{"id":332880,"date":"2026-03-16T21:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T21:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/332880\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T21:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T21:40:10","slug":"john-oliver-on-jd-vance-hes-become-the-archetype-of-the-hyper-online-conservative-troll-john-oliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/332880\/","title":{"rendered":"John Oliver on JD Vance: \u2018He\u2019s become the archetype of the hyper-online conservative troll\u2019 | John Oliver"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver<\/a> took a deep dive on JD Vance<\/a>, the former Hillbilly Elegy memoirist turned US senator from Ohio and Donald Trump\u2019s second-term vice-president. \u201cI know to some, Vance might appear to be just another abrasive Maga asshole with a load-bearing beard,\u201d Oliver duly noted. \u201cBut to many on the right, he\u2019s a towering intellect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tucker Carlson once called him \u201cthe smartest and deepest [senator] I\u2019ve ever met\u201d, which is \u201ckind of like Ryan Lochte calling Cookie Monster his go-to guy for investment advice\u201d, said Oliver. \u201cI don\u2019t trust any of the individuals involved on any of the subjects involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vance has also performed one of the most confounding about-faces in modern politics. As recently as 2016, when he was doing press rounds for Hillbilly Elegy, he said that if Trump stood a good chance of winning, he would \u201chold my nose\u201d and vote for Hillary Clinton, because Trump would become \u201cAmerica\u2019s Hitler\u201d. Just a few years later, he was campaigning for the Senate in Ohio alongside him.<\/p>\n

And \u201cVance has turned out to be perfect for Trump, as in many ways he\u2019s become like a son Trump doesn\u2019t even have to pretend to love,\u201d Oliver quipped. The 41-year-old has served as a dutiful \u201cattack dog\u201d for the president, defending the president\u2019s decisions with barely passable rationalizations.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow obviously some of that is just being vice-president \u2013 you have to roll over for your boss,\u201d Oliver said. \u201cBut it\u2019s worth remembering: Vance has an inside track to the Oval Office in the future, not only because polls show him leading the Republican field for 2028, but also because if this guy doesn\u2019t make it through his term, either because the 25th amendment got invoked or his internal organs decided \u2018you know what, dude, you can\u2019t keep doing this to us, we\u2019re out,\u2019 JD Vance<\/a> will become president.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that, Oliver dug into Vance\u2019s current ideology and status as a prominent rightwing troll. But first, he returned to 10-year-old clips of Vance, expressing somewhat complicated and grounded views on the white working class and the impulse to scapegoat others for political expediency. \u201cIt is strange to see such a nuanced tone from a guy who has since become such a troll,\u201d Oliver observed. \u201cIt would be like finding old videos of your dog eating with a fork and knife. What the fuck?! Yesterday, I watched you take a shit and then eat it mouth-first. How on earth did we get from this to that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I could tell you what happened to him between 2016 and that moment, but sadly I am not a mind reader nor the therapist he so desperately needs,\u201d he continued. \u201cVance would tell you it\u2019s that Trump turned out to be a great president in his first term. Others would say that he\u2019s a power-hungry ladder-climber who saw that the Maga right was the only way up.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019d argue his shift was both opportunistic and genuine. Because Vance has seemed to have journeyed farther and farther into some pretty far-right thought.\u201d In 2024, Vance himself said he was \u201cplugged into a lot of weird rightwing subcultures\u201d, guided by his mentor and patron, the billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel \u2013 \u201cwhich isn\u2019t something you want to hear from your Tinder date, let alone the fucking vice-president\u201d, Olive fumed. \u201cIn fact, in many ways, he\u2019s become the archetype of the hyper-online conservative troll, right down to the whole kidding\/not kidding, trigger the libs shtick.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example, Oliver pointed to Vance\u2019s role in spreading lies about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio; when asked by CNN\u2019s Kaitlan Collins about the baseless rumor, Vance insisted that the claim deserved attention, and only got some because Republicans turned it into \u201ca meme about cats\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t turn it into a meme about cats,\u201d Oliver responded. \u201cYou shared misinformation that turned a whole town upside down. And it wasn\u2019t even the fun kind of misinformation, like when that same summer, everyone got convinced that Vance had fucked a couch, a theory that went so viral it led to us calling Vance\u2019s team and asking: \u2018Has the senator ever had sex with a couch?\u2019 To which, by the way, they hung up on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that the show followed up via email with the same question, along with several additional follow-ups on whether Vance had ever had sex \u201cwith a latex glove stuffed between two couch cushions\u201d or \u201cany other furniture or household items\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, they still haven\u2019t responded to us, which isn\u2019t exactly a resounding \u2018no\u2019, is it?\u201d he added. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not like it\u2019s hard to deny you fucked a couch. If you email hasjohnoliverfuckedacouch@hasjohnoliverfuckedacouch.com and ask if I\u2019ve fucked one, I promise you\u2019ll be emailed right back with an answer of: \u2018No way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat exchange is basically JD Vance in a nutshell,\u201d Oliver added. \u201cHe told a racist lie he saw on social media, doubled down, then tried to play the \u2018you elites don\u2019t get it\u2019 card to huff his way out of the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for where Vance\u2019s beliefs have ended up, the result is, according to Oliver, \u201cpretty grim\u201d. The vice-president has inaccurately blamed numerous societal issues, such as healthcare costs and home prices, on undocumented immigrants and expressed nakedly racist views. (\u201cIt is totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their nextdoor neighbors and say: \u2018I want to live next to people that I have things in common with,\u201d Vance said on a radio show.) And he remains obsessed with women having children, even going so far as to say that childless women are more \u201csociopathic\u201d and that \u201cthe rejection of the American family\u201d is \u201cthe most pernicious and evil thing the left has done\u201d.<\/p>\n

That is, at least in part, \u201cwho Vance is, and I\u2019d argue it\u2019s repellant\u201d, said Oliver. \u201cBut the dangerous thing is he\u2019s proven himself able to hide the worst part of himself at moments when the most people are watching him.\u201d Oliver pointed to the 2024 vice-presidential debate, in which Vance appeared polished and reasonable, to the surprise of many Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he can put that act back on when everyone is looking, we may be in trouble,\u201d Oliver noted. \u201cAll of which is why it is so important to remember who JD Vance actually is. Because he\u2019ll present himself as an anti-elitist man of the people, but much of his career has been bankrolled by tech billionaires\u201d such as Thiel. \u201cHe\u2019ll offer empathy and understanding when it comes to \u2018non-conventional\u2019 thinkers, but he\u2019ll deride immigrants as a net-negative on society, and it\u2019s not hard to see what the differences between those two groups are.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know Vance is easy to write off as a charisma-less asshole,\u201d he concluded, \u201cbut scratch even one inch under the surface \u2013 peel back the beard \u2013 and you\u2019ll find something far worse: his batshit views, and his bare fucking face.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver took a deep dive on JD Vance, the former Hillbilly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-332880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}