JD Vance has carved a unique path from his upbringing in Middletown, Ohio, to New York Times bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy to U.S. Senator and now vice-presidential nominee. A new podcast from Cincinnati City Beat explores Vance's rise and the extent to which his public persona gels with reality. The podcast is called "Elegy: The Many Myths of JD Vance."
WOSU’s Debbie Holmes spoke with City Beat journalist and Middletown native Madeline Fening.
Holmes: You were working as a reporter at JD Vance's rally in Middletown in July, right after Donald Trump chose him to be his running mate. The next day, pundits were all talking about how Vance's infamous riff about Diet Mountain Dew fell flat. But you had a different takeaway, right?
Fening: I did, yes. The Diet Mountain Dew comment was certainly entertaining and interesting in the moment, but it's not what grabbed me. What really grabbed me and made me want to start this podcast with my co-producer, Ashley Paul, was the comment he made about Middletown being so good to him at the beginning of his rally. That really stood out because Vance built his career off of writing a book about how Middletown was not good to him in many different ways. And so to hear him make that statement not only in general, but within the Middletown High School auditorium on a campaign stage got me interested in figuring out how he changes his mind about things.
Holmes: What have you learned about Vance while researching him for the podcast? And what are some of the myths you discovered?
Fening: I would say that it's less about myths, as far as lies, and more about myths, as far as mythology of his personal storytelling. I've learned a lot about his trajectory from Yale to that sort of tech elite space. We spoke with a ProPublica reporter who got his hands on a Teneo Network speech, which is a conservative sort of secretive group that Vance has joined, and has got his hands on a speech where Vance is speaking in very sweeping terms about changing America's culture. And so I learned a lot about how Peter Thiel was really fundamental in Vance's growth from sort of his hillbilly, Appalachian sort of self-identification, when he was at Yale to becoming this new version of himself in that Silicon Valley world, and how those two worlds are kind of gelling now that he is a vice presidential candidate.
Holmes: You also spoke with a wide swath of elected leaders. What did you hear from them?
Fening: I spoke with Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, who is, you know, an (Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander), first Asian mayor of Cincinnati. A lot about how Vance's comments about Kamala Harris' race really resonate with folks who have multi-racial families. You know, Vance's comments about Kamala being a chameleon felt very concerning for Cincinnati's mayor, because he himself is from a multi-racial family. His wife is actually Appalachian. And so we spoke a lot about the concerns that the mayor has for not only what his comments mean for America, but even what they mean for Vance's own family, because his own kids are going to grow up and have to sort of square their own experiences with what Vance has said during this campaign.
Holmes: I'm sure you reached out to Vance's team for comment. What did they have to say about the concerns people have raised about Vance's credibility?
Fening: You know, I've been trying to get in touch with Vance for two years now since he started his Senate campaign. I've never been granted an interview. And so the only real comment that we have on the podcast from his team is basically just that Hillbilly Elegy, and the concerns that anyone might have about Hillbilly Elegy, are that they're just his personal story, and that his personal story is not going to be shared. The opinions in his personal story are not going to be shared with everyone.
Holmes: Considering Vance's loose adherence to the facts from his hillbilly autobiography narrative to his admitted willingness to make up stories about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, are you finding that any of this matters to voters in this hotly-contested campaign?
Fening: I would say that the Springfield situation, I think, really, really put a magnifying glass on Vance's relationship with the truth and his relationship with storytelling for his overall goal. And that's something that he even warns people about in Hillbilly Elegy. We point to this in one of our episodes that, you know, Vance warned people that white working-class voters are sort of targeted by some media organizations, influencers, people like Alex Jones, others who sort of don't really have the truth in mind, but instead an agenda and a narrative, and that that's something that is more powerful than major news networks that have traditional journalistic values.
