VANCE WINS: Loyalty as A Political Virtue, Or The Subtle Art of Bailing Out Billionaires
How Matt Gaetz Saved J.D. Vance... and Peter Thiel
I want to tell you a different story than the one you’re being told.
It’s about how JD Vance won the Ohio Republican primary.
You’ll be told that Peter Thiel’s $10m was decisive. It wasn’t. Much of it was wasted on the very ridiculous consultants that plagued his JD’s lackluster campaign.
In point of fact JD ran a terrible campaign. He didn’t raise enough money. Some of his statements on the campaign trail and on Twitter were gaffetastic. It isn’t easy to run statewide when you’ve never so much as run for mosquito control board.
And I see all kinds of ways that Tim Ryan could get the beat on JD.
True to form Ryan came out swinging.
Vance needs to keep his anger in check though I suppose if my mother were an addict I, too, would be pretty upset at the state of the world.
Let’s be clear here: Vance won because Trump endorsed him.
Now why did Trump endorse him? After all, we know that Trump was a fan of JD Mandel, whoever he is. Trump seemed to be hedging his bets or going off script as septuagenarian pols are wont do.
Trump endorsed JD Vance because Matt Gaetz asked him to.
Trump credited Gaetz with his decision to back Vance at a fundraiser last month at Mar-A-Lago. And true to form, Gaetz is hanging out tonight with Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago to watch the returns.
I had been pushing for Matt to get involved with the Thiel-backed candidates but Matt had been reluctant. Even though I had predicted that JD and Blake would go down for defeat in a primary lest drastic action be taken I thought it important to back them anyway, I said to Gaetz.
He suspected that there was a Thiel play there but I told him that there wasn’t.
(If Thiel and I were to have a relationship setting on Facebook the company he backed and I seek to destroy, it would be “It’s complicated.”)
But JD and Blake are my friends. Do I think that they’d make good Senators? Probably but that’s up to the voters of Ohio and Arizona. I do know that Blake and JD are my friends.
We don’t often hear about friendship and its role in politics. We are all supposed to be mindless automatons with neither a soul nor a sense of dignity. Nor do we hear about loyalty or kindness.
It’s rough out there. Ours is a disloyal age where divorces occur often and spinelessness is all too common among politicians and businessmen alike. I often marvel at all the “disloyal f***s” out and about and what it must be like to have no personal integrity.
Well, let’s just say that I’ve always been a bit contrarian. If a virtue is rare it is all the more important to cultivate it. You never know when it might come back into fashion again.
Once upon a time Matt Gaetz was loyal to me when I needed him to be and when I was at my most low. I told him at the time that he could denounce me and that I expected him to but that the network I have would be done with him and that would be that.
Candidly, with my marriage falling apart, I wasn’t expecting to make it home that night or any night. There’s a reason I don’t drink anymore and it isn’t a happy one but every time I hug my daughter I know it was the right one.
To my surprise and delight Gaetz went toe to toe with that perfidious nullity Jake Tapper and defended me against that liar Chris Wallace.
I wasn’t expecting any of that so I decided then and there that I would be with Matt come what may. It hasn’t been easy for either of us.
Those of us who are odd ducks have learned that we must swim together lest we make an easy meal for the fox. But every single person who had backed me has been rewarded many times over. This is what it means to be a friend.
No, I am not as mean as the business or political world requires. I am not conniving enough.
But loyalty can be contagious and when people know you are loyal they’ll confide in you. They’ll trust you and you’ll form a bond that’s hard to beat.
When Matt Gaetz was targeted by a hostile foreign power I was quick to defend him anywhere and everywhere. My cofounders at Clearview.AI were not too pleased and predicted a quick end to the Firebrand congressman but it was the right thing to do. And right to do for the country. We cannot allow blackmail networks ensnare our public servants or we might as well give up the idea of free government.
I wasn’t going to stand for that. I told another friend in the intelligence community that they were about to watch a master class in how the Netanyahu crowd took down a congressman like Gaetz.
That friend asked me what I was going to do about it. And I replied, “Just watch me” and sent him the great Trudeau clip. So began a shadow war that continues to this day, the less said about which the better.
Those were lonely days for the Matt Gaetz fan club, made all the more problematic because Matt didn’t seem to get what was happening to him.
He blamed the “deep state” for targeting him. I explained to Matt that the “deep state” had its divisions too — all human institutions do — and that he was being targeted by a rogue government over his Iran vote. He, along with Rep. Thomas Massie, got targeted by the Chisraeli faction. Massie had a Super PAC pour money into the race agains him funded by none other than Steve Wynn erstwhile attorney, Lin Wood.
When you stand up against the baddies, you often learn that there is a goodness in people you didn’t quite expect.
And so it was with JD Vance. Within days of the Gaetz affair breaking, Vance called me and told me that he would do whatever he could to help Matt. He had “seen things” and he knew the score from his time in politics.
I put him and Gaetz together and so began a friendship among my friends.
With Gaetz came Marjorie Taylor Greene and one of the finest moments during the campaign came when JD defended Marjorie from scurrilous attacks.
Matt and JD hit the campaign trail with Matt’s wife, Ginger (who I had also introduced Matt to).
Watching the three of them on Instagram left me excited. Finally. My generation was taking its rightful place in the national conversation. At last.
There’s so much work to be done against a mobbed up medical industry, a predatory housing market, and so on but tonight we might be permitted a bit of a celebration.
Now that’s not to say that JD was always loyal to me. He wasn’t. Nor, for that matter, has Thiel been.
But maybe Gaetz’s and my loyalty will rub off on them. Here’s hoping.
Addendum:
A friend writes in with this beautiful quotation that he (and I) found apt.
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book II, section 8
“Do you think it is of small account that this harsh and terrible misfortune has revealed those friends whose hearts are loyal to you? She has shown you the friends whose smiles were true smiles, and those whose smiles were false; in deserting you Fortune has taken her friends with her and left those who are really yours.
Had you remained untouched and, as you thought, blessed by Fortune, you would have been unable to get such knowledge at any price. So you are weeping over lost riches when you have really found the most precious of all riches - friends who are true friends.”
Loyalty definitely run deep, Charles. Having friends that know the true you and will stick by your side through thick and thin is a gift. You've always answered when I needed you. That's a gift to have in my life.
“Sometimes I catch myself wishing I’d spoken
So careless but I’ve never been a traitor, no, no, no..”
I’ve always liked that line from a Phil Cody song. Loyalty is not as culturally valued as it was during my post WWII youth, but it’s never fallen out of fashion in my household. Charles, you have always held friendship above and beyond what is considered acceptable, especially considering that you swim with sharks.