Critics of his talk at the RJC are missing the forest for the trees and, also, misunderstanding some of the trees.
JD Vance gave a speech at the RJC the other day. I was there, and it was a warm room for him; he got a standing ovation when he arrived and a standing ovation when he left. Understandably given the importance and sensitivity of the topic, there’s been extremely close exegesis of his remarks, which has often been critical and, I think, misses the mark.
Now, Vance didn’t denounce Tucker Carlson, and I don’t think he will explicitly distance himself from Carlson until he’s cornered and forced to (which he wasn’t on Monday night — more about that in a minute).
But Vance compared the Israel–U.S. relationship to the “special relationship” with the U.K. — the two countries don’t just have an alliance but a deep cultural affinity; said the alliance with Israel is strategically important to the U.S. in numerous ways; said he loves Jews; said Christians and Jews both believe people are made in the image of God; said Nick Fuentes is a disgrace; and said Jew-hatred is corrosive of the soul.
No ordinary person would listen to all of this and find anything objectionable about it, which is why there was a standing ovation in the room.
Yet his remarks are getting picked apart in the aftermath. It’s true that Vance garbled a discussion of blood libel and blood guilt, and it’s true that Carlson talks a lot about blood guilt (a coincidence that makes some people queasy), but it’s obvious that what Vance meant is the opposite of Tucker Carlson’s point.
When Carlson brings this up, he basically says that Christians don’t believe in blood guilt and Jews do; Vance was saying that both Christians and Jews reject blood guilt, and you are a bad Christian if you don’t.
The passage is worth quoting in full:
JD Vance: My solution to this, and, you know, I’m hardly an expert on the Jewish faith, but I believe that Jews and Christians, one of the critical things that we agree on is this concept of Imago Dei, that we are all made in the image of God. It says it right there in the Hebrew Bible in the book of Genesis. And what I . . . say to the people, like the root of antisemitism, the core of antisemitism to me, is the idea of blood libel. The idea that because of your genetics, because of your blood, because of your ancestry, you are guilty of a crime that you never committed. And I think that blood libel, which is at the root of antisemitism, is the exact opposite of the Christian gospel. And because of that, I believe the gospel is actually the solution to this.
And when I see, you know, you’re right that . . . Fishback won college-educated, or . . . not college-educated, but he won some of the college precincts.
Norm Coleman: University precincts.
JD Vance: I guess my response to that is I say that you cannot be a Christian, and I would say, you know, you know better than I would, but I don’t think that you can be a Jew either if you engage in this idea of blood guilt against people. And I think the antidote to antisemitism is the rejection of this idea of blood guilt. And I would tell any young man who claims to be a Christian that . . . this is super corrosive for the soul. And this brings me to my . . . final point.
So, we’re about to commemorate the 25-year anniversary of September 11, but of course that day will now always have a transformed meaning for me, because I was supposed to go to the 9/11 memorial service last year, but I ended up going to Arizona to take Erika and Charlie Kirk — Charlie Kirk had just been killed — from Utah to Arizona, where Charlie of course was buried. And Charlie, who by the way, like had disagreements with our foreign policy in the Trump administration, had criticisms of the Israeli foreign policy, he was not a person who was always perfectly politically aligned, he was a free-thinking guy, he loved Israel, but he also said something that I just keep on returning to, which is that Jew hatred is corrosive to the soul.
And I think that that’s the important point. Charlie’s message that you cannot be a good human being, you cannot have a good soul if you engage in Jew hatred, that to me is the antidote to what we see out there.
By the way, if we are focused on the details of his remarks, it should be noted that there’s been a war over Charlie Kirk’s legacy regarding Israel and the Jews, and here was the vice president claiming him for the pro-Israel side.
On Tucker, as you might have gathered from the transcript, Norm Coleman was talking with Vance, and he brought up Carlson but didn’t ask Vance directly about Carlson’s views. He instead asked how the vice president decides what shows he goes on, and Vance drew an understandable line between Joe Rogan and Nick Fuentes. If Coleman had followed up on Carlson, he would have forced Vance to discuss him, but he didn’t.
Anyway, I think Vance should make his disagreements with Carlson clear, and I’m guessing it’s inevitable that he will (notably, Vance did not appear on Carlson’s podcast to promote his new book). And there are all sorts of reasons for people to be skeptical of Vance and be interested in someone else for the GOP nomination. But his talk the other night was quite good; the critics are missing the forest for the trees and, also, misunderstanding some of the trees.