JD Vance is ‘strongly Faragist’ and wants to ‘cut off’ Ukraine, says close ally

In an interview soon after Vance was selected as Trump's VP pick, Dreher said that he “is for peace in Europe, for cutting off Ukraine and suing for peace.”

He added that when he met with the Ohio senator at the Munich Security Conference earlier this Spring, Vance told him that “nobody wanted to hear what he had to say about Ukraine,” but “he was right, in my view.”

The American journalist made his comments to GB News as debate about how to respond to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and ensuing war continues to dominate Republican circles.

Trump is widely considered to be more skeptical of extensive support to the Ukrainian resistance to Vladimir Putin’s war, with key allies to the former President opposing additional funding for the Kyiv war effort.

President Joe Biden approved a billion-dollar aid package for Ukraine in April that faced months of delay due to opposition from house Republicans.

MAGA-aligned congressmen, including Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie from Kentucky, tried to remove the house speaker Mike Johnson as he eventually moved to pass the package.

Trump has regularly complained that European NATO allies have not pulled their weight in supporting Ukraine.

JD Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate could signal a shift towards a sterner stance towards Ukraine.

Dreher, who is widely credited with helping to launch Vance into the national spotlight, said Trump’s VP pick was “not a creature of the Republican Party.”

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:

• JD Vance jokes UK could be 'first Islamist country to have nuclear weapons'
• Trump holds back tears as he's seen bandaged up in first appearance since shooting
• Donald Trump confirmed as Republican presidential nominee at RNC

“He is truly right-populist,” he added.

“He grew up very poor, in a broken family. He got his life together thanks to his tough, cigarette-smoking, pistol-packing grandmother, who raised him. He went to the US Marines, and then to Yale.”

Dreher reviewed Vance’s best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2016 for The American Conservative magazine, which went “mega-viral” and is widely credited for propelling the politician into the national spotlight.

“He hasn’t forgotten where he comes from. He has a Yale degree and worked in Silicon Valley, but he has not lost the perspective of the white working class.

“He is a traitor to his Yale class, in other words.

“I think about how intensely devoted he is to the memory of ‘Mamaw,’ his grandmother, and how she must be the guiding star of his life.”

When asked by GB News for his standout individual quality, Dreher said: “If I had to pick one thing about Vance, it’s his refusal to sentimentalise poor working class people. It’s why he called out the bulls**t laziness and refusal to get off drugs among poor whites in Appalachia.”

Vance has also faced criticism as being an authoritarian and anti-democratic, for admiring the so-called “strongmen” of American history who ignored the law in favour of power, such as President Andrew Jackson.

In particular, critics have pointed out that Vance said he would not have certified the 2020 US Presidential Election, which led to the January 6 storming of the Capitol.

Responding to this perspective, Dreher said: “To be honest, I don’t know what his stance is on Jan. 6 - and it might be different to my own - and what they mean by ‘anti-democratic’.”

“In Europe, as in the US, when the establishment calls you ‘anti-democratic,’ that usually just means you vote in ways they don’t like.”