JD Vance calls his new book on his spiritual journey Communion but it reads as a confession of his cynicism and ambition. There are remnants of the loving, decent Vance we saw in his memoir about growing up in a dysfunctional family, Hillbilly Elegy, but also evidence of the heartless Vance who turned from Donald Trump critic to bootlicker on his way to becoming the youngest Vice President of the United States.
Serving a mercurial, demanding President – with the highest office in America tantalisingly within reach – you have to wonder whether Vance really has changed over the years from the guy who called Trump “America’s Hitler” to the patsy twisting himself into a pretzel trying to defend his master.
Indeed, if Trump ever bothered to read the book, he would probably laugh at his Vice President’s attempt to reconcile his newly found Catholic faith (Vance converted only in 2019) with his weak-kneed loyalty to a secular supreme leader who demands worship from his aides.
If anyone can see through Vance, it is Trump himself, who despises flip-flopping, unless it involves himself.
In his latest incarnation, Vance has been assiduously flogging what US critics are calling Trump’s “Versailles treaty” with Iran, a nod to that other disastrous post-war settlement in 1919. The President has gone from demanding “unconditional surrender” from the Islamic Republic to negotiating with the regime in the Memorandum of Understanding signed at a post-G7 dinner in Louis XIV’s French palace.
