Rod Dreher, the prominent conservative writer and blogger, says his once-close friendship with JD Vance has fallen apart — which he attributes to the vice president’s refusal to confront rising antisemitism and white nationalism on the online right.
Vance, in his memoir, credits an early interview with Dreher for helping launch his political career, saying without that relationship he might have remained a center-right venture capitalist rather than a national political figure, and the two grew close in the years since, meeting in Hungary as recently as April, when Vance traveled there to campaign for Viktor Orbán, reported The Bulwark.
But Dreher now says Vance cut him off after a visit last fall. “I don’t know that we’re friends anymore,” Dreher said recently on the Jeremy Boreing Show.
The break traces to a November essay Dreher wrote for the Free Press, in which he cast Vance as the only figure with enough credibility and “hillbilly gumption” to take on the rise of Nick Fuentes and his “Groyper” followers, who Dreher warned had become alarmingly popular among young Republican staffers.
Dreher framed Vance — married to a woman of a different race and faith — as proof that Vance himself embodied a more inclusive vision of American identity than the “heritage American” faction of the right.
That optimism has since curdled.
Critics, including Dreher, have shamed Vance for approving of Trump’s description of Somali immigrants as “garbage,” amplifying and refusing to retract the debunked claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets, and dismissing leaked racist and antisemitic chats among Young Republican leaders as “kids” being “edgy.”
After federal agents killed two American citizens during an immigration operation in Minneapolis, Vance defended the shootings and accused the victims of terrorism rather than calling for accountability.
Vance also stayed silent when Tucker Carlson’s friendly on-air interview with Fuentes ignited a civil war on the right, warning instead against “purity tests” — a stance Dreher’s critics say reflects deference to Carlson’s influence rather than principle.
Last month, Dreher published an essay accusing Vance of practicing a “Von Papen Conservatism,” comparing him to the conservative Catholic German politician who convinced the Reich president that Adolf Hitler could be restrained if he was allowed into a governing coalition.
“Perhaps Dreher deserves credit for finally recognizing the truth about his former friend,” wrote The Bulwark’s Matt Johnson. “Vance has spent two years nurturing a viral bigotry in his party with the power of the bully pulpit. Had Dreher been capable of recognizing Vance’s flaws earlier, he may have been in a position to gather critical GOP opposition to the vice president’s political and moral recklessness, and help rein in the right’s lunatic fringe.”
“Instead, the party’s best hope is that if Dreher can finally see who Vance was all along, maybe others will, too,” he added.
The post Conservative giant who launched JD Vance’s political rise sticks fork in their friendship appeared first on Raw Story.
