‘Extremely Online’: The Significance of J.D. Vance’s Social Media Presence
Vice President J.D. Vance is a “first” in many ways in the vice presidency: Vance is the first U.S. Marine Corps veteran and the first Catholic convert to hold the office, as well as the first man with a beard to hold the office in over a hundred years. Notably, Vance is also the first millennial to attain the vice presidency. This means that the 50th vice president grew up and came into adulthood during the advent of mass internet use and the pioneering days of social media; platforms like MySpace and Facebook were in their infancy as Vance reached the early years of adulthood. The incumbent vice president maintains an active presence on social media — a surprisingly active presence, in fact, making the second Trump administration arguably the most accessible in generations.
In recent years, the world of social media — especially platforms like X and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Facebook — has emerged as the “public square” of the modern day, a space where individuals across the nation and even across the globe can exchange and consume ideas and information. Social media can be used to report news and publicly share photo or video evidence of consequential events in real time, post detailed and edifying threads on subjects ranging from philosophy and theology to history and architecture, raise public awareness of crucial issues, promote and debate political ideologies, and interact not only with other everyday folk but, notably, with the major influential figures of the day.
President Donald Trump has proven himself a social media savant, mastering use of platforms like X and Truth Social to promote and disseminate his policies and ideas and develop a loyal base of supporters to whom he artfully — and often humorously — communicates. However, for all of his prowess and popularity (Trump currently boasts over 100 million followers on X, having surpassed pop stars such as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga and even the official accounts of organizations like YouTube), Trump largely uses social media to broadcast, rather than interact.
If Trump’s use of social media is comparable to a general marshaling and encouraging his soldiers, then Vance’s use of social media (especially X) is more akin to a member of the famous Oxford Inklings group, not only sharing his own ideas and digesting and debating the ideas of others. Unlike many major political figures, Vance regularly interacts with other accounts on X — not because they are the large official accounts of professional news organizations or the team-run accounts of other world leaders, but because they share or discuss ideas of interest to him, ideas he considers worth debating, clarifying, promoting, confronting, or just engaging with.
When Vance chooses to confront ideas over social media, he does so in much the same way that snarky, terminally-online millennials do. When Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) criticized Vance for demanding that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffer Marko Elez be reinstated after he was fired due to years-old discriminatory social media remarks regarding Indians, Vance responded, “Grow up.” Referring to Vance’s family and his wife Usha, who is of Indian descent, Khanna, who is also of Indian descent, implied that Vance should condemn Elez “for the sake of both of our kids.” The vice president fired back, “I cannot overstate how much I loathe this emotional blackmail pretending to be concern.” He continued, “I don’t worry about my kids making mistakes, or developing views they later regret. I don’t even worry that much about trolls on the internet.” He asked, “You know what I do worry about, Ro? That they’ll grow up to be a US Congressmen who engages in emotional blackmail over a kid’s social media posts. You disgust me.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan recently equivocated European nations criminalizing, investigating, and arresting citizens for allegedly posting “misinformation” online with Trump barring an Associated Press reporter from the White House press briefing room, saying to Vance, “I know you’re busy lecturing the Europeans on free speech, but have you seen this?” The millennial vice president replied, “Yes dummy. I think there’s a difference between not giving a reporter a seat in the WH press briefing room and jailing people for dissenting views. The latter is a threat to free speech, the former is not.”
Vance’s refutation of bad ideas is blunt, bordering on rude, but bold. For decades, political leaders have placed a high premium on a sort of false civility, treating grave moral evils like widespread abortion, pornography use, or mass replacement migration as though they deserve equal standing and consideration alongside mere policy proposals. Like many of the millennial generation, Vance has rejected that insincere veneer of decorum, opting instead for brusque — but not necessarily mean-spirited — honesty.
This quest for honesty seems to be a recurring theme in Vance’s social media interactions, although he obviously sometimes misses the mark, especially when it comes to issues like chemical abortions or in-vitro fertilization (IVF), where he has been reticent to embrace the biblical worldview promulgated by the Catholic Church he converted to. But the vice president nonetheless engages with others on social media in an effort not only to explain or clarify his own thoughts but to understand and even consume others’ thoughts.
For example, National Catholic Register Senior Editor Jonathan Liedl, whose X account has less than 5,000 followers, hypothesized in a post that Vance may himself embody the “rightwing religious populist vs tech-bro libertarian civil war in the Trump admin,” rather than that “civil war” being a conflict between Vance, representing “rightwing religious populism,” and tech billionaire Elon Musk, obviously representing the “tech-bro libertarians.” Liedly posited that, “proportionally, there may be a lot less religious populism to go around than some previously thought.”
Vance, who boasts nearly four million followers on X and is the sitting vice president of the United States, took the time to engage with and respond to Liedl’s post. “I’ll try to write something to address this in detail,” Vance replied, explaining that the “civil war” referenced by Liedl “is overstated,” although he admitted that “there are some real divergences between the populists and the techies.” Vance explained that his views on technology and industry are informed by his appreciation for “growth and productivity gains.” Referring specifically to artificial intelligence (AI), his comments on which were the initial impetus for Liedl’s post, Vance explained, “One of my very real concerns, for instance, is about consumer fraud. That’s a valid reason to worry about ‘safety.’ But the problem is much worse if a peer nation is 6 months ahead of the US on AI.” He contrasted his position on technology against his position on “immigration and offshoring,” which he encapsulated, “In general: I dislike substituting American labor for cheap labor.”
According to a profile in The Spectator, Vance is “plugged into a lot of weird, right-wing subcultures” online, a fact which shows through in his speech and his policy advocacy. In the wake of Vance’s ascendancy to the vice presidency and the onslaught of posts he published online, numerous right-wing social media users began noting the similarities between Vance’s posts and the posts right-wingers have been sharing for years, speculating that the vice president may have been quietly following and absorbing right-wing social media accounts for some time.
“Remember when you post that the extremely online Vice President of the United States is reading, absorbing, and listening,” quipped Gab founder Andrew Torba. After Vance explained the Christian concept of the “ordo amoris” or order of loves, the Bendell Werry X account noted that he and other Christian accounts have been posting about the theological concept for years, adding that Vance “really is reading our posts.” Refuge Church Utah pastor Brian Sauvé suggested that Vance uses an anonymous alternate account to follow and interact with right-wing Christian social media users, and others have semi-facetiously tried to identify which anonymous accounts might be Vance’s, with “Lord of the Rings” themed accounts making multiple appearances on the list of possible Vance alternates.
The hypothesizing is more than just frivolous fun: the enthusiasm reveals that for the first time, possibly ever, Christians and right-wingers who have grown up with the internet or learned early on to adapt to it finally feel represented by their government leaders. More than just inspiring enthusiasm, though, Vance’s social media use and the close correlation between the online culture fostered by right-wingers and the posts the vice president has produced demonstrate that a portion of the U.S. population which has long been sidelined, suppressed, silenced, and even demonized has contributed to shaping the ideology of the sitting vice president.
Concerns that Americans have — concerns which would have been ignored by other administrations — are now monitored by the vice president, who can share those concerns with the president. Ideas and values held dear by Americans can now be communicated, almost directly, to the incumbent administration. Given that social media is the public square of the modern day, Vance’s presence on X is the equivalent of having the president’s top advisor spend all day every day holding court and listening to what his countrymen have to say.
Under the second Trump administration, the importance of social media has amplified, truly ensuring that all Americans now have a voice.
AUTHOR
S.A. McCarthy
S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
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