The Mystery of JD Vance Is Unraveling

JD Vance embodies the pros and cons of political competition in a divided America. He helps, and he hurts.

GZero Media broke this out neatly in a piece it posted on his “pluses and minuses” during the Republican National Convention:

During the 2022 Ohio Republican Senate primary race, the Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio warned Vance that many Republican voters hold “the perception that he is anti-Trump” because, up until that time, he had been willing to describe the 2020 contest only as “unfair.”

“I think the election was stolen from Trump,” Vance declared in a Republican Senate debate two months later.

In an interview with The Youngstown Vindicator, an Ohio newspaper, Vance contended that there was extensive fraud in 2020, including a “big tech” conspiracy directed by Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook.

Vance told The Vindicator that Zuckerberg spent $420 million “buying up local boards of elections in battleground states of mostly Democratic areas” to “tilt” the vote in Biden’s favor.

Vance didn’t stop there. “We have a fake country right now,” he said. “If a billionaire can go and buy up votes in our biggest geographies and tilt an election, transform who can be president, it’s really, really dangerous stuff.”