Friendship is tricky business in politics, especially if your friends disagree with you. Today on The Editors, Rich discusses JD Vance’s friendship with Tucker Carlson and asks Dan what he thinks of the vice president’s reluctance to criticize him.
“Friendship is very important, controversial as it may be to say,” says Dan. “I think there’s something admirable and rare about going to bat for your old pal and elevating real human bonds and people who’ve had each other’s back through thick and thin over any political question.”
“As a general matter, that is a good thing. I try and practice that in my own life. . . . Some of my dear old friends got swept up in ‘wokeism’ in ways that horrified me at the time,” Dan explains. “I tried to reestablish the human connection that we had. So I think that’s all very admirable.”
“But it doesn’t obviate the need to give a better answer than the one he gave,” Dan says. “It simply undersells the story to say, ‘We have some political disagreements.'”
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