How JD Vance Thinks About Power

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In September 2021, JD Vance offered two predictions about former President Donald J. Trump and one piece of advice.

Mr. Trump would run again in 2024, Mr. Vance said. He would win.

And when he did, Mr. Vance counseled, he needed the right people around him this time.

“Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” Mr. Vance said on a podcast.

He continued.

“Then when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did,” Mr. Vance said, citing a (possibly apocryphal) quotation long attributed to America’s seventh president, “and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

In his U-turning path from anti-Trump author to MAGA-approved Ohio senator and running mate, Mr. Vance has developed a reputation for being ideologically pliable — open-minded, supporters say; core-less, critics counter.

But he has been unswerving in recent years in his assessment of how Republicans should carry themselves when they win: Use every available lever of state, even if that means testing the bounds of the constitutional system.