During a recent interview at his residence, Vice President JD Vance hit back hard against "anyone who attacks my wife" and people who promote "all forms of ethnic hatred."
In a sit-down with UnHerd, Vance issued a blunt message to racist provocateur Nick Fuentes and to Democrats and media figures who have taken cheap shots at second lady Usha Vance.
"Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat s***," he said. "That's my official policy as vice president of the United States."
Fuentes, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier, has targeted Usha Vance with slurs and smeared the vice president as a "race traitor" for marrying her.
The vice president also drew a firm line on bigotry, saying, "Antisemitism and all forms of ethnic hatred have no place in the conservative movement." He added that attacking anyone because of race or religion is "disgusting."
He argued that Fuentes' influence is routinely exaggerated by political actors who would rather police speech on the right than confront a real debate inside the GOP — particularly over U.S. policy in the Middle East and America's relationship with Israel.
The vice president said the rhetoric of figures such as Fuentes becomes a convenient distraction.
He did offer a vigorous defense of ally Tucker Carlson, another lightning rod.
He told UnHerd on Friday that Carlson remains "a friend," and he rejected what he described as "gatekeeping" efforts to declare Carlson's views unwelcome in conservatism simply because they challenge bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxies.
While acknowledging disagreements, the vice president said he won't "throw friends under the bus" to satisfy establishment enforcers.
His broader argument is that America's political class spent years ignoring cultural and economic strains created by mass immigration and then acts shocked when social cohesion frays.
He condemned racial politics outright but suggested the country should keep perspective about who actually holds power.
While Fuentes is a podcaster with a loud online following, the vice president said, government-backed policies that explicitly discriminate, including race-based preferences in elite institutions, have been promoted by influential figures on the left.
If racism is wrong, he argued, voters should focus on what is being implemented through law and bureaucracy, not solely on who is shouting online.
He also addressed a growing "heritage American" debate on the right, rejecting any notion of unequal legal treatment based on ancestry.
Citizenship, he said, must mean equal treatment under the law. He also acknowledged that assimilation and cultural continuity matter and that overwhelming levels of immigration can strain a shared national identity.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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