Whither J.D. Vance

Popular broadcaster Megyn Kelly, for instance, refuses to take Candace Owens to task for spouting total nonsense, without evidentiary support, on a daily basis, on the grounds that Owens is a friend and the mother of a young baby. On October 30, Kevin Roberts, the executive director of the Heritage Foundation, a premier conservative think tank, created a turmoil within his own organization when he broadcast a statement affirming that the Heritage Foundation would not in any way distance itself from its “close friend” Tucker Carlson, after the latter’s friendly interview with Nick Fuentes.

Of all those refusing to criticize Tucker Carlson’s platforming of Nick Fuentes, by far the most prominent was Vice President J.D. Vance. He told UnHerd interviewer Sohrab Ahmari, “Tucker’s a friend of mine. And do I have substantive disagreements with Tucker Carlson? Sure. I have disagreements with most of my friends, especially those who work in politics…. I’m also a very loyal person, and I am not going to get into the business of throwing friends under the bus.”

He went on to ridicule the proposition that Carlson, who supported President Trump and Vance in 2024, holds views that are “somehow completely anathema to conservatism, and that he has no place in the conservative movement.”

ONE PERSON WILLING to make the case that Carlson’s views ought to be completely anathema to the conservative movement, however, was Ben Shapiro. Remarkably, he did so in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in the presence of Kevin Roberts.