A Former Friend Urges JD Vance to Stand Against Political Extremism

you've written about and even spoken here about your trip to DC

and speaking to young zoomers who are working within the government, working within the administration,

and you say 30 to 40 percent of them and, you know, and growing,

I would, I would add, and growing, seem to adhere to this nihilistic

world view of sort of despair and revenge, it's not a constructive world view.

Tear it all down. Tear it all down.

Who represents them politically?

Heavy sigh.

I had hoped that J.D. Vance would be the guy...

With whom you were friends.

Yeah, it was an interview I did with him in 2016

for the American Conservative that launched his political career.

It was an accident, but it went mega viral, and boom.

He was suddenly a best-selling author. We stayed friends after that.

I don't know that we're friends anymore.

He cut me off after I went to visit late last fall to talk to him about this very thing.

Now, I'm not going to disclose our conversation,

but I will just say that I pointed out to him these people. the Flintests,

the Groepers, all of them, are going to destroy conservatism and the Republican Party.

And I said to him, because of your background, because of your age, you're uniquely positioned to draw a red line there.

Say no, we are not going to accept that.

And I asked him to do it.

It's not my position to say what he said, but I will say firmly, unequivocally,

I do not think J.D. Vance is an anti-Semite.

I do not think he's a racist at all.

But I've written a couple of things since then calling on him to please.

Be a leader,

take a stand,

you know, take a stand for your own Christian beliefs, for your own life, but he hasn't chosen to do it.