In 2016, JD Vance texted his Yale Law School roommate: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Nixon was the best case. Eight years later, Vance was on stage in Milwaukee accepting the Republican nomination for Vice President.
If Trump is Hitler, what does that make Vance? Not Himmler - too crude for a Yale-educated memoirist. Not Göring - too buffoonish. The better analog is Goebbels: the educated intellectual who knew exactly what he was enabling, burned away his doubts, and became the regime’s most polished propagandist. Or Franz von Papen - the establishment figure who thought he could harness the monster and instead legitimized it. The man who privately called Trump “America’s Hitler” chose to become his most loyal servant. That tells you everything about JD Vance’s character - and his price.
For a list of other Nazi profiles, visit “The Others” at Quislings.info.
The Culture Warrior
In 2021 on Tucker Carlson’s show, Vance declared that America is run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives,” naming Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and AOC - though Harris is a stepmother and Buttigieg an adoptive father. Elsewhere he called childless Americans “childless sociopaths.” In his 2026 book Communion, he called it “one of the dumbest things I ever said” – which was not evidence of personal growth, but calculation. The comment had become a liability.
The belief system has not changed: Vance has argued consistently that women without children are failing a national duty, threading into MAGA pronatalism and its undercurrent of demanding women reproduce while controlling their choices. He has opposed LGBTQ rights throughout his career, wrapped in the language of “Christian civilization” - the same framework he used to campaign for Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
Two Dead. One Walkback.
On January 7, 2026, Renée Nicole Good - a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother - was fatally shot by an ICE agent during Operation Metro Surge. One day later, Vance went on television:
“That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.” He also called the killing “a tragedy of her own making.”
[There’s video; there are photos: find them; see where the officer was standing; look at where the vehicle tires were pointed.]
Sixteen days later, Alex Pretti - a VA nurse and U.S. citizen - was surrounded by six federal agents, pinned face down on the ground, and shot multiple times in the back. He wasn’t an ICE target. He had been filming agents with his phone and stepped between an agent and a woman who’d been shoved to the ground. The county medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
After Pretti’s killing, Vance told reporters: “I didn’t say that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity; that’s absurd” - directly contradicting his on-camera statement sixteen days earlier. Legal experts had already explained that “absolute immunity” for federal agents doesn’t exist.
What Vance did between the two killings was send a signal to agents in the field: don’t worry, we’ll cover you. Minnesota officials are still trying to answer what that signal cost. The Trump administration has been withholding evidence.
The Pope Problem (Both of Them)
Vance wears his Catholic faith publicly and insistently - and has managed to get crosswise with two consecutive popes over it. Pope Francis called the administration’s deportation campaign a “major crisis.” Vance’s response, in his 2026 book Communion, was to describe Vatican officials as “too abstract to be helpful.”
Then came Pope Leo XIV - Robert Prevost, a Chicago-born American, elected May 2025 as the first U.S. pope in history. Before his election, Leo twice shared social media content directly criticizing Vance by name. As Pope, he told reporters that immigrant treatment under the Trump administration was ‘extremely disrespectful’ and pressed U.S. bishops to speak out. Vance refused to “play the politicization of the Pope game.”
Vance has now dismissed two consecutive popes - including an American one - for inconveniently agreeing with their own church’s teaching on human dignity.
Orbán: The Model
In April 2026, Vance traveled to Budapest to campaign for Viktor Orbán, called Trump on speakerphone for the crowd, and praised Orbán as “one of the only true statesmen in Europe.” Orbán had spent 15 years dismantling Hungarian democracy - capturing courts, strangling independent media, rewriting election rules - building what he called an “illiberal democracy,” backed by Putin. Orban and Vance lost. Opposition candidate Peter Magyar won in a landslide.
The American Vice President had flown to a foreign country to save an authoritarian, failed, and revealed in the attempt exactly what kind of America he is building toward.
The Rest of the Record
At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vance lectured European allies that their greatest threat wasn’t Putin - it was immigration and the suppression of right-wing voices. The audience sat stone-faced. Two weeks later, he and Trump spent the final ten minutes of a bilateral Oval Office meeting berating Ukrainian President Zelensky for insufficient gratitude. The meeting collapsed. Zelensky later said Vance was “helping the Russians.”
On January 6, 2021, Vance texted Jared Kushner urging him to get Trump to call off the mob. By 2024, asked what he would have done as VP, he said:
“I would have told the states - Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others - that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.”
He would have done what Pence refused to do. Pence refused because it was illegal. Vance wouldn’t have been so constrained.
Before the Supreme Court’s July 2024 ruling in Trump v. United States, Vance was already publicly arguing for presidential immunity: “The president’s got to be able to do his job in the same way that police officers, judges, prosecutors enjoy some immunity - that principle has to apply to the president too.” He was saying this while his running mate faced criminal indictments, laying legal groundwork in public for the argument that Trump was untouchable.
Vance’s career was bankrolled by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who seems to view liberal democracy as an obstacle to power. Thiel is so patriotic that he has quietly obtained New Zealand citizenship, had bunker plans drawn up there (rejected by local authorities), and acquired escape properties in Argentina and Uruguay. The great financier of American nationalism has three exit strategies on other continents.
The Scenario Ahead: The Pardon Play
If Democrats take back one or both chambers in the 2026 midterms, the investigative machinery restarts - subpoenas, hearings, contempt referrals, the full accounting of the graft, DOJ weaponization, emoluments, and tariff corruption. At that point, Trump has a decision to make and Vance has a role to play.
The Nixon-Ford precedent: Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment. Ford pardoned him for all offenses “committed or may have committed” and spent the rest of his career defending it as national healing. He lost the 1976 election largely because of it.
A Trump resignation followed by a Vance pardon would be the same play - bigger, broader, dirtier. The pardon would need to cover Trump’s children, his son-in-law, Cabinet members, and the loyalty-enforcement apparatus inside DOJ. It would declare that power, exercised boldly enough, is its own absolution.
Consider where we started. In 2016, Vance’s best-case scenario for Trump was Nixon - “a cynical asshole… who wouldn’t be that bad.” His worst case was Hitler. He ended up choosing the man he feared was Hitler and making himself useful to him.
In June 2026, Vance stood at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library promoting his memoir, announced “I’ve always liked Richard Nixon,” said Watergate would be “like a 12-hour news story” today, and compared himself to Nixon: “Young senator, vice president, writes some bestselling books, is hated by the media - it kind of sounds like JD Vance.” The man who hoped Trump was only Nixon-level bad is now Nixon’s rehabilitator and Trump’s Ford-in-waiting. The pardon is the point. It always was.
SOURCES
THE HITLER QUOTE
Ohio Capital Journal — Original text message report (2022)
CNN KFILE — Vance’s past statements on Trump (2024)
Snopes — Fact check: Vance called Trump “America’s Hitler”
PBS NewsHour — Fact-checking Vance’s past statements
THE CULTURE WARRIOR
CNN KFILE — Vance’s history disparaging people without kids (2024)
LGBTQ Nation — Vance regrets “childless cat ladies” remark (2026)
Truthout — Cat ladies remarks and GOP weaponization of family
TWO DEAD. ONE WALKBACK.
Newsweek — Vance says ICE agent has “absolute immunity” (Jan. 8, 2026)
CNN — Do ICE agents have absolute immunity? (Jan. 8, 2026)
NPR — Do federal agents have absolute immunity?
Fox 9 — Vance calls Good killing “a tragedy of her own making”
Wikipedia — Killing of Alex Pretti
CNN — How two agents escalated encounter with Alex Pretti (Jan. 29, 2026)
ABC7 — Medical examiner rules Pretti’s death a homicide
IB Times — Vance backtracks on absolute immunity after Pretti killing
NPR — Months after ICE shootings, federal probe remains elusive (Apr. 2026)
THE POPE PROBLEM
https://www.ncronline.org/news/vance-surprised-pushback-pope-us-bishops-new-immigration-policies
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/06/15/vance-new-book-talks-about-disagreements-with-vatican-officials/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/08/europe/new-pope-conclave-white-smoke-vatican-intl
https://abcnews.go.com/International/pope-leo-shared-content-critical-trump-vances-immigration/story?id=121619905
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pope-leo-xiv-social-media-
ORBÁN: THE MODEL
ABC News — Vance visits Hungary ahead of election (Apr. 2026)
NBC News — Vance stumps for authoritarian leader Orbán
Ohio Capital Journal — Vance stumped for Putin-backed authoritarian and lost (Apr. 2026)
THE REST OF THE RECORD
NPR — Vance scorches European allies at Munich Security Conference (Feb. 2025)
Al Jazeera — World reacts after Trump, Vance berate Zelensky (Feb. 28, 2025)
Kyiv Independent — Zelensky says Vance is “helping the Russians”
Politifact — Vance said he would have sent back electors on Jan. 6 (Jul. 2024)
HuffPost — Vance would have done what Pence refused on Jan. 6
The Hill — Vance says president has immunity ahead of Supreme Court ruling (Jun. 2024)
Wikipedia — Trump v. United States (Supreme Court ruling, Jul. 2024)
The Nation — What’s behind Peter Thiel’s move to Argentina
THE PARDON PLAY / NIXON
ABC News — Vance admirer of Nixon, says Watergate would be “a 12-hour news story” (Jun. 2026)
NBC News — Vance says Watergate would be “a 12-hour news story” today
Boston Globe — JD Vance comments on Richard Nixon and Watergate (Jun. 2026)
Fox News — Carville theory: Trump resigns, Vance pardons him
... with one exception: Vance doesn't have Goebbel's gift of gab! Seriously, the current VP of the United States is a soulless political opportunist who saw the shortest and cheapest way to become President by joining Trump, fully calculating that his "one step" away from the Presidency could easily materialize given age et al. Vance reminds me more of Goethe's Dr Faust who made a deal with the devil by selling his soul. Except, Faust had more character.