Photo: VINCENT ALBAN/Getty Images via AFP
Photo: VINCENT ALBAN/Getty Images via AFP

Ideas

What J. D. Vance Once Knew

Ten years ago, the vice president wrote that one day, voters would realize the truth about Donald Trump. That day has now arrived.

First published in The Atlantic on July 4, 2026.

by Peter Wehner, The Atlantic
July 9, 2026 | reading time: 6 Min.

TEN YEARS AGO TODAY, in the middle of the presidential campaign, an essay in The Atlantic set out to explain the appeal of Donald Trump. Its author traced that appeal to the social decline and cultural trauma he had known firsthand, in an impoverished childhood.

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