For JD Vance, Free Speech Only Means His Friends Can't Be Criticized

David Harsanyi
Tue, 23 Dec 2025 18:48:52 -0800
Opinion

"I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform," Vice President JD Vance told the crowd at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest conference in Phoenix this week.

This was a dig at Ben Shapiro, who warned earlier in the week about "charlatan" podcasters like Candace Owens and Vance's good friend Tucker Carlson, "who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty."

Few politicians beat on strawmen with more frequency than Vance. And, in this case, the red herring is the word "deplatform." It insinuates a form of censorship, which no notable person is demanding.
Updated: Fri Dec 26, 2025

"I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform," Vice President JD Vance told the crowd at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest conference in Phoenix this week.

This was a dig at Ben Shapiro, who warned earlier in the week about "charlatan" podcasters like Candace Owens and Vance's good friend Tucker Carlson, "who claim to speak in the name of principle but actually traffic in conspiracism and dishonesty."

Few politicians beat on strawmen with more frequency than Vance. And, in this case, the red herring is the word "deplatform." It insinuates a form of censorship, which no notable person is demanding.

Speaking out against those who normalize odious lies and indecency, as Owens and Carlson do, is a way of exercising free expression. This offends Vance, who sees the problem differently.

In a recent interview, Vance contends that Nazi fanboy Nick Fuentes' "influence within Donald Trump's administration, and within a whole host of institutions on the Right, is vastly overstated."

This is an entirely defensible point. After all, despite all the propaganda and vile conspiracies spread by the Carlson wing of "conservatism," a strong majority of attendees at the recent TPUSA conference still consider Israel as our ally.

Yet, instead of finishing the remark there, Vance added the danger was "overstated by people who want to avoid having a foreign policy conversation about America's relationship with Israel."

So, you see, the problem wasn't the elevation of Fuentes, a podcaster whose oeuvre spans from praising Hitler to calling women "w——s" and "stupid dirty b——es" who "want to be raped" nor Carlson's monomaniacal obsession with Zionists and Jews, a topic that dominates most of his episodes in one ugly form or another.

No, the problem is, as always, it seems with Vance, defenders of Israel.

Who are these "people" ducking debate, by the way? I run across scores of pieces defending Israel every day. If the vice president is having trouble locating these articles, columns, and speeches, or needs a list of intellectuals who would love to debate the topic, I'd be happy to provide them.

In the interview, Vance does offer some perfunctory condemnation of bigotry, before contending "(a)lmost no Americans are antisemitic" — which is definitely a big relief. Only around "99% of Republicans, and I think probably 97% of Democrats," the vice president contends, "do not hate Jewish people for being Jewish."

However, he adds, there is a "real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy" and "we should be able to say 'we agree with Israel on that issue, and we disagree with Israel on this other issue.'"

Again, for Vance, Israel supporters are the problem.

This talking point is one of the most loathsome because it insinuates that Jews and Christian Zionists control the conversation, rather than stake out positions.

Vance should man up and name the specific issue "we" are allegedly forbidden from debating in this country. Because virtually every major media outlet has been campaigning against Israel for decades. I've been in a continuous argument over the issue my entire professional life.

Being critical of the Israeli government isn't antisemitic, and no serious person has ever argued otherwise. Endless attacks on American Jews as having dual loyalties and conspiratorial lies about Israeli bloodlust are a different story.

In any event, Vance, as far as I can tell, has never uttered a word of protest about any of these deranged positions, maintaining strict neutrality on speech grounds.

Critics of Carlson, on the other hand, aren't afforded such grace. They are cast as deplatformers and "gatekeepers" and sparkers of backlash. Using Vance's formulation, only one side is allowed to speak.

We don't need performative denunciation of podcasters. It's too late for that anyway. Nor do we need people wringing their hands over the twits, extremists and modern shock jocks that dominate online conversation.

Hey, if the vice president is comfortable sharing a movement with people who will refer to his wife as a "jeet," that's his prerogative. Most normal people have standards that aren't based on cynical political or ideological calculations. Most normal people don't want to be associated with psychos.

Vance, though, feels the need to proactively shield the worst actors. And anyone who points out their vileness will be smeared by him as authoritarians on speech. In Vance's worldview, the only protected class consists of his "woke Right" friends. It's a transparent tactic meant to chill speech while ostensibly defending it.