Is JD Vance’s Friendship With Tucker Carlson About to Cost the GOP Everything?

A short take

I have lost so many friends over politics. Some friends of more than 15 years thought nothing of walking away. It shocked me. We’re all adults, after all. This isn’t middle school anymore. Don’t they know I’m still me? No, they don’t. Their pathological hatred for Trump means anyone who votes for him is their sworn enemy.

I was no longer someone they trusted or even liked. I remember a friend from high school who later became a singer-songwriter and was fully consumed by the “white fragility” madness of 2020. She wrote an entire album called A White Album about her guilt over being white.

She lives in a town that is 96% white. She held a concert at her house, with an all-white audience listening to songs from The White Album. I thought it was funny and made a typical joke on Twitter (before it became X) that didn’t land. She told me I was mean and that I’d changed. We haven’t really spoken since.

Almost everyone I knew on Facebook for the past decade has become a stranger to me. I know the people I see around my town would not want to be my friend if they knew I voted for Trump.

My choice was to stay true to what I believed was worth fighting for, or stay silent to preserve my place on the Left and my friendships. No one should be asked to do that. I believe it shows weakness of character to abandon friends over politics. And yet, here we are.

So when JD Vance was pressured to either end his friendship with Tucker Carlson or make clear that he did not agree with Tucker’s attacks on Trump, it felt eerily familiar. Is this the same thing working in the opposite direction? Is JD Vance now supposed to do to Tucker Carlson what so many people I knew and trusted have done to me?

JD’s response when asked was simply this:

JD Vance won’t sell Tucker down the river. Megyn Kelly won’t sell Candace Owens down the river. That means we have a massive divide on the Right that could cost the GOP the midterms. The losses are many. The gains are few.

Chicks on the Right had a strong rundown, including some of the best dissenting views. Their point is that they don’t care about the friendship. They worry about Tucker’s influence. If JD Vance can’t even stand up to him, how can he possibly be president? At what cost? Tucker ended his friendship with Trump over Israel. Would he do the same with JD?

The full video is here, but here’s the clip.

But here’s the thing. The stakes could not be higher. According to Mark Halperin, the GOP has already lost the midterms because it has not done what it needed to do to pull ahead. He is predicting a blue wave and thinks it might be a “blue tsunami.” At least half the reason is the lack of enthusiasm in the MAGA base and among independent voters.

Nearly one year after Charlie Kirk’s death, the coalition he worked so hard to build seems to be falling apart. Candace Owens has plundered his grave for clicks. Podcasters who advocated for Trump—Megyn Kelly, Theo Von, and Joe Rogan—have vanished over Israel. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie are trying to burn the house down and hand power to the Left.

Tucker Carlson has said he wouldn’t vote for Mike Rogers with a “gun to his head” and is now openly suggesting voters choose Abdul El-Sayed instead.

If JD Vance continues to protect his friendship with Tucker, Democrats can easily exploit this later. I had readers unsubscribe just for posting Tucker videos. I can’t imagine what voters will do.

On the other hand, if someone else runs for the nomination—Marco Rubio or Ron DeSantis—Charlie's coalition will not show up. That is the Right’s quandary, on top of everything else going against them.

Just so people on the Right understand what this means: the upcoming midterms and 2028 could be FDR’s New Deal on steroids. If Democrats take both houses, they will not hold back—not just on this country, but on all of you. Even now they ask, “What will we do with all of these Trump voters?”

You should be very afraid of what they will do. Very, very afraid.