Photo: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images
When you think about it, J.D. Vance has one of the tougher jobs in American politics: being the faithful understudy to the greatest narcissist ever to hold the presidency. Not only must he support the Sun King through thick and through thin, he must also avoid stealing any of the limelight from the jealous god who lifted him to the Senate with a crucial endorsement and then to his current position as heir apparent. Vance’s role as initiator in the Oval Office mugging of Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a job well done; the subtext of the whole incident was the Ukrainian president’s lack of gratitude to Donald Trump.
What is apparently Vance’s next major chore for his benefactor is even more crucial, and better yet, isn’t likely to attract too many flattering headlines: He’s appointed himself the healer of the MAGA movement’s breach between “populists” and the billionaire tech bros who helped finance the Trump-Vance campaign and are now dictating a vast number of public policies.
As Vance himself suggested in a “unity” speech he delivered during a conference organized by the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, he is “a proud member of both tribes.” After all, he came to national notoriety as the embodiment of the struggling white working class via his Hillbilly Elegy memoir, but then became a protégé and beneficiary of Silicon Valley reactionary pioneer Peter Thiel, who blazed the path to MAGA prominence now trod by Elon Musk and so many others. He’ll need both “wings” of the movement if he wants to succeed Trump as MAGA chieftain and president. And he can also do his boss a solid by quieting some of the infighting that bubbles beneath the surface of Team Trump’s aggressive pursuit of its agenda.
The most notable public indication of the rift occurred last December, when a spat broke out between populist social-media figure Laura Loomer and DOGE co-founder Vivek Ramaswamy over the obscure but highly symbolic issue of H1-B visas, which are issued to attract highly skilled immigrants, particularly in the technology field. Ramaswamy inflamed the dispute by arguing that H1-Bs were made necessary by the inferior quality of American labor. But then his buddy and DOGE rival Musk stepped in and escalated matters as only he could do in a response to a tweet from a Loomer ally:
The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.
Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 28, 2024
Then Steve Bannon, the OG populist of MAGA-land, counter-escalated, as my colleague Chas Danner noted at the time:
Bannon, posting on right-wing X competitor Gettr, screencapped Musk’s tweet and added, “Someone please notify ‘Child Protective Services’ — need to do a ‘wellness check’ on this toddler.”
Bannon later told an Italian newspaper: “He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down.”
As things threatened to spin out of control on the very brink of Trump’s triumphal return to power, Trump signaled agreement with Musk and Ramaswamy on H1-B visas, and the “MAGA civil war” died down. But given the new administration’s assault on nearly every form of legal as well as illegal immigration, the issue may not have gone away forever.
At the conference, as Politico reported, Vance asked populists and tech bros to keep their eyes on the prize: their common enemies.
Both our working people, our populists and our innovators gathered here today have the same enemy” — namely “40 years of failed economic policies” that enabled globalization — and the same goal: a “great American industrial renaissance” that uses innovation to boost worker productivity and drives wage gains.
As the New York Times noted, the veep argued Trump’s agenda would scratch backs on both sides of the populist/tech-bro barricades. “We can only win by doing what we always did,” he said. “Protecting our workers and supporting our innovators, and doing both of those things at the same time.”
That’s easier said than done. Much of what the “innovators” are trying to accomplish via DOGE and legislation in Congress involves their triune goals of deep tax cuts, deregulation, and slashing federal spending, including popular services and benefits. Yes, “workers” may be cut in on some of the bonanza via tax breaks on tips, overtime work, and Social Security benefits. And everyone in MAGA-land can celebrate the pain of “deep state” bureaucrats and woke university administrators. But ultimately the tech-bro vision of a nation largely run like a corporation by their own selves, deploying AI and discarding excess labor as inefficient, isn’t compatible with any kind of “populism.” And conversely, the protectionism and nativism beloved of right-wing populists everywhere and at every time is not really compatible with the so-called innovators’ thirst for free-flowing capital and inexpensive labor.
The other problem with Vance’s plan to keep the two MAGA wings yoked to the same team is that tensions will likely intensify if, as seems likely, Trump’s agenda becomes increasingly unpopular among the general public. How much political capital will populists want to expend on maximizing high-end tax cuts or slashing their own federal benefits? How hard will tech bros fight for high tariffs that upset their Wall Street colleagues and allies? Will populists go to the wall to defend Elon Musk, who considers beneficiaries of wildly popular entitlement programs “the parasite class”? How long with tech bros hide their contempt for blue-collar workers as anything other than cannon fodder in their war with government and any sense of collective responsibility?
Vance has a tough row to hoe in keeping these people together, but it’s a job he does need to undertake if he wants to inherit a winning coalition in 2028.
