J.D. Vance Speaks at a Private Teneo Network Event, Sept. 2021

[Music] [Applause] I guess I I like throw out the standard campaign speech it's one of the crazy things about running for office is you give the same speech many many times and and actually just try to level with you guys about what I do see as the big a few big problems in our in our country right now and I'll talk a little bit about more uh or some of them in in in Greater detail but I only have about 10 minutes so I don't want to take up too much time so first is look I I think that for all of us we're all part of the conservative movement in one form or another I think we're we're leaders in business uh in politics in in government and bureaucracy wherever we actually find ourselves working like this is our movement and one of the very brute facts that we all have to confront is that we have lost every institution in American society this is the first Big Challenge so if you look at for example the list of the fortune 10 CEOs in 19 90 I believe every single one of them was a republican a republican donor at least mildly affiliated with the right and in 20121 if you look at that same list of people it's a different group of people and I think every single one of them is a major Democrat donor uh so we've not just lost the academy which we've lost for a long time we haven't just lost the media which has been on the side of the left for a long time we now find ourselves in a situation where our biggest multinational corporations are active participants in the culture war on the other side I believe the Swami a friend of mine from law school actually is going to be here later and and I think VI has written uh the most comprehensive you know set of set of uh set of the most comprehensive statement about the fusion between socially Progressive ideology and our big corporations uh so I won't talk too much about this I think all of you if you can should listen to him him to speak about it because you know for for a long time I'd like to say a lot of us have been talking about this problem but it's really been a few of us over the past few years who have recogniz that the big corporations have really turned against conservatives in a in a very big and powerful way and we see this in a number of different ways you know one is recently this this Texas abortion law okay Texas tries to pass a law that protects the right of The Unborn to live their lives and set aside the legal technicalities about whether that law is ultimately going to survive legal challenges I don't know I went to law school but I'm not I went to Leo law school so I'm not a very good lawyer um but the the fundamental problem revealed itself because virtually every major big Corporation in this country felt the need to issue a statement in support of not the unborn babies but in support of people who might want to abort them a few major corporations actually put a lot of money behind the effort to make it easier to achieve an abortion and the one CEO that I'm aware of a medium-sized tech company who actually spoke up on behalf of The Unborn was fired 3 days later after he issued a state stat like if we're unwilling to make companies that are taking the side of the left in the culture wars feel real economic pain then we're not serious about winning the culture war and so that is that is challenge number one so Challenge number two is just basic truth-telling we live in a society that is terrified to tell the truth and it takes a number of different forms on the left people are terrified to actually point out the obvious that men and women are different that they want different things uh at least as a as an average matter and that there are real biological cultural religious spiritual distinctions between men and women I think that's what the whole transgender thing is about is like fundamentally denying basic reality uh that's that's a problem that you can't speak the truth but it actually takes a different form on the right which is I think those of us in this room especially people who have been trained in conservative institutions as part of the conservative movement we've like lost our ability to E even think about some of the big challenges because you know we sort of want to speak in this like politician or bureaucratic goblook instead of being very honest about what's really going on so like a couple of examples of this uh recently of course we have this terrible disaster in Afghanistan and I understand that I myself have participated in this movement to blame the Biden Administration for the terrible chaos in Afghanistan but too few conservatives are willing to admit or even acknowledge that three months ago it wasn't just Biden it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff it was some of our military leaders that were talking about white rage in the military the terrible scourge of white rage in the military even as they were presiding over a massive disaster in Afghanistan I served in the Marine Corps I was an enlisted guy and so I didn't talk to the to the top level brass that often but one of the most consistent things you would hear when you met like a real Marines Marine Colonel when you met a guy that the troops the enlisted guys really loved is people would say well he'll never become a fourstar because he's not political enough well why is our bureaucracy so broken that some of our best military leaders are actually prevented from becoming four-star generals instead of encouraged to become fourstar generals there is something broken not just about the Biden administration's foreign policy yes it is broken yes we should talk about it but the entire Pentagon bureaucracy itself is itself broken I talked to a doctor in Ohio I'm running for Senate so I I talked to a lot of people in Ohio and I talked to a doctor a few weeks ago who is terrified that if he speaks out against gender reassignment therapies at his hospital he's going to get fired right speaking the truth saying the obvious things is really important in this moment and we all have to do that we have to do it in our businesses in our personal lives just being honest don't fall for the the consultant lines don't F fall for the gobletg actually just speak in direct truth we have a society that's terrified of it and that's why we need more people to actually do it then the third challenge I want to talk about is we are horrified in this country and I see it on both the left and the right we're horrified of unconventional people who say and believe unconventional things I got myself into a little hot water last week uh because I made what what what seemed to me a plainly obvious observation that Alex Jones the Infowars guy is a better source of information than Rachel mattal the MSNBC gal now some people said well JD you're just trolling well yeah of course I was just trolling but that doesn't mean what I said is in any way untrue right I mean look I I think there's a not terrible chance that that one of you is going to be sharing you know cellblock 12a in Premier Harris's uh prison detention camp in in a few years if we're going to all end up in that place we might as well have a little fun while we get there it's okay to troll when you when you when you make and speak fundamental truths but but look I do think that I I do think what I what I said was correct yeah I was trolling I was also speaking a truth because look if you listen to Rachel madow every night the basic worldview that you have is that like Maga grandmas who have family dinners on Sunday and bake apple pies for their family are about to start a violent Insurrection against this country but if you listen to Alex Jones every day you would believe uh that a that a transnational Financial Elite controls things in our country that they hate our society and oh by the way a lot of them are probably sex perverts too sorry ladies and gentlemen that's that's actually a hell of a lot more true than Rachel maddow's view of society but but but but then the second criticism that I get is well he's a he's a crazy conspiracist right he he doesn't believe that 911 actually happened or he believed 911 was an inside job and look I I understand this desire to not be called terrible names it's like yeah okay this person believes crazy things but I bet if you're being honest with yourself every single person in this room believes is at least something that's a little crazy right I mean I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society that's a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well educated people in this country right now um even though of course they participate in it without knowing about it but that's a separate a separate matter but but like ladies and gentlemen the most important truths often come from people who are crazy 60% of the time but they're right 40% of the time I don't know Elon Musk very well I know him a little bit I've had a couple of private conversations with him Elon Musk believes some crazy stuff I'm very close friends with Peter teal I think Peter teal is one of the most important sources of non-conventional Truth in our society Peter teal believes some things that are considered Crazy by opinion makers we have to get away from this weird tension that we feel in our chest when somebody says this person believes something crazy therefore you must denounce them one of the weirdest things that happened and I'm in Ohio it's funny cuz I I think we're in her District right now uh but I'm regularly asked by donors in Ohio whether um I'm I'd be willing to denounce MTG marjerie Taylor green the congressman from if not this part of Georgia at least close close by and I say why why do you want me to denounce this person well she believes these crazy things who cares believing crazy things is not the mark of whether somebody should be rejected believing important truths should be the mark of whether we accept somebody and if they believe some crazy things on the side that's fine we need to be okay with non-conventional people this is a big problem for you in this room there's the last point that I'll make we are trained among Elite circles if you go to Elite institutions if you study at Elite places we are trained to reject anything that falls out of a very narrow Overton window but if we've just learned anything in the last year and a half I mean a year ago it was a pretty crazy truth the idea that maybe the Corona virus came from a Wuhan lab not from like some random dude's bat soup right turns out that was probably true a lot of the things that are ultimately going to get revealed as truths are going to be advocated originally by crazy people doesn't mean you have to be best friends with them doesn't mean you have to defend their craziest views but by all means if this movement is going to survive we need to speak for truth and that means standing up for non-conventional people even when they sometimes say things that we disagree with um the final point that I'll make is look we have very real challenges in this country um and I I I I there's it's easy to get pessimistic about what's going on it's easy to feel a certain uh lack of Hope about the future but if this movement is going to survive it's going to require leaders like the type of people who exist in this room and so I thank you all for being here I thank you all for having me and importantly the last the last and and very final actual final point that I'll leave you with is is that we are part of a movement okay many of you in this room either currently do or will sit at the head of the movement you'll serve in the organizations and the think tanks and the businesses in the governments that actually enact the policy of this movement but don't forget that there are a lot of people out there who may not agree with us on every issue who may not agree with you on every issue who may not always talk the way that you talk about issues but they are part of our movement right after the 2008 financial CR I saw a poll that a large segment of the democratic base believed that the Jews caused the financial crisis right the media did not demand that the leaders of the democratic party reject every single member of the democratic base because a lot of them believed the Jews caused the financial crisis don't take the bait that disconnects us from our own voters and our own people just because you don't always agree with them just because they don't talk the way that you talk they are our people and if this movement exists for any reason it's to defend them to advance their interest and to make it sure that they can live a good life in this country too thank [Applause] [Music] you my big takeaway you can be a truth teller and a troll that's awesome you have to be well we've got a quick little chat here I want to Dive Right into something that might be a little bit hard I want to read a passage from an article and have you kind of respond to oh God how you heard this here we go you guys may have seen this this morning is about in the arena guys and we talked about last night when you're in the arena it's uh some cases literal some cases metaphorical blood and sweat how about this blood and sweat this is a passage guys millions of people read this opening paragraph what do we call a man who turns on everything he once claimed to believe for a practitioner of petty and self-serving duplicity we use sellout or backstab for Grand betrayals of weightier loyalties country and faith we invoke the moral the more solemn terms of Traitor or apostate that's the opening paragraph in the Atlantic two months ago Tom Nichols on a piece called the moral collapse of JD Vance take us to where did you first learn about that article and just talk about that people have said crazy things about you what is it like that to read stuff like that yeah well first of all a lot of it I don't read and um you know one of one of the when I was thinking about running for the Senate one of the first people that I actually had my wife talk to uh was Tucker Carlson and um you know Tucker I think is one of the most important leaders in our movement and um one of the things that Tucker told my wife is if you read everything that they write about him and you try to assume that it's in good faith it's going to destroy your life and if that's true for my wife I think it's definitely true for for me right and so I I I've certainly heard about that article because so many people have shared it and if I hadn't heard about it I guess you just told me about it right now sorry but I I I guess that you know the the the the thing that bothers me about this is look I've I've clearly like I changed my mind on things right and I changed my mind on Donald Trump I did not like Donald Trump in 2016 I've you know pretty enthusiastically supported him in 2020 both with my vote but also going out on there on TV and defending defending certain parts of his policy agenda and I I think that what is true about Tom Nichols and true about a lot of you know anti-trump conservatives or liberals and their criticism of me is that it's not offered in good faith uh they don't actually care about the arguments that I'm making they don't actually care if I maybe really did change my mind they don't care about the fact that you know if you paid attention to what I was saying three years ago it was pretty obvious where I was coming down on a lot of these things they just see it as an opportunity to deploy a powerful argument against a political enemy and I unfortunately think there's something to learn about this I don't think that we want to take all of the baa the left or follow their tactics all the time but I think about this a lot you know with the accusation of racist racism that gets thrown around and obviously racism is out there and it's bad I you know I really don't like judging people based on the color of their skin I think we we should reject it but if you look at how frequently progressives deploy the term racist against just normal conservatives right you start to realize they don't give a damn about minorities or ethnic groups of any particular part they realize that the American people are compassionate and they want to use that compassion as a rhetorical weapon against arguments that will reduce their power that's what's really going on I think that's true for a lot of arguments that our opposition makes is they don't actually believe the same things that they say they believe they know that we often do and so they're trying to use our good faith against us I try not to let them well I hope I didn't break that news story to you you did not no trust me a little awkward now I I am well aware that Tom Nichols is not a fan of me um okay let's uh let's go back a little bit so you have uh in some sense uh earlier in your career trajectory some similari to some to you go to y Law School you're working for Peter teal you're kind of at a hedge fund then you choose to write a book and then you're starting your own Venture Capital firm and you choose to run for office I think a lot of us here might be in uh kind of more traditional careers in the marketplace investing or running a company and sort of think like how should I get in the arena and just to be clear running a company can totally be in the arena abut one's not better than the other but just russle through that a little bit you and your wife processing that you kind of started down this path you chose how do you process that yeah I mean you know a lot of it is just the opportunities that are presented right and so I I really knew I didn't want to be a corporate lawyer and right at the time that I was thinking I didn't want to be a corporate lawyer I got introduced to Peter teal right so Peter teal offered me a job so then I'm in Silicon Valley the book comes out I was sort of working on the book part-time really it was never something that I did full-time the book took off like crazy there were sort of opportunities to launch my own fund so I did that right and that's kind of how that happened a lot of it is just the opportunities to present themselves I've been talking a lot about politics and public policy The Last 5 Years and then a senator in my home state decides to retire leaving open what is increasingly a red state senate seat in the state of Ohio so like a lot of things it's just the opportunities present themselves and I think you have to be willing to walk through the door you know but but but if if we're trying to translate that into useful advice because obviously different opportunities open uh for different people at different times I I really do think that um you know in the business World especially we need more passionate conservatives people who actually have the courage of their convictions um I you know like there're all of these things that I'm very hopeful about but one of the things that really does worry me is that we have very few oligarchs on our side and I don't mean just rich people I mean people who are smart about deploying their resources in a way that advances the cause maybe only Peter teal on our side I think maybe a few others right the left has a lot of oligarchs they have Bloomberg they have Soros they have Gates they have very wealthy people who aren't just Rich they're very smart about accomplishing their objectives with their resources we need a lot of that we need a lot of it so that young conservatives have places to work where they can actually speak their values but we also just need resources to fund the institutions that will be necessary so that the next time we really get a chance at governing um you know we we we really take take advantage of that shot because the left has shown over the past couple of months that they really don't want to give us that shot ever again and I don't think that that impulse is going to change hey my team just let me know breakout 107 is now becoming an oligarch so if you guys want to check that out there's a howto guide um hey about a month ago we had a fun chance uh I I called JD I said hey I'm driving through Ohio with my son on a road trip and uh we got to walk with you in a July 4th parade was fun which was a really cool opportunity there was a line from a woman who was there for the parade that uh I wanted to get your feedback on and I appreciate it and she said JD I love your book and I I hate your party uh talk a little bit about you know when your book came out tens of millions of people read it it just spoke to the situation of workingclass Americans of hollowed out small towns and and I think in a lot of ways set off a lot of these more you know someone would say populist conversations in the movement a lot of those people are are trying to figure out are they Republicans react to that line when someone says I love you in the book but not the party yeah you know it's I I remember that woman very well and the the problem is that that woman could have two viewpoints and because we were literally still marching in the parade it was towards the end right like I ran I you like run off and keep on going but she could have been one of two types she could have been like a moderate Democrat and this is in Lebanon there AR a lot of Democrats left in Lebanon uh so I don't think she was of this type she could have been a moderate Democrat who maybe you know liked the book for one reason or another but just really hates the party right those people tough to reach you know you got to try I definitely want to be a candidate for for as many people as possible but very often what I find in that is like she really loved the book and you know she doesn't watch mainstream news she doesn't even watch like Fox News or Newsmax like her main source of news is is Steve bannon's war room right and she hates the party right but she loves the movement she loves the ideas she really cares about her country and I think that we have to we have to accept that that is one issue that exists in our movement right now is a relatively disconnect very discouraged group of people who feel burnt out after 2020 and they don't see a path forward uh they don't see leaders actually offering solutions to their problems like oh my God this guy who defended this Texas abortion Bill just got fired what do we do about that right and so I do think that a lot of our people the a real a real concern that I have is they feel discouraged and we've got to energize and provide folks a little bit of Hope because the energy is there we just have to actually Marshall it and send it in the right direction on the policy front you've given some talks lately they're fantastic I highly recommend listening everything GD has to say you talk a lot about a real interest of yours is that a uh middle inome family a middle-income family on one income can uh can have a easy comfortable reasonable life and in some sense like duh haven't Republicans been saying that for a long time but some might you know look at the eight years of George W bush and say you know W was probably saying some of the same things but we get into Iraq we get into Afghanistan we grow the size of the federal government so when you talk about the flourishing of this middle class family what are the what are the levers here what are the things you'd actually materially change uh to make that life more possible yeah yeah it's it's interesting somebody sent me um was it yesterday or the day before this sort of policy briefing from the family research Council Tony Perkins group in the late 90s and I was looking at it and it was so crazy to me how similar that is to a lot of the issues that those of us on sort of the populist right are talking about uh it was anti-n normalization of trade relation with China it was anti-free trade it was pro- family policy it was super hard restrictionist on immigration there's just a lot of interesting stuff in there and it made you realize that I think maybe George W Bush was a really big missed opportunity because a lot of these ideas were percolating in the movement and it just didn't really didn't really ultimately materialize um so I I I I guess I think that um you know look the the the the the basic principle of we want normal people to be able to live a good life in this country we want people to be able to support themselves on a single middle class wage I mean it actually includes a lot of stuff that's unspoken right okay a single middle class wage that means we need really good jobs for middle class people um it also means that we need people who can speak their mind at their workplace without getting fired right that's an important cultural concept to I think economic stability um I think it means that we need something like traditional families right and I've got you know a dear friend who's a very socially conservative guy he's a stay-at home dad his wife works I'm not saying it's always going to be the man working the woman not working but you really do need a two parent household if the single income model is going to work out really well uh so there's a lot built into that assumption a lot of policy levers that I think we can push and pull on to make it more possible to happen uh but I think that should be our Guiding Light and so many I think Normie Republicans here Republic you know here folks like us right probably I assume very well educated room lot of fancy credentials you know we we love to talk about you know lock and monsue and Hayek and fredman we love to talk about like these big ideas and Abstract principles but most people deal with politics at the level of I really love my country and I want to be able to live a good life here yeah yeah uh you've given me glimpes of this I want you to share with the crew The Experience around uh you write this book and you get this call about doing the movie uh would you take us to that uh dinner with your family where you guys were meeting the the cast oh yeah yeah um yeah so so you know got a lot of calls from producers I didn't want to do a movie out of the book I just felt a little bit worried that you give it off to somebody and it becomes something that you don't control anymore and it was funny because I I started talking to my family about it my family that was sort of pretty apprehensive about the book and a lot of difficult conversations as people who've read the book can probably appreciate they were all just like are you kidding me we should definitely do a movie right I like okay okay okay okay real quick so we're marching in the parade JD's family was there and is it's your sister from California was my that's my cousin C she's like my sister but yeah she's a cousin so she comes over and she says do you remember the cousin from California in the book that was me they were awesome they were awesome J's mom was there anyway they're they're now in rural Texas which is which is so funny um so hey ho um but but you know we basically like what we what we Tred to I mean you know I had this conversation with Ron Howard I really liked him I didn't like most the producers that I talked about and he he just you know he's like I really want to tell a story about like normal Americans who are struggling in like the post industrial era like I don't feel like many stories have been told on the big screen about families like that he was really into the idea uh really was into the relationship between my mom and my grandma which is I think a very perceptive way to read the book that it's really about the interaction between my mom and my grandma in a lot of ways and so anyway so the family loved him we ended up you know sort of talking to him a lot he came and visited Us in like Eastern Kentucky and Southern Ohio and did all this stuff and so finally we're doing this movie but yeah the cast wants to meet my family right and so they all fly in to do what what what in hindsight was actually research on the way that you know my family acts and the way my grandma held her cigarette and what her glasses looked like and all this crazy stuff um and and it was just you know just a lot of fun for my family to sit down and talk with these actors and actresses about like you know what was M all like and what were some of the crazy things she said like um you know my cousin Rachel told Glenn Close That one of my my my my Grandma's favorite sayings was grab a straw and I won't even repeat it here but if you're interested afterwards I'll tell you uh but it's just incredibly vulgar and I guess like people have told me that Glenn Close will sometimes say to people like grab a straw because she thought this the most hilarious thing that she had ever heard my you know anybody say so anyway so it was a cool experience in a lot of ways I you know I I am waiting for the point at which the entire cast and crew of hology the movie issues a a anent of me personally um I'm sure it's coming but I think when it happens that's when I'll know I'm about to win the senate race um in our in our final minute or two a lot of Tans I feel this way uh it's a it's a nice set of people it's a very pleasant sure cordial we want to have dinner conversations you have been criticized by the dispatch and some other parts of the conservative movement about taking a more aggressive aggressive approach or maybe using tools of the left or levers that you know traditionally conservatives would not use would you just talk a little bit about how you think about what tools you have in your toolkit have conservatives been too unwilling to take out tools that the left might be willing to use and just encourage us how we'd think about picking up the right tools for this fight yeah absolutely so first of all rhetorically there's nothing wrong with dinner conversations and there's nothing wrong with discussing abstract principles um I I think it is important for us to be a philosophically rooted movement and that's an important thing so I encourage everybody to do that I think there's also a time and a place for it and you know when we're sort of dealing with Nancy Pelosi this 3.5 trillion dollar package with an amnesty Bill built into it like it's it's probably not the time for dinner conversations right and so different different uh different approaches for different seasons is an important principle for us to keep in mind but I guess just one one one thought on this right so uh Republicans believe in lower taxes that's like basic Republican principle I believe in lower taxes I think it's good for economic growth I think it's important for people to keep more of their own money but one of the things I've noticed in the tax conversations is we assume that Democrats believe in higher taxes if you actually look they believe in higher taxes for their enemies and lower taxes for their friends um so the Harvard university endowment Democrats aren't trying to raise their taxes uh the biggest foundations in our country the Ford foundation and so forth which by the way one of the reasons Capital has gone so woke is because the deployers of capital big foundations big endowments hundreds of billions of dollars of money are increasingly putting left wi pressure on these institutions uh foreign direct investment all allies of the left all pay effectively no tax right the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley all allies of the left Amazon Google Apple Facebook pay a lower tax rate than like a midsize manufacturer in Middletown Ohio right so I I I think that one of the things we have to realize is the left isn't playing the game we think that they're playing the left is playing a game of rewarding friends and punishing enemies um we need to be willing to actually defend our friends and the old slogans aren't going to work anymore so maybe we should be raising the tax of the Harvard University Endowment in fact I think we should be um things things like that that require a new approach and a new way of thinking yes occasionally the dispassionate folks like that don't like it but as I say look if they're bringing a bazooka to a fight we can't bring a wet noodle we have to bring something bigger and better yeah say no to wet noodles guys Round of Applause thanks for JD Vance thank you guys thanks hey a