There is a famous axiom that goes something like “a week is a lifetime in politics,” and these past few weeks have certainly proved that rule.
We went from:
A Presidential debate with a malignant narcissist that was doomed to fail with no moderation.
Much of the country suddenly discovered how much Biden had physically aged, setting off a panic, firestorm and minor Democratic civil war.
An apparently unwell Republican with an assault rifle got past the secret service and took shots at trump, killing another. We can only imagine how much more paranoid and unhinged this will make trump.
trump apparently goes against his “better judgment” and picks JD Vance for V.P. at the extreme urging of Don Jr, Eric and Tucker Carlson.
Republicans had a malignant narcissist at a convention, MKUltra cult rally.
President Biden makes the selfless choice to not run again.
Nearly the entire Democratic Party efficiently and effectively rallies around V.P. Kamala Harris.
The Democrats go from panic to euphoria creating an entirely new positive firestorm of enthusiasm and excitement for a youthful and energetic Presidential candidate.
All signs point to the trump team having no plan B beyond misogyny, racism, and running against “old” Joe, but now the only old in the race is “don old.”
The race was completely flipped on its head by Harris’ A+ rollout of charm, charisma, applause lines, Democratic energy, unity and new polls showing that trump’s lead has all but evaporated, when he should be at his peak after the Republican convention.
Even before Harris ascended to presumptive nominee, reports almost immediately started coming out that trump was second-guessing the pick of JD Vance because he keeps being revealed as weirder and creepier than any of us could have ever imagined (including trump). It’s so bad that many of us can sense trump desperately wants to say to JD Vance, “You’re fired!”
Whew, that’s a lot for a little over 3 weeks! Let’s take a breath.
A few days ago, subscriber Pam Smith (ME) asked, “Does J. D. Vance qualify as a malignant narcissist as well. And if he does, how will two malignant narcissists work together?”
The CNI standard response is to always be as honest and informative as possible about such questions.
“Idk enough about Vance yet to make that judgment but let's just say a lot of signs are pointing to the affirmative. As long as trump thinks JD is sufficiently sucking up, they will get along. I'm certain he'll try to play along until the clock strikes midnight, but he might not be able to help himself.”
Truth be told, psychologically profiling such horrible human beings is rarely my idea of a good time because it can be so time intensive in a dark place, so I don’t want to spend any more time on this weirdo than I have to.
Thankfully we don’t really need to because he has already given us several tells about whether or not he is fairly high up on the narcissism spectrum, and that is more than enough to work with in covering a political outline of a psychological profile.
Like previous CNI subjects such as Kevin McCarthy and Alex Jones, JD Vance’s epically obvious self-serving dishonesty and lack of spine or depth over the last few years has meant that even if he is a clinical-level malignant narcissist, sociopath or psychopath, he is a very sad, soulless, lessor, shallow clown, follower version, despite seemingly impressive accomplishments and appearances in the past of a completely different person.
Sadly, the creepy, suck-up misogynist he is now pretty much cancels out anything intelligent he ever said as nothing more than dishonest or unreliable information.
Yes, his apparent complete reversal makes him a potentially very interesting psychological case study, but we are in big trouble if his 15 minutes of fame are not up in November, if not sooner, because he is a far more dangerous Manchurian candidate than most of us realized, including me.
The Political Lens
Frankly, it is hard to imagine what answer there is besides some form of malignant narcissism for saying trump is “America’s hitler” with sincerity in 2016, and then by 2022 completely flip-flopping by sucking up to trump for his support when running for Senate in Ohio.
It certainly made one feel foolish for believing he ever had anything intelligent to contribute or meant anything he ever said, when the very financially well off Vance seemingly sold his belief system, integrity and soul to trump for political power.
Here was a guy who claimed to be from humble beginnings, supposedly wrote a good book about the struggles of the rural working man, but based on his completely shameless nature and relentless lies he told in running for political office, it has brought into serious question the accuracy and true motivations behind everything he has ever said, done or written, and “begs the question,” WTF is JD Vance?
Fake Successful Hillbilly Traitor
So yeah, I thought I knew WTF JD Vance was. He was a superficial and apparently conscienceless narcissist who is incredibly craven and/or shockingly not very bright. Who else would seemingly completely reverse themselves from the person they claimed to be and is their claim to popular fame, all for the sake of power, when they don’t need any more money or fame?
It was stunning, weak and pathetic, but since a dishonest moral character is now a job requirement of the trump Republican Party, he only stood out as someone who sold what seemed like some very valuable brand credibility with his best-selling and promoted book Hillbilly Elegy, just to be a Senator from Ohio.
While a lot of assertions have been made here, one person who brought a lot of personal confirmation to the CNI indicators of JD Vance’s duplicitous nature was author and comedian Trae Crowder. Trae spent some time with JD and his wife drinking beer and hating on trump as an existential threat to America.
For those who don’t know Trae, in 2016 the “Liberal Redneck” became a YouTube hit in the Resistance. He is charming, poignant, intelligent, has empathy and does a great job reminding the rest of the country that there are plenty of good-hearted and kind folks in the South, despite the endless parade of clown narcissist GOP leaders we see on the news.
I believe he said his liberal politics were crystalized when he heard what the GOP was trying to do to LGBTQ people. He was very close with a gay uncle and recognized he deserved to be treated equally.
Here are six minutes of NSFW gold with Trae discussing JD.
It gets so much worse
Now while I knew he had suspiciously flip-flopped from Never-trumper to trump suck-up, to barely win, I have only recently learned how much more odious his supposed political beliefs have become, or always were. By now most have heard the highlights:
Misogynist - Wants a national abortion ban and believes women should stay in abusive marriages.
Family elitist - Says only people with children have a stake in the future of America so their votes should count more.
Pro-Russia - Opposes U.S. support for Ukraine.
Project (Mein Kampf) 2025 - Wrote the introduction for a Project 2025 author’s book summarizing it.
Perhaps most shocking of all, this man of the rural people with a popular book was apparently created and grown in a lab by far-right libertarian billionaire tech bros, and not just any tech bros! CNI readers will know of these dark Silicon Valley forces from our tentpole four-part epic, The Grooming of Elon Musk: A Psychological Profile.
“Elon’s Roy Cohn
For those who don’t know, Roy Cohn was trump’s mentor in New York, and was likely a psychopath. In trump, he saw a rich narcissist he could easily groom and manipulate as his flying monkey due to trump’s massive Daddy issues and other insecurities. I highly suspect Musk’s PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel had similar instincts when he met a clever young Elon, and then further groomed him with narcissism labeled as libertarianism every chance he got, since a top goal of wannabe authoritarians is to recruit and place in power those who can be made to serve them, as Thiel seems to have accomplished to great effect with his “PayPal Mafia.”
It’s easy to imagine Thiel as Musk’s Roy Cohn when they built up PayPal together, grooming the young and vulnerable savant Elon with his own mix of cold-blooded behaviors, completely self-serving business practices and cut-throat processes. Elon as the bullied son of an abuser is certainly very vulnerable to being manipulated and having his buttons pushed by any older, dominant and organized pathological narcissist, because if reports are accurate, his father installed plenty of narcissistic abuse buttons to be pushed and triggered by dominant narcissists in the future.
In many ways, it is hard to separate “Silicon Valley Libertarianism” from Peter Thiel since he and his “PayPal Mafia” have seeded tech ideology with it from their beginnings. However, I don’t remember hearing about Thiel until 2015. It is hard to forget someone being labeled in a tweet as a “proto-fascist vampire,” and I have never seen anything since that has contradicted Thiel’s metaphorical blood-sucking nature. No surprise, Thiel served himself well as top technology “advisor” to easily triggered narcissist trump.
Using the themes of Elon’s favorite Sci-Fi movie, Star Wars, Thiel very much seems like Silicon Valley’s Sith Lord, Emperor Palpatine who groomed, gaslit and eventually turned Musk into his libertarian Darth Vader. However, thanks to his logic and AS, Elon has not gone full dark side yet, and as recently reported Elon thinks Thiel is “a sociopath.” No doubt Elon remembers the cold-blooded lesson of how Thiel’s allies ruthlessly replaced him as PayPal CEO with Thiel when Elon went on his honeymoon. Understandably, this life event has driven Elon to feel like he must always be in control, so he is not replaced again. However, Thiel’s most noteworthy flying monkey for his self-serving ideology is still the newly anointed Darth Twitter.”
Wherever JD Vance lands on the narcissism spectrum, he has had the same Svengali father figure / puppet master as Elon Musk, and we see how dark that has turned out.
It seems very much the case that while Vance has marketed himself for years as a man of the people, he was in fact just another Sith apprentice cutout hiding in the shadows of Peter Thiel’s very dark side and self-serving benevolence.
Indeed, the dark turn I did not see coming and most still do not see is that Palpatine-esque, “proto-fascist vampire” Peter Thiel is just a stolen election away from a 78-year-old trump’s incapacity or a cabinet purchased 25th amendment, from having his acolyte and apprentice who owes him everything, as the malignant, anti-democratic, tech bro President narcissist of the United States.
Sam Ray © 2024 - Counter-Narcissist Intelligence
Look for the upcoming Psychological Lens in JD Vance: A Psychological Profile - Part II - The Mordor Candidate, out soon.
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Can I just say how pleased I am to be seeing this statement about a 59 year old woman? “… a youthful and energetic Presidential candidate.” 🥰
It can't be easy to write engaging prose about such a repellent specimen, but I think "WTF is JD Vance?" sums it up pretty well. Also, great that one can actually feel the tingles when watching Kamala take flight. Whereas every picture I've seen of Vance looks like a mugshot.