I think it was 2019 when I first interacted with Sen. J. D. Vance (R-Ohio). I had just finished my judicial clerkship and begun my career in media. J. D., just a few years older than me, was already a bestselling author and a tech venture capitalist. We were both interested in some of the energetic and ascendant elements of the Trump-era Right, and had followed each other on social media accordingly. We messaged about meeting up on the sidelines of the first-ever National Conservatism Conference (“NatCon 1”), held in Washington D.C. in July 2019. I don’t think we actually met up amid the fracas, but J. D. gave a memorable speech.

We’ve remained in touch ever since. He published two op-eds at Newsweek during my tenure as opinion editor. We have remained active with national conservatism and both spoke at last week’s NatCon conference (“NatCon 4”). We are two of the founding advisory board members for American Moment, which seeks to “identify, educate, and credential” young New Right leaders. We have both been active with American Compass, a think tank that aims to reorient conservative economics away from doctrinaire libertarianism. We both spoke at the Restoring a Nation Conference in Steubenville, Ohio, in Oct. 2022; we got dinner before his keynote speech, nerding out on public policy. Like a true American, J.D. downed two Miller Lites.

We have also taken a similar path when it comes to former President Donald Trump. J.D. and I were both critical of Trump during the 2016 election but quickly came around as we saw the great achievements he secured in short order. We became vocal proponents of a more pragmatic, nimble, and dynamic right—a right, that is, which rejects the dog-eared playbook of yesteryear, and which prefers prudent statecraft to blindly following abstract dogma. We have been influenced by many of the same people and count a number of the same people as friends.

It is somewhat surreal to watch a friend be coronated as a major party’s vice presidential nominee. But J. D. is not merely a spokesman for our particular corner of the American right. Rather, he is an authentic voice for all those tens of millions of forgotten Americans who have been sold out by globalism and left in a cloud of dust by neoliberalism’s “free movement” of goods, labor, and capital. (Anyone who thinks neoliberalism has been “free” ought to walk around a town like Steubenville.) And he is the best possible voice for frustrated Millennials and Gen Z-ers who have inherited a country, following decades of boomer malpractice, where the social fabric is tattered and the American Dream of upward economic mobility is all but dead.