forcing function in that way.

01:31:30.000 Absolutely.

01:31:30.600 It's, it's a bit of a cleansing process.

01:31:33.160 You mentioned the road rage.

01:31:34.420 I, I love, there's the line in the book that says hillbillies could go from zero to murderous

01:31:38.980 in a fucking heartbeat.

01:31:40.260 That's not cut off a hillbilly for the love of God, this holiday season, when driving home

01:31:46.980 from Thanksgiving, do not.

01:31:49.360 Yeah.

01:31:49.940 Yeah.

01:31:50.240 No, no, really.

01:31:51.420 Um, yeah, my, my wife sort of recognized, you know, when we were dating, she recognizes

01:31:55.620 impulse in me where, you know, if somebody cut you off, it's like a challenge to your

01:31:59.620 manhood and you have to go cut them off and then, you know, threatening to get out of your

01:32:03.400 car and beat their ass.

01:32:04.580 And, you know, it's just one of these things where, you know, you can't do that, right?

01:32:08.440 When you've got a family that depends on you and two kids, it's, it's understandable that

01:32:12.420 that's your instinct, that that's what you grew up around, that you just can't do it.

01:32:15.420 And that, that recognition has been pretty powerful.

01:32:18.340 Well, not only that, but your wife's got this killer career who I mentioned her earlier,

01:32:22.240 but Usha clerked for Brett Kavanaugh when he was on the court of appeals and then moved

01:32:26.220 on to a clerkship after that with Chief Justice John Roberts.

01:32:30.500 Um, so she's pretty accomplished and impressive too.

01:32:35.160 Is that, is that humbling?

01:32:36.580 What's that like?

01:32:38.680 Yeah.

01:32:39.200 You know, it's, it's, it's definitely, um, I don't know that I'd say it's humbling, you

01:32:47.260 know, Usha.

01:32:48.600 Uh, I guess, I guess it is like, Usha definitely brings me back to earth a little bit.

01:32:55.240 And if I, if I maybe get a little too cocky or a little too proud, I just remind myself

01:32:58.740 that she's, she's way more accomplished than I am.

01:33:02.580 Um, you know, what, what, what is interesting about, about my life and just about, about,

01:33:09.820 you know, Usha, um, as part of it is that, you know, somebody pointed out that there's,

01:33:16.900 there's this weird way in which like every phase of your life, you have this like strong

01:33:22.540 female that you could attach yourself to, right?

01:33:25.060 It was your mammal, it was your sister, it was your aunt, and now it's Usha.

01:33:28.980 And I think that's probably a pretty critical insight that like, I'm, I'm one of those,

01:33:33.300 I'm one of those guys who really benefits from having like a sort of powerful female voice

01:33:39.900 in his left shoulder saying, don't do that, do do that.

01:33:43.020 Uh, it just, it, it, it just, it just is important.

01:33:45.460 Um, and you know, Usha is just people, you know, I think, look at her credentials and

01:33:54.800 think, oh, she's, you know, she's, she's, she's so impressive.

01:33:57.120 And just, I think people don't realize how just brilliant she is.

01:34:02.680 Um, you know, she is one of these people who, first of all, she reads books like faster than

01:34:10.800 anybody that I've ever seen read a book.

01:34:12.320 Um, you know, she can read like a thousand page book in a few hours sitting and just

01:34:16.740 absorb the information incredibly.

01:34:18.460 And she, you know, she's one of these people where, you know, Amy Chu actually once said

01:34:21.920 this about Usha and it's so true.

01:34:23.580 It's like a perfect crystallization of how she thinks that, you know, Usha can take an

01:34:29.440 incredibly complex set of facts and information and details and just absorb them on first reading

01:34:37.720 or on first hearing it.

01:34:39.180 And then if you ask her about it, she can spit it out in a way that makes more sense coming

01:34:43.960 out than it actually did going in.

01:34:45.500 Right.

01:34:45.840 She can sort of like harmonize information faster than anybody that I've ever met.

01:34:52.520 She must be terrifying to argue with.

01:34:54.820 Oh my God.

01:34:55.680 It's terrible.

01:34:56.360 It's, it's just terrible.

01:34:57.500 Um, and she uses, you know, so much facts and logic and I just constantly, I'm like,

01:35:02.140 no, no, no, no.

01:35:02.660 Facts and logic.

01:35:03.380 You can't do that.

01:35:04.200 I know.

01:35:05.080 That is tough in a spouse, JD.

01:35:07.180 I have to feel for you there.

01:35:08.960 Yeah.

01:35:09.400 It's, it's very, it's very tough.

01:35:11.640 Well, can I ask you about that?

01:35:12.560 Cause I am thinking about when I was thinking about you and your life and I love, I love

01:35:16.780 that you're happily married and you've got your two boys now and you know, you move back

01:35:20.700 to Ohio and you're doing venture capital for companies that are not in Silicon Valley that

01:35:27.100 are sort of outside and more flyover country.

01:35:29.500 I like that.

01:35:30.340 Of course, all the rest of us hope you run for office someday, which I know you told me

01:35:33.660 last time, maybe we'll see, but what do you, what do we have to feel hopeful about?

01:35:40.320 Right.

01:35:40.640 It's, this is right around Thanksgiving.

01:35:42.140 So what are we, what are we feeling good about when it comes to our country and ourselves?

01:35:46.260 First of all, I'm one of these people who believes that to actually solve problems, you have to

01:35:52.820 be pretty honest with yourself about what the problems are.

01:35:56.720 That's sort of the first and most important step.

01:35:59.400 And when I think about what I'm most optimistic at a national level, it's even if you're not

01:36:04.020 happy that Biden was elected, or even if you are really, really frustrated as, as a lot

01:36:10.920 of folks are, and you know, to be clear, I didn't vote for Biden, I voted for Trump.

01:36:16.260 Um, I don't think that we're having the same dumb conversations about the problems that

01:36:25.540 we were 30 years ago.

01:36:27.260 Uh, there is a recognition and, and, you know, like I know a lot of people don't like AOC.

01:36:32.080 A lot of people don't like Bernie Sanders.

01:36:33.760 A lot of people don't like Tucker Carlson, who's become a good friend of mine, but those

01:36:38.660 people I think are at least circling around the fact that you do have real problems in this

01:36:43.920 country that you do have an opioid problem that's killing tens of thousands of people.

01:36:47.620 You do have the decline of the American manufacturing sector in a way that's, that's caused a lot

01:36:53.220 of hopelessness and a lot of joblessness.

01:36:55.020 You do have these multi-generational cycles of family poverty and trauma and abuse.

01:37:00.980 I think there was this weird conceit that we have that things were just getting better

01:37:05.760 indefinitely.

01:37:06.360 It was the end of history that if there was any real problem in America, we could solve it

01:37:10.460 with a little redistribution from rich to poor.

01:37:13.720 And I at least think that most people on frankly, both the left and the right recognize that's

01:37:18.480 not happening and that we're actually making real progress in understanding the nature of

01:37:25.500 the challenges.

01:37:26.100 So I'm optimistic about the fact that we're just being honest with ourselves about the

01:37:29.660 real problems that exist in the country, at least more so than we were a couple, a couple

01:37:34.860 decades ago.

01:37:38.120 I'm, I'm optimistic that, you know, we just went through in some ways, a very traumatic moment

01:37:47.580 of American history, a really tough election, a pandemic killed a lot of people, the economic

01:37:55.060 fallout from the pandemic and some of our response to it that has caused a lot of misery, but we're

01:38:00.680 still basically here, right?

01:38:02.740 People are still getting together with their families mostly.

01:38:05.320 I know some people, you know, are, are, are, are being cautious and I understand that.

01:38:10.200 But there's, there's still finding ways to be together, to talk to one another.

01:38:16.000 You know, children are still, you know, I, I think of them as, as, you know, it's trite,

01:38:21.560 but it's the most important thing.

01:38:23.400 The children are still being born and raised and, you know, we have a, a next generation of

01:38:28.900 Americans that's coming online.

01:38:30.920 And I think that's, that's just, it's hard not to be optimistic about that.

01:38:35.600 And, you know, as, as tough as it's been, the country is actually still standing, which is,

01:38:41.760 which is sort of crazy.

01:38:43.040 We've, we've survived most of the way through a pandemic.

01:38:46.000 We appear to have vaccines that are coming online.

01:38:48.740 The economic damage has been severe.

01:38:50.700 The social damage has been severe, but it hasn't wiped the country off the face of the earth.

01:38:55.120 And I, I guess the way that I put it is, is I think we've shown ourselves to be a pretty

01:38:58.700 resilient country.

01:38:59.880 So even though there are a lot of problems, there's also a lot of resilience out there.

01:39:03.180 And I take some solace in that.

01:39:05.080 I know that, uh, you, you wrote in the book, I want people to know what it feels like to

01:39:10.220 nearly give up on yourself and, and why you might do it, um, to see sort of what the other

01:39:17.880 possibilities are, right?

01:39:19.260 Like you were one of those people, you know, of what you speak, you lived it and you, you

01:39:24.900 managed to get yourself out even without a lot of role models, which hopefully now you

01:39:28.860 will be hopefully now the kids sitting in their neighborhoods and Middletown or what

01:39:34.440 have you will say when asking the question, why try, why try because JD Vance, because

01:39:41.880 there is a way forward because maybe, maybe I could be at Yale law school or in the Marine

01:39:46.100 Corps or, or married to Usha, someone like her with kids and a brilliant future ahead

01:39:52.620 of me.

01:39:52.960 Maybe I could, maybe notwithstanding what people are telling me, I could, I don't know,

01:40:00.100 JD, I think we need more of that and more of the possibility of agency and, and less of

01:40:06.400 the, you're downtrodden, you're a victim and there's no way forward.

01:40:11.180 And I'm, it's one of the reasons I'm doing the show.

01:40:13.020 And it's one of the reasons why I find your message so super empowering.

01:40:17.800 Um, last question.

01:40:18.820 Do I, do I hear you offering this from the bully pulpit one day?

01:40:23.400 You were a little down on the possibility.

01:40:25.320 You were down on politicians and I know you've, you've been scolded for being too down on that

01:40:29.280 because you don't want to discourage good people from going into running for office,

01:40:32.460 but realistically, cause I, I don't want you on the couch.

01:40:36.600 I, I don't want you to, you know, retreat to that instinct just in case Usha's too busy

01:40:42.480 with her law job to get you off of there, right?

01:40:44.460 Like, are you going to get out there?

01:40:46.420 Cause we need people like you.

01:40:49.280 Well, I think I'll continue to talk a lot about stuff that matters and try to be involved

01:40:53.080 in the policy conversation on the right.

01:40:54.920 You know, I've, I've done, you know, a fair amount of work there, try to encourage your

01:40:58.600 different folks to think about certain issues and, and, and different and hopefully innovative

01:41:03.060 ways.

01:41:04.120 I mean, to, to, to be honest, the thing about politics and I'll, I'll just, I'll be very

01:41:08.960 direct is, um, I'm feeling a little selfish right now.

01:41:13.040 And what I mean is that, you know, I, I woke up this morning, um, it was up late last night.

01:41:20.740 And so I had both the boys this morning by myself.

01:41:23.040 We made breakfast together, you know, we played together, you know, you and the toddler told

01:41:28.620 me a lot of goofy, ridiculous jokes, and I'm just not quite ready to give up on that yet.

01:41:35.180 And I think that, you know, there is a reason that people call politics sacrifice.

01:41:39.760 Uh, you gotta spend a lot of time away from your family.

01:41:41.740 You've got to, got to work on things.

01:41:43.460 And I think it's, you know, I've come around to the view, at least that a lot of people

01:41:47.480 do it for noble reasons.

01:41:48.580 Some people don't, but a lot of people do it for noble reasons.

01:41:51.800 Um, so I'll tell you the same thing I told you a few years ago, which is definitely not,

01:41:55.440 not, you know, something I'd rule out.

01:41:58.620 Some time down the road, but you know, right, right now it's like the only thing I really

01:42:03.520 want, I didn't care about law school.

01:42:05.380 I didn't care about getting a nice job.

01:42:07.300 I didn't care about making money, certainly not writing a big book, but the only thing

01:42:10.720 I really wanted is, is the life that I have right now, like getting up and, you know, knowing

01:42:16.800 that I'll be able to give my kids the things that I didn't have in knowing that they look

01:42:21.940 at their mom and dad as a rock, that they'll always be there for them and just getting

01:42:26.680 to spend that time with them, you know, spending time with mom who's been sober for six years,

01:42:31.820 having, you know, my sister and my aunt build a relationship with my kids.

01:42:35.940 Like all of those things, I selfishly want to continue for at least a little while before

01:42:40.900 I think about politics.

01:42:41.860 And, you know, once, once I get to the point where I feel like I've had at least, um, enough

01:42:48.360 of that, that I've gotten my fill, then maybe that's a different conversation then.

01:42:51.580 But, but for now I'm, I'm sort of, unfortunately, maybe to you, uh, content to be a little selfish

01:42:58.140 and just enjoy this while I can.

01:43:00.420 Well, you're young, so it's okay.

01:43:02.000 I I'll, I'll allow it, but don't, don't be too selfish for too long.

01:43:07.360 I, cause I, everything you've gone through, everything your family's gone through, they,

01:43:12.640 they make me believe the line from Hillbilly Elegy that hillbillies are the toughest goddamn

01:43:17.460 people on this earth.

01:43:18.620 And we, we need more people like that with thick skins and a tough attitude to, to take

01:43:24.280 on some of these battles that we all want fought.

01:43:26.580 Listen, do me a favor, send my love to your family.

01:43:30.020 And we, Lindsay, who I met and loved.

01:43:32.540 And, um, just know that as always, I'm rooting for you.

01:43:35.700 Thanks, Megan.

01:43:36.580 I appreciate it.

01:43:39.820 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:43:41.740 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - July 21, 2024

J.D. Vance on Trump, Addiction, and Family ｜ November 2020 Re-Release

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