The Official "Damned Trump" Thread: Phase II

[Angrboda]

The Atlantic on Saturday republished a JD Vance essay that dismissed Donald Trump as “cultural heroin” exactly 10 years earlier, bringing back to the fore his evolving from a critic of the president to his vice-president.

In an editor’s note, the magazine said it was republishing the essay on the occasion of its 10th anniversary – and the US’s semiquincentennial – “so that our readers can judge for themselves how well his assessment [of Trump] … has stood the test of time”.

The original essay was published during Trump’s first victorious presidential run, when Mike Pence was his running mate and before Vance entered politics. He worked at Mithril Capital Management, Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, at the time and had just published Hillbilly Elegy, a bestselling memoir of his upbringing in the Rust belt that also served as a social commentary on the white working class.

In the essay, Vance said many Americans turned to Trump as a “pain reliever” in the midst of a social crisis in which mounting distrust in the government and economic decline were coming to a head. He invoked the phrase “cultural heroin” to describe Trump’s political appeal at the time – and said his supporters would eventually realize he was not the answer to their problems.

Trump offered “an easy escape from the pain”, Vance wrote. “To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution.

“He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.”

Vance continued: “He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”

That day appears to have arrived, with Trump’s approval near historic lows amid his unpopular mass deportation campaign, a failure to reduce prices as promised, and his helping launch war in Iran alongside Israel after pledging to avoid new wars, among other issues.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...rump-essay