JD Vance will virtually appear at a conservative conference in the UK this week, as the freshman Republican senator of Ohio seeks to take his rightwing message to an international audience.
Vance will speak at the National Conservatism Conference, usually shortened to NatCon, which will begin on Monday in London. Other featured speakers include senior Tories Suella Braverman, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Frost.
Vance’s speech comes six months after he won his Senate election in Ohio, defeating Democratic candidate Tim Ryan. During his Senate campaign, Vance, a venture capitalist, entirely abandoned his past criticism of Donald Trump.
Vance – who had previously described Trump as “America’s Hitler”, “a total fraud” and “a moral disaster” – embraced the former president’s political ideology, calling for finishing the wall along the US-Mexico border and denouncing identity politics as a Democratic gimmick.
His complete reversal eventually allowed him to secure Trump’s endorsement, which helped him emerge victorious from a crowded and contentious Republican primary.
Vance rose to prominence in 2016, when his memoir Hillbilly Elegy reached the New York Times’s bestseller list. The book details his upbringing in a poor dysfunctional family in rust-belt Ohio and his journey to attending Yale law school. It was adapted into a 2020 film starting Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
Vance’s loyalty to Trump has proved unwavering since he joined the Senate in January. This week, Vance attracted criticism for staunchly defending Trump after a New York jury found the former president liable for sexual abuse.
Appearing on CNN just before the network’s town hall with Trump on Wednesday, anchor Wolf Blitzer pressed Vance for his response to the verdict in E Jean Carroll’s lawsuit. A New York jury concluded on Tuesday that Trump had sexually abused Carroll 27 years earlier, ordering the former president to pay her $5m in damages for her battery and defamation claims.
“I think that case is illustrative of what’s gone wrong in this country,” Vance said. “Simply put, the Democrats don’t want to have a debate about prosperity and peace, about the failures of the Biden administration. They want to try to destroy this guy through the legal process.”
Blitzer countered that members of Trump’s own party had expressed alarm over the case. Republican senator Mitt Romney of Utah suggested the verdict demonstrated that Trump is “just not suited to be president of the United States”.
Vance again attempted to redirect the conversation, arguing US voters should be more focused on issues such as immigration and the economy than Trump’s sexually abusive behaviour.
“So you don’t believe the allegations that E Jean Carroll levelled against Trump?” Blitzer asked.
“Well, I think fundamentally the lawsuit is about something that happened 25 years ago,” Vance replied. “It’s a ‘he said, she said’ situation, and I trust my friend and the guy that I’ve known and gotten to know.”
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Carroll testified to the New York jury that Trump had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at the Bergdorf Goodman luxury department store in 1996. She said the attack, which she recounted to two friends immediately after it occurred, had left her emotionally scarred, and a psychologist testified that Carroll exhibited aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Trump refused to testify during the trial and repeatedly denied even knowing Carroll, dismissing the case as a “made-up SCAM” and a “witch-hunt”. The jury concluded that Trump was liable for sexual abuse and defamation, although the former president was not found liable for rape.
Vance’s full-throated defence of Trump after the jury’s verdict provoked ire among the former president’s many critics.
“So ahead of Trump’s appearance on CNN, we get to watch JD Vance – a man who has pushed conspiracy theories and the white supremacist ‘Great Replacement’ – come on live and do a friendly, pre-game chat,” MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan said on Twitter. “The normalization of extremism and conspiracism continues.”
During the 2022 election, Vance was indeed denounced for accusing Democrats of attempting to “transform the electorate” and warning of an immigrant “invasion”.
“You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win, meaning Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again,” Vance told voters last April.
Vance’s comments were interpreted by experts as a clear endorsement of the racist “replacement” conspiracy theory. NatCon will provide Vance with an opportunity to spread those beliefs beyond the US.