JD Vance, Heritage Americans, and the GOP's Emerging 2028 Primary

Vice President JD Vance (R-OH)

Racism is always rearing its ugly head in the MAGA movement (its basically the source code for its political computations), and it has taken on an unusual form in the past few months in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death.  Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist figure in the MAGA movement, one who has gained an enormous online following, particularly of far-right, young white men, has used racial slurs to attack Second Lady Usha Vance publicly, and drawn rebukes from both Vice President Vance as well as Ohio gubernatorial frontrunner Vivek Ramasawamy.  Both Ms. Vance and Mr. Ramaswamy were both born in America, but were born to immigrants (in this case from India), a relatively common situation, but one that people like Fuentes have attacked, popularizing the term "Heritage American."  Despite his wife getting attacks from Fuentes and his supporters (nicknamed "groypers"), Vice President Vance has tacitly catered to this crowd, and hinted at his knowledge of the growing usage of the term.  In a speech at Claremont Institute in July, Vance used the line "this is our heritage as Americans," a pretty obvious acknowledgement of the phrase, and during a podcast interview with Theo Von in June, Vance promoted a website where Americans could look up to see how many people with their last names fought in the American Civil War.

There's a lot to unpack here, and part of me wouldn't normally be writing this article because I don't find it appropriate, and I think that promoting someone like Fuentes (whom, despite his fame, is getting his first ever mention on this blog with this article), even through a blog post talking about his growing power in the conservative movement, feels a bit icky.  I will state, categorically, that I find the concept of "Heritage Americans" having a special distinction in the United States to be the antithesis of the American experiment.  President Reagan has a famous quote that Ramaswamy recently paraphrased that I like, "you can go to France, but you cannot become a Frenchman.  You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot became a German, a Turk, or Japanese.  But anyone, from any corner of the earth, can come to live in America and become an American."  The idea of America is that it is an ideal, one of equality for all and freedom for all and success for all, no matter your background, and while it is not a country that has always lived up to that ideal, that it is is the ideal it strives for is the single greatest attribute about our political sphere.  Nick Fuentes is just plain wrong to think otherwise, and the Founding Fathers that he idolizes would agree with me, not him, in this regard.

It's worth noting, of course, that while I agree with Ramaswamy and Vance in their criticisms of Fuentes, Ramaswamy is doing this fight in a party that increasingly has no place for him.  It's been noted that he is severely underperforming in the Ohio gubernatorial race, and it's hard not to wonder if racism is playing a part in that.  Ramaswamy and his wife Apoorva have talked about how surprised they were by the focus on their race when he ran for president in Iowa last year, and his continued focus on this underlines a potentially ugly (but real) truth about his campaign: he will need Nick Fuentes' increasingly vocal component in his party to win a close race in Ohio, and it's not clear he knows how to do that.  His play here seems to be for moderate Republicans who voted for Trump in 2024, but are not appreciative of his second term, to back him as well...but that's a risky gambit when he also has his right flank so vulnerable.

But, speaking of Trump, I think the most interesting aspect of the popularizing of the frame Heritage American is whom it leaves out.  Despite his own administration using the phrase in so many words (there was a tweet by the DHS that said "a heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth defending" a clear hint at the term) by pretty much every definition of the phrase, a very key member of the administration would not be able to to be considered one: President Trump himself.

The phrase, like so many on the internet, is one without a clear definition, but generally it means someone whose ancestors were American citizens during at least the Civil War, and more commonly the Revolutionary War.  The phrase doesn't seem to acknowledge that Native Americans and many African-Americans would more than qualify under this definition of residing in America before 1865 (it's hard to think that someone like Fuentes would care that much about the specifics of how this would apply to Americans who are not white), but if you go with the idea that it was at least by the Civil War, Donald Trump doesn't even come close to qualifying.  Trump's mother emigrated to the United States in 1930 from Germany, so he is a first-generation child of an immigrant on his mother's side.  On his father's side, his grandparents emigrated here from Germany as well, but the earliest of these (his paternal grandfather Frederick Trump) came to the United States in 1885 (by pretty much every account he came here illegally by shirking his military duty, a good factoid maybe for a different story, but given Trump's politics of projection, one to keep in mind for a future cocktail party anecdote).  1885, for those not super familiar with American history, is two decades after the end of the Civil War and over 100 years after the end of the Revolutionary War.  Donald Trump, the MAGA leader, would not qualify for the movement's new favorite phrase.

You might be asking yourself if this is uncommon, given America is a country of immigrants.  But for recent political figures in the White House-yeah, it's actually less common than you'd think to have such a recent American history.  Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and both Bush's can trace their direct ancestry in this country to before the Revolutionary War, as can Vice President Vance.  A common trope in America is bragging about being descended from someone who came over in the Mayflower (over 10 million Americans are estimated to be descended from people who came over on the Mayflower), and by some estimates over 180 million Americans have some ancestry that predates the Revolutionary War.  Even looking at my own family history, my great-great-great-great grandfather took part in the Boston Tea Party and he & his sons and grandsons fought in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War (for the North), respectively.  

None of this makes any of these people "more American" than anyone else-there is no such thing as being "more American"-we are a country where everyone is equal.  But it is fascinating to me that JD Vance, who has rarely done much to step out of the shadow of the powerful men who serve as his benefactor to power (which right now is Trump) is making a point of highlighting a conservative conversation that not just discriminates against his wife, but also decidedly excludes his boss...but not him.  That Vance is bringing this conversation forward in one hand while disparaging Nick Fuentes in another is a telling sign from a man who seems to already be running a shadow campaign for the 2028 Republican nomination for the presidency, and who understands he'll need Fuentes' supporters to get there.