J.D. Vance VP Pick: How Trump's Choice Will Permanently Transform the Republican Party

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they break down the significance of Trump choosing J.D. Vance as his running mate for the 2024 election. This in-depth analysis covers the shifting landscape of conservative politics, the rise of tech conservatives, and what this means for the future of the Republican party. The Collins couple offers their unique perspective on Vance's background, his transformation from Trump critic to ally, and the implications for upcoming elections.

Key points covered:

* The two main factions in current conservative politics

* J.D. Vance's background and political evolution

* Trump's strategy in choosing a younger, tech-savvy running mate

* The decline of traditional GOP Inc. and rise of tech conservatives

* Immigration policy and border control strategies

* The importance of religious engagement in modern conservatism

* Implications for the 2024 election and beyond

Whether you're a political junkie or simply interested in understanding the changing face of American conservatism, this video offers valuable insights into the current state of Republican politics.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. It is so exciting to be here with you today. Again, the world has changed and. In an incredibly positive direction. I should think previous episode. I had said that there are two paths Trump could take with his VP pick and which path he takes is going to show which team he is on and it is going to set the future of Republican politics in this country

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: and right now there are two core Republican.

factions that are like cultural groups. One is the GOP Inc. Remnants. This is the theocratic faction, which believes in a deontological theocratic morality and wants to enforce that morality on the general public.

Simone Collins: performative Cultural conservatism, [00:01:00] what a lot of people think about when they think about traditional conservatives, like religious and typically very Christian, that kind of thing.

No, the other faction is

Malcolm Collins: religious and Christian as well. Yeah, but in

Simone Collins: a very different way. Yeah, that's what I,

Malcolm Collins: that's why I didn't say religious, because that's not the important part. The important part is that they are theists. Theocratic and morally deontological. So what I mean by that is these are the types of people, that wants to do things like, you saw in project 2025 in their mission, ban pornography force young men to do programs that basically put them on military enlistment lists.

This is very different from the ideology that Trump represents, right? Yes. It's much

Simone Collins: more socialist leaning, much less libertarian, much less classically liberal too.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah but, yeah it's very much like the government's role is to enforce a moral system. Yes. And this was the party that Mike Pence, his last running mate, [00:02:00] represented.

Very, I can't be in another room with a woman without my wife there sort of stuff, oh the horror of this and it's not that we have anything against being in an alliance with this group or anything like that, but there is always, or up until I would say really just two days ago, there was always a chance that the conservative party post Trump reorganized around this group.

But then there's been a new conservative faction growing this is the faction that's represented by individuals like Elon and Vivek and Tamath and they are the tech conservatives, I guess some people would call them. Where Peter Thiel's in

Simone Collins: there too.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Peter Thiel's in there. They've been around for a while, but they have been growing in terms of their ability to actually interact with mainstream conservative politics.

And I think that if Elon wasn't a foreign national, he would be the obvious [00:03:00] person to take over American conservatism after Trump. He's just very lined up to do that in terms of public sentiment these days. Now the, talking heads don't think though. But I think, when I talked to the base, I see much more yeah, way to go fight the man, you be you which is also the difference between these two factions.

The theocratic faction is very much, we should have an authoritarian system. Or authoritarian in the way it relates to the people, culturally speaking. It's just, we don't like who's running it now. Like, when we were at NatCon, something we kept hearing is bureaucracy is good. It just needs to be a conservative controlled bureaucracy enforcing conservative cultural values.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They just want to be the man. Yeah, they just want

Malcolm Collins: to be the man. Then you have the other faction, which is much more formal. Fight the man. It's an anti authoritarian faction where it does implement controls. The controls are generally designed to prevent authoritarian cultural overreach.

So they would promote [00:04:00] ideas like there should be some restrictions around what schools should teach and show children when that stuff is literal pornography. Or literal like brainwashing yeah, okay. You're trying to mess with people's kids and stuff like that.

But anyway, so there were these two large factions. They have different ideologies. We will lay out this divide more in another episode. But Trump really had the choice, which faction is his successor faction or crowned as his successor faction,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: In his VP, he chose J. D. Vance, the writer of Hillbilly Effigy.

Elegy. Elegy, sorry. Not Effigy, Hillbilly Effigy. Hillbilly Elegy. In doing this, he basically threw in 100 percent with the tech faction.

Simone Collins: Thank goodness. And

Malcolm Collins: in a very interesting way, and in a way where a lot of people, when they look at What Trump is doing right now. They're like, how could he support this guy?

This [00:05:00] guy said Trump was a Nazi. This guy said he hated Trump, that he was an idiot. This guy said all sorts of horrible things about Trump and Trump said horrible things about him. And I would note here that when I first heard of this guy, when I first heard that he had been elected to office, I was mortified because I hated him from my first impressions of him.

Who?

Simone Collins: Trump?

Malcolm Collins: J. D. Vance. Interesting. So my first introduction to J. D. Vance was through NPR segments on Billbilly

Simone Collins: Elegy.

Malcolm Collins: I saw him, and this is who he was. He was the real East Coast elite type guy going into the environment where he was born, because he was born into these poorer communities and

Simone Collins: He was raised in like rural Ohio, right?

Mostly by his grandmother, mom was at a rehab, dad wasn't really super there.

Malcolm Collins: He was translating this experience [00:06:00] to the NPR audience. Yes. To help them understand how anyone could have ever voted for this fascist monster Trump in their eyes. Trump is obviously not that. He is fighting against fascism, I think, in terms of everything I see.

Yeah, but he was,

Simone Collins: essentially the role that he played at the time that Trump was elected Was to explain to the NPR Americans, the liberal educated elite that was out of touch with middle America, why less educated white voters could possibly vote for Trump.