On Saturday, The Atlantic republished a JD Vance essay from exactly 10 years earlier that dismissed Donald Trump as “cultural heroin,” bringing renewed attention to Vance’s evolution from a fierce critic of Trump 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 and its context
The original essay was published during Trump’s first successful presidential run, when Mike Pence was his running mate and before Vance had entered politics. At the time, Vance worked at Mithril Capital Management, Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, and had just published Hillbilly Elegy, a bestselling memoir of his upbringing in the Rust Belt that also served as social commentary on the white working class.
In the essay, Vance argued that many Americans turned to Trump as a “pain reliever” amid a social crisis marked by mounting distrust in government and economic decline. He invoked the phrase “cultural heroin” to describe Trump’s political appeal, predicting that supporters would eventually realize Trump 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.”
Current political landscape
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 involvement in launching war in Iran alongside Israel after pledging to avoid new wars, among other issues.
Trump nonetheless marked the 250th anniversary of the US’s declaration of independence from the UK on Saturday with a speech declaring the nation was experiencing a “golden age.” This came one day after he attacked what he called the US’s brewing “communist menace” as a democratic socialist political movement gained ground at the polls ahead of November’s midterm elections, building on Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor in January.
Vance’s transformation from critic to defender
Beside the essay republished by The Atlantic on Saturday, which quickly went viral online, Vance had once openly described himself as a self-described “never Trump guy” and had even called Trump “America’s Hitler.” He said Trump was “unfit” for office and was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
Then he dramatically changed his tune when he ran for the US Senate in Ohio in 2022 and won with Trump’s backing. He subsequently became Trump’s running mate for the winning 2024 White House campaign, with Vance saying he had a change of heart after witnessing the results of Trump’s policies before his first presidency ended in defeat to Joe Biden.
Now a ferocious defender of the president, Vance is widely expected to vie to become Trump’s successor, alongside US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Reactions and analysis
David Frum, a senior Atlantic editor who knew Vance early in his political career, told NPR in 2024 that the limits politicians set for themselves and don’t cross for the sake of their careers are telling. “I think he walked across it,” Frum said of Vance during that year’s election. “I think he told us in advance what it was. It was Donald Trump, and he walked across it.”
