For his main story on Last Week Tonight, Oliver used his time to remind everyone who Vance actually is. He is a person who gleefully contradicts himself, who claims that some of his incendiary remarks were trolling but that he was also serious about them. He’s someone who has spoken about “bouncing ideas” off of Peter Thiel, and someone who seems pretty heavily influenced by the man who called diversity “very evil.” “Thiel is a huge influence on Vance, who has attributed ‘pretty much’ his entire career to Thiel’s mentorship. They met when Thiel spoke at Yale when Vance was a student, and Thiel later wound up hiring him and eventually investing in his venture capital firm,” says Oliver. “He then backed Vance’s 2022 senate campaign with, at that point, the largest amount given to a single candidate in congressional history.” And, yes, this is the campaign with the infamous “Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans?” ad.
There’s also the fact that Vance has called childless people “psychotic” and “deranged” but is against offering pretty much anything in the way of government help to people with children. And that’s to say nothing about his stances on abortion and divorce. It’s all pretty bad stuff! But people tend to have short memories, which is Oliver’s reason for bringing all of this bad stuff up again now. “When the next election rolls around, if he can put that [reasonable] act back on when everyone is looking, we may be in trouble,” says Oliver. “All of which it is so important to remember who J.D. Vance actually is, because he’ll present himself as an anti-elitist man of the people, but much of his career’s been bankrolled by tech billionaires. He’ll go to bat for Alex Jones, arguing we should show grace to those who are 40% right, but happily co-sign on childless people being sociopaths and the left being ‘unhumans’.” You can watch the whole segment below.
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