The Bullying

Just checking in. Vacation is fantastic. I’m a little itchy to get behind a microphone. I’ve checked in occasionally and just want to call your attention to something.

My friend Rod Dreher is the man who elevated J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy into the phenomenon it became. That’s not my opinion. The Vice President has said as much.

This past week, Dreher did an interview with Jeremy Bolling Boreing in which Dreher said Vance has shut him out after Dreher urged Vance to distance himself from the antisemites and white nationalists.

If you haven’t paid attention, the Vice President is very online — so online, in fact, that the President’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, recommended Vance unplug. Vance is tight with Tucker Carlson, who pushed the President to nominate Vance. Vance hired Carlson’s son for a time.

Though Carlson has called for the end of the Trump presidency, suggested the President is a bad guy, called for “Nuremberg style” trials, etc. etc. etc. Vance has chosen not to cut ties with Carlson.

Now, online, the bullies have come for Dreher.

The Vice President has, in fact, surrounded himself with what some call the woke right, but what can best be understood as the identitarian right. They are progressives economically, but socially conservative. Many of them view whiteness as a core identity. Many of them hate Jews. The Vice President, himself, has rarely missed an opportunity to criticize Israel, which, in and of itself, is not a problem, but by pattern most who do and tie themselves to these other characters tend to share their antisemitism.

The progressives on the Left and Right are bullies. They dominate by making others shut up. On the Left and now, with this group on the Right, there is fear in text messaging. They use Signal and disappearing chats so that their friends on the groupchat can not later use their chats to destroy each other. Just as you can never be too progressive on the Left and some get run out because they haven’t gone hard enough Left, the same is happening with this group. To reiterate, more than one person has told me they don’t text anymore because they’re afraid their friends will later turn on them and use the texts against them. Both sides have a Stasi.

They have piled on Rod Dreher now because Dreher has dared suggest the Vice President put distance between himself and the antisemites. They will pile on anyone who criticizes the Vice President because they want silence and adherence. As President Trump fades to lame duck status, they need a new horse to hitch their wagons to. They’ve found it in the Vice President, whose ambition seemingly is causing him to turn a blind eye to who many of these people are.

It will be important in the coming months to still stand and speak when you dissent. The shaming and bullying are going to get worse, and the only way to deal with it is to go through it with your head up.

The 2028 campaign season has begun in earnest, even though 2026 is not yet over. I wish it were not so, but that is why the bullying has begun.