GOP Senate candidate criticizes Washington establishment for ‘moralistic instead of strategic’ foreign policy
J.D. Vance, a Republican candidate in next month’s Ohio U.S. Senate primary, says the United States’ funding of gender ideology around the world is a waste of money that weakens it on the global stage.
“Pushing the worst of American progressivism on the rest of the world—I don’t want my tax dollars to go to that,” Vance told The Epoch Times last week after speaking as part of a panel at an emergency foreign policy conference, “Up From Chaos.”
A Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, Vance is the author of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
After graduating from Yale Law School, Vance began working for billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, one of Silicon Valley’s most outspoken conservatives and an early supporter of former President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In 2020, Vance launched his own Ohio-based venture capital firm, Narya.
“I think a lot of countries look at the United States as the leader of the free world,” he told The Epoch Times. “They’re not going to look at us like that if we keep on pushing ridiculous notions of gender with the children, not just here, but everywhere else too.”
Vance contrasted U.S. diplomacy today with earlier efforts such as the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II at a time when it was under direct threat from an expansionist Soviet Union.
Pushing gender ideology, he said, is “something you do when you think about diplomacy in purely moralistic instead of strategic terms.”
Sen. Rob Portman’s (R-Ohio) announcement that he will retire this year touched off a highly competitive GOP primary, which has pitted Vance against other Ohio Republicans, most of whom are seeking to position themselves as ideological heirs to Trump.
Vance has come under fire for past posts on Twitter that attacked Trump as “an idiot” and “reprehensible.” He has since publicly apologized for what he said.
“Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016 and I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance said on Fox News in July 2021. “I think he was a good president. I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.”
Trump hasn’t yet endorsed a candidate in the state’s primary, set for May 3.
Vance’s competition includes former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, former state GOP Chair Jane Timken, and entrepreneur Mike Gibbons.
