Vance was not a natural fit for the MAGA GOP. His 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which describes the despairing hillbilly culture he grew up in as a form of social decay, made him the toast of New York City salons and garnered him posts at elite bastions like The New York Times and CNN. As he rose in prominence, he publicly denounced Donald Trump as “an idiot” who was “noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place,” and declared himself “a Never Trump guy.”
But Vance had two powerful figures in his corner as he plotted a run for Senate: the anti-democratic billionaire Peter Thiel, his former employer at the investment firm Mithril Capital, and Carlson. Thiel provided the cash — he invested $15 million in a super PAC that supported Vance — while Carlson, the face of Fox and one of the most influential figures in the GOP, showered him with promotional airtime and helped him secure the crucial endorsement from Trump that put him over the top.
Vance has been a frequent presence on Fox, and on Carlson’s program in particular, over the last several years. He has made 34 appearances on Tucker Carlson Tonight since August 1, 2017, nearly half of his total of 69 weekday Fox appearances over that period, according to Media Matters’ internal database. Those interviews became more numerous after Vance declared his Senate run on July 1, 2021 — he appeared on Carlson’s show 15 times, and on weekday Fox programming a total of 39 times. Meanwhile, the rest of the Ohio Senate field was almost entirely absent from Fox airwaves in the months leading up to primary day.
Vance’s first interview with Carlson, on November 23, 2018, is notable both for how different it seems from his more recent appearances — and for how it foreshadows them. Vance argued that the GOP’s huge losses in the 2018 primaries had come because the party’s attempt to repeal Obamacare had been a “millstone” on the party, citing this as an example of a divide between Republican elites who call for moderate social policies and libertarian economic ones while its voters prefer “the opposite.” He concluded that the party’s leaders “have to accept” their voters’ preferences and demonstrate they are “proud of the coalition that we have and try to build on it as opposed to being ashamed of that fact.”
In that interview, as in other early appearances on Carlson’s show, Vance’s rhetoric is measured and deliberate, the very model of an elite commentator opining on his party’s strategy. But as he moved into the political arena, Vance demonstrated what he apparently thought was necessary to show respect for his party’s voters — he started providing the sort of hard-right demagoguery commonly heard from the likes of Carlson. The switch became evident during a February 22, 2021, interview with Carlson — just two days before the formation of the super PAC Thiel used to support his campaign — when Vance said that corporate diversity trainings are “destroying our society” and condemned “woke” identity politics.
Vance’s subsequent appearances on Carlson’s show were littered with the sort of bigotry, conspiracy theories, cruelty, and authoritarianism familiar to the program’s audience. He condemned the Kyle Rittenhouse trial as “child abuse masquerading as justice”; described Silicon Valley technology companies as “the enemies of Western civilization” which are “willing to burn down our entire constitutional republic”; attacked the COVID-19 vaccination campaign as a conspiracy between the government and pharmaceutical companies; denounced Democratic politicians as “childless cat ladies”; and called for the seizure of assets from nonprofits whose advocacy he opposes.
Vance even invoked the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Carlson mainstreamed from the white nationalist fever swamps.
