Hillbilly Elegy director Ron Howard has taken a swipe at JD Vance, suggesting that Donald Trump’s Republican running mate has “changed” since he first met him.
Earlier this year, Vance was selected to be Trump’s possible vice president in the 2024 US presidential election race – but before his political career, he was known for being the author of memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which was later adapted into a Netflix film of the same name.
Since being announced as Trump’s running mate, Vance has been criticised for comments that saw him refer to women, such as Trump’s presidential rival Kamala Harris, as “childless cat ladies”. This prompted swift backlash and accusations of sexism, with Vance claiming the remarks were made in “sarcasm”.
“When we spoke around the time that I knew him, he was not involved in politics or claimed to be particularly interested. So that was then.”
I have a hard time believing that. Filmed in June 2019, and Vance was elected November 2022, I simply don’t buy that he 180’d that hard just a year or two later. Perhaps Vance did not talk about campaign plans on set, but without question his narrow bigoted views would’ve been made clear. Ultimately, I too am surprised and disappointed, but in Ron Howard for making a movie about this ass.
Look into Vance a bit deeper. He’s no hillbilly. Nor Appalachian. He was born in Middletown Ohio. He went to Yale. He’s latched on to experiences only heard about in stories from his family. Pretending it was something he did. He’s the lowest kind of low.
The thing that f****** got me is he was all read this book and you’ll understand why we respond the way we do. And you go through the entire book waiting for the other shoe to drop or the first shoe to drop.
It goes right from business drying up in Appalachia and drugs moving in, to him trying to scare the s*** out of the poor to hate the foreigners while taking their money and giving it to the corporations who don’t give two f**** about the people.
The book itself is just a grift.
It’s out front in a local Barnes and Noble in the SF Bay Area.
His grift worked, I think. So many people on the left want to understand the right, that they reward bad behavior and put themselves in positions to be tugged right.
It’s okay to simply reject the book without reading it (or buying it). But here we are. And it’s okay to not watch Fox News and reject their rhetoric without watching it.
RFK also 180d from never wanting to go into politics to helping the Trump campaign. It’s almost like there’s something about the Republican party that draws in money-hungry grifters…
One of Vance’s former friends detailed the downfall of their friendship as Vance rose in politics. Despite their differences they were still friendly until 2021. Full article : https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/us/politics/jd-vance-friend-transgender.html
During their last text exchange that was outlined in the article, they had this to say:
“I know I can’t change your mind but the political voice you have become seems so far from the man I got to know in law school,” wrote Nelson, later explaining their position “as a trans person who accessed needed health care so I could live a full life.”
It does seem like Vance did 180 from someone equating Trump to Hitler to Trump’s running mate in just a few years.
On his press tour, he had a lot of negative things to say about Trump. In conversation with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, he said:
“I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
In public, Vance said that Trump was, “unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
And in unearthed private messages, he compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.
From 2016. Seems he did drastically change his opinions on trump once in politics.
Vance actually had really good ideas until he went Trump. A mixture of far left and middle right politics. Now you never hear his working class ideas.
It’s hard to imagine this is the guy who said declare war on corporations
Vance actually had really good ideas until he went Trump.
He’s always been a far-right reactionary with paleoconservative views.
He just drifted from the corporate insider Mitt Romney track to the populist outsider Ron DeSantis track as he watched Trump’s brand take over the party.
A mixture of far left and middle right politics
So like national socialism then? 🤔
JD Vance’s Wikipedia page:
In December 2016, Vance said he planned to move to Ohio and would consider starting a nonprofit or running for office.
His mentor says hillbilly elegy was written to propel him into politics. So I find it hard to believe he wasn’t interested when that was the reason for the book
Ron was happy to cash a fat Netflix check for his bullshit memoir, now shocked he ignored all the signs Vance was an asshole.
If you don’t understand that Ron Howard has no ill intent in his DNA then you need a reality check on your sad life. Take a break from social media and watch everything Ron Howard has done in his life and shame on you.
How ron? How? Why wouldn’t a creepy grifter continue to be a creepy grifter
Maybe he could have just been, I don’t know, paying attention? Ron Howard is full of shit, here.
From JD Vance’s Wikipedia:
In December 2016, Vance said he planned to move to Ohio and would consider starting a nonprofit or running for office.[54][50] In Ohio, he started Our Ohio Renewal, a 501©(4) advocacy organization focused on education, addiction, and other “social ills” he had mentioned in his memoir.[55] According to a 2017 archived capture of the nonprofit’s website, the members of the advisory board were Keith Humphreys, Jamil Jivani, Yuval Levin, and Sally Satel.[56][57] According to a 2020 capture of the website, those four remained in those positions throughout the organization’s existence.[58] Our Ohio Renewal closed after less than two years with sparse achievements.[55][59] According to Jivani, the organization’s director of law and policy, its work was derailed by Jivani’s cancer diagnosis.[60][61] It raised around $221,000 in 2017 and spent the majority of its revenue on overhead costs and travel. In subsequent years, it raised less than $50,000.[57]
During Vance’s 2022 campaign for US Senate, Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, said the charity was a front for Vance’s political ambitions. Ryan pointed to reports that the organization paid a Vance political adviser and conducted public opinion polling, while its efforts to address addiction failed. Vance denied the characterization.[62][63][c] Our Ohio Renewal’s tax filings showed that in its first year, it spent more (over $63,000) on “management services” provided by its executive director Jai Chabria, who also served as Vance’s top political adviser, than it did on programs to fight opioid abuse.[67][57]
Vance was born in Middletown Ohio. He never was a hillbilly or an appalachian. So it can always get worse. It would be an insult to veneers to call his projected identity a thin veneer. I don’t think it’s substantial enough to even be a laquer.
The dude is trading on stories told to him by his parents and grandparents when he was a wee little ottoman fucker. Passing it off as if it was his accomplishment.
Yeah he’s as much a hillbilly as I am, except I actually lived in urban Kentucky for like a year once and sometimes date actual Appalachians. He’s just some guy who got into a good school and ditched the rust belt for the coasts, which I don’t judge, it’s a good decision and one I wish I’d studied enough for. But a lot of those folks build their identity on being from back here and it gets weird.
There’s this coastal idea of Ohio vs the realit. I think Ron DeSantis showed it best where they keep trying to act like Ohio is this salt of the earth conservative place, and like yeah it’s lost its swing state status, but it isn’t conservative like Miami or Orange County, it’s conservative like folks who haven’t met people different from them. It’s conservative but we love weed and abortion is contentious not hated. And also Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati aren’t conservative. Please coastal conservatives stop moving to Ohio cities and thinking we’re cool with your bigotry.
Anyways yeah Vance is a costal conservative and thinks he understands Ohio just because he lived in Middletown until he had the ability to bail.
My point is simply he has documented political ambitions going back as far as 2016, and acting like Ron Howard couldn’t have been aware of that by 2019 is absurd.
“No, not now,” he said when asked if he’ll ever run for office. “I think that I need to live in the state for a while and get to know these problems a little better before actually doing something like that. Never say never, but it’s certainly not something I am thinking about over the short-term.”
“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since Friday,” said Jai Chabria, an adviser to Vance who joined him in Washington this week for meetings with those encouraging his candidacy.
“The amount of support for J.D. Vance is incredible,” Chabria told BuzzFeed News. “People are starting to realize he has the best message to beat [Democratic incumbent] Sherrod Brown. J.D. is giving serious consideration toward this, because there are very serious people asking him to run.”
Oh wait, who was Jai Chabria again?
Our Ohio Renewal’s tax filings showed that in its first year, it spent more (over $63,000) on “management services” provided by its executive director Jai Chabria, who also served as Vance’s top political adviser, than it did on programs to fight opioid abuse.
Fuck Ron Howard for making a movie about this guy to begin with
I want to know what Clint
the superior Howard thinks.
