George Packer
Appearances
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Can you explain really briefly, we know that Peter Thiel is a billionaire, but can you explain why he's so influential?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Vance has a law degree from Yale. Right now, his priorities seem to be attacking the courts. What do you make of that?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Well, George, the name of this article, The Talented Mr. Vance, is this clear play on the talented Mr. Ripley. And that is a story about a man who is brilliant and charming, but deceitful in his quest to become someone entirely different from who he once was. And he's willing to betray nearly anyone to preserve that new identity. Is that how you see Vance?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
How do you think that younger Vance who wrote Hillbilly Elegy would think of Vice President Vance?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Our guest today is Atlantic staff writer George Packer. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Vance went on to work for Peter Thiel. And during that Silicon Valley phase, Vance has talked about being at dinners and explaining the struggles of people like him to billionaires. And has he talked about how he reconciled those encounters?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Did you find signs that it actually troubled him that even among those that he admired that spoke of the ideologies that he now like really accepted and felt found himself in actually also didn't really know much about him and where he was from and people like him?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
The thing about Hillbilly Elegy, I mean, I want you to delve a little bit deeper into this because you write, while that memoir really did speak to his life in really deep and profound ways in the lives of many, many people, the memoir belongs in an era that no longer exists. Can you say more about that?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
An informant because he's speaking. He's speaking about the working class through his own experiences.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Well, at that same time period, I mean, we're talking like 2016, 2017. I want to actually play a clip of Vance speaking at the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics. This was a year after the release of his memoir where he also then started to talk about the appeal of Trump in other ways and more in deeper ways. Let's listen.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
So as we can hear there, that was J.D. Vance speaking in 2017, and he's interrogating the mainstream media. He's kind of digging at it, which will become a talking point later. But you also noted around this time he also began to view the policy intellectuals that were around him differently. What changed during that time period for him personally as well?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Did you try to talk to Vance for this article? And did they respond?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, I'm talking to George Packer, staff writer at The Atlantic, about his story, The Talented Mr. Vance, about Vice President J.D. Vance. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Let's talk a little bit about Vance's conversion to Catholicism. This came around the same time as this pivot towards what I guess some might call kind of like a political aggression around 2019, 2020. And of course, we don't know someone's heart. I certainly would never question someone's faith. But his conversion, from your view— Was it more spiritual, more intellectual, more strategic?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
You make the point to say the problem with Vance is a question about his character. I'm just wondering what makes the way Vance has moved over the last two decades maybe different than your average politician who kind of moves through different worlds and is different depending on the environment and the circumstance.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
You know, up until he entered politics and very specifically until he became vice president, he was a very eloquent speaker. The ability to speak in a way where people from different backgrounds and political ideologies could actually maybe hear some of what he was talking about. But since then, I mean, he has really said some very inflammatory things.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
There's this Fox interview where his wife spoke in defense of him calling Democratic leaders childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they've made. He actually points out that he believes that they don't have a stake in the country's future because of their lack of having biological children.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
And I want to play a clip of Usha Vance making a statement about this on Fox in August of 2024. Let's listen.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
That was J.D. Vance's wife, Usha Vance, on Fox in 2024 speaking about her husband's statements about childless cat ladies. George, how do you assess her role here? She's navigating and mitigating his words, the controversies around the things that he said. How do you assess that?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. And today my guest is George Packer from The Atlantic. His latest story, The Talented Mr. Vance, offers a sharp portrait of Vice President J.D.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Some of the people that you talked to for this piece who are friends with Vance said that they still believe that he is motivated by his loyalty to the working class. But you show how many of his actions, repeating election lies, mocking marginalized groups, really contradict that. Who and what do you think he's actually loyal to?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
George Packer, thank you so much for this article and for this conversation.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
George Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Coming up, TV critic David Bianculi reviews a new HBO movie from the creator of Succession. This is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Jesse Armstrong, creator of the popular HBO series Succession, has a new drama, this time a comedy, about powerful and wealthy people vying for power and control. It's a made-for-TV movie called Mountainhead, and it centers on a quartet of very rich tech wizards who gather at a private home in a remote area of Utah to play some poker and also dream and scheme.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
The stars include Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman, and it premieres on HBO this Saturday. Our TV critic David Bianculli has this review.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the upcoming HBO movie, Mountainhead. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, comic, actor, and writer Sarah Silverman. Whether she's tackling sex, abortion, being Jewish, or everyday absurdities, she's known for pushing boundaries to land a deeper truth and a laugh.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
We'll talk with her about her new comedy special, Postmortem, which is a bold and moving exploration about the deaths of her father and stepmother just nine days apart. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Lorne Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nakundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Roberta Shuroff directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Going back to his time in the military, he went there as an idealist. What did he witness or experience during that tour, which was it was around 2006 that kind of shifted his perspective about war?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Vance, tracing his journey from a childhood shaped by poverty and the Appalachian Hills of Kentucky and the industrial decline of Middletown, Ohio, to the rarefied worlds of Yale Law School, Silicon Valley Venture Capital, and now the White House.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
You track his skepticism and also kind of a cycling through a range of belief systems around that time period and identities in his 20s, which like many of us do as we're trying to find ourselves. But what stands out to you the most about that evolution during that time period? What makes this more than a young man simply trying to find himself?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
In recent weeks, Vice President Vance has found himself in the international spotlight after he briefly met with Pope Francis the day before he died, followed by a high-profile meeting with Pope Leo at the Vatican several weeks later, where the two discussed pressing global concerns, including immigration and artificial intelligence and the war in Ukraine.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Did you find or learn from anyone you talked to any contradictions between the man that he describes himself as in Hillbilly Elegy and some of the realities that people responded to once that book came out?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
As you mentioned, J.D. Vance went to Ohio State University. He went on to Yale Law School. That time at Yale was a transformative time. He arrived there and made friends very quickly, was very popular, as you stated, He also met his wife, who is now the second lady, whom he called his life coach. Can you remind us of her background and how she helped him navigate that world?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
In his article, George Packer examines the contradictions at the heart of Vance's meteoric rise, how the thoughtful, searching voice of hillbilly elegy turned into a politician known for inflammatory rhetoric. Someone who, as Packer writes, sneers at childless cat ladies, peddles lies about pet-eating Haitian immigrants, and sticks a finger in the face of the besieged president of Ukraine.
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Were there really basic things that she taught him about moving through the world?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
George, has Vance ever talked about or written about maybe the moral or emotional cost to that kind of class mobility he experienced at Yale. I mean, he basically, which millions of people do, assimilated in order to be a part of that class of people. Because we see what he gained, access to the people in power and elite education, but what did it require him to shed?
Fresh Air
The Talented Mr. Vance
Packer covers American politics, culture, and foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He's also the author of several acclaimed books, including The Unwinding, An Inner History of the New America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2013. George Packer, welcome back to the show.