Hello everyone and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of the

bulwark. And this week, we're covering J.D. Vance's first few months in the vice presidency. We haven't

talked about him much yet. Since Vance joined the ticket, it's been clear that he's

indicative of the new right populist strain of thinking in the GOP that is a lot more purchased

right now than my, you know, John McCain, Mitt Romney wing, RIP. So I want to learn as much

as I can about Vance's influence at the moment, the new rights influence more broadly, and what it all means for where the Trump administration is taking us.

We're bringing back a former guest who's been a singularly dogged and insightful chronicler of Vance and the New Right.

Ian Ward, reporter at Politico and Politico magazine.

What's up, Ian? Thanks for coming back.

Hi, thanks for for coming back.

Hi, thanks for having me back.

So we've been asking about Vance and the groups and getting a lot of feedback from the voters.

You were so good on the last show. You knew so much about this, the new right. And our listeners were really interested in it. And I think even now watching Vance in this role and the obvious question of,

is this guy Trump's successor, I think opens up new relevance to discussion of the

ascendancy of the new right and what that means for our politics. So besides the obvious,

which is like Ukraine tariffs, what other footprints have the new right had on the

second Trump term that our listeners might not grok? Yeah, I mean, I think tariffs would jump out

is an enormous one. I mean, I think it's hard in retrospect even to think back to how remote

the possibility of the current tariffs were, even during the first term, right?

I mean, Trump, the first time around was surrounded by a bunch of economic advisors who were

openly free trade, openly skeptical of tariffs. Vance in the Senate was one of the few senators

who was sort of vocally pro-tariff. And the case that he made for it mattered a lot, too.

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