Undeniable Proof Vance Is Aligned With Russia, Against Democracy

It will be interesting to see the career trajectory of J.D. Vance after Trump sets fire to the GOP, a conflagration in process as we speak. Vance has always had the basic instincts of a conman. We see that from his *memoir* Hillbilly Elegy, where he wrote about his life growing up as an impoverished child in Appalachia. That claim has since resoundingly been disproved. J.D. grew up in a four-bedroom house supported by an income of $175K in today’s dollars, some of which went to pay for golf lessons. Yes, he spent parts of summers off in the hills with the grandparents, but he’s not the heroic survivor of abject poverty who climbed the social ladder that his book would indicate. He’s somebody who had a foot in two worlds and saw a way to profit off of that experience.

Profiting by manipulating circumstances, rather than working, is J.D.’s way. J.D. found himself placing fourth in the Senate primary in Ohio until he entered the thrall of Donald Trump. Then he rose to become the Republican nominee and the shoo in during the general election. Many Fox News appearances later it became clear that he would be the new improved version of Mike Pence, a vice president who would do whatever he was told and if the Constitution and the rule of law ended up in the shredder, oh well.

And now Vance has devolved even farther in his service to Trump. He’s now shilling points of view which are pro-Russian and anti-Ukraine/anti-democracy. It’s a disgrace for an American veep to be talking this way. That is unless you consider the audience Vance is playing to and that is Putin and pals. Then it all makes perfect sense and it’s right on point.

But Vance, who also advocates claiming the Panama Canal as American territory, is not just contemptuous of the U.S.-Denmark alliance. He’s actively trying to weaken Denmark. The country particularly bedevils Vance and others on the global far right, who see it as a leading avatar of the Europe they loathe and fear—the one that’s still faithful to the liberal orthodoxies that defined the West for seven decades.

In January, Vance horrified the audience at the Munich Security Conference when he proposed that Europe’s own liberalism, which grounded its defense of Romania against Russian hybrid warfare, among other actions Vance balked at, posed a greater threat to Europe than Russia or China.

Perhaps this is because avatars of European liberalism, notably Denmark, are a threat to Russia. Denmark’s defense spending comes in above the NATO-required 2 percent (it’s 2.4 percent, and the country has proposed raising it to 3 percent). And just last week, it pledged $140 million to companies that invest in Ukraine’s defense in its war with Russia. It has even created a “Danish model” of purchasing arms for Kyiv from Ukrainian producers.

Alexander Dugin, the far-right philosopher and adviser to Putin, took notice. On X, he condemned Frederiksen for her support for Ukraine: “It would be fair take Greenland out of her. She is murderer.”

Dugin’s point is clumsily expressed but you get the malicious tone. Dugin is quite the piece of work.

Dugin "We need to think how to implement the end of the world. This is our task. In fact, people with a heightened philosophy think how to do it, in the spirit of global warming so that it finally floods or burns. It just ceased to exist."

17th parahttps://t.co/ggWsHJXZ4J pic.twitter.com/lTa6cC5YtK

— stmichaelssword (@stmichaelsswor1) August 21, 2022

There’s a life affirming philosophy for you. The man simply exudes joy, does he not? This is the kind of guy you don’t want children to be around, lest they get nightmares. But he and Vance are preaching the same side of the philosophical and political coin, horrifyingly enough.

And it’s got to addle Vance that even as Denmark upholds the principles of social welfare, the country is rich. Denmark’s per-capita gross domestic product is among the highest in the world; it rates well above the U.S. in quality of life. And in spite of its reputation for socialism, Denmark was ranked number seven on the Heritage Foundation’s list of countries by “economic freedom,” again well above the U.S.

At the helm of Denmark’s economic success is Novo Nordisk, the pharma company that makes Ozempic and Wegovy, blockbuster drugs for diabetes and obesity. With its all-time highest market cap in 2023 ($570 billion), Novo became Europe’s most valuable company for a time.

Novo’s controlling shareholder is the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the biggest altruistic organization in the world. While American institutions under the spell of Trump and Vance abandon even baseline civil rights, Novo Nordisk is still bullish on social justice, sustainability, and global health. Last year, the foundation committed $1.5 billion to 1,800 new global projects, including a collaboration with NVIDIA on an AI supercomputer that will accelerate research into drug discovery, quantum computing, and the green transition.

As it happens, Vance’s V.C. firm Narya invested some $617 million in a Novo Nordisk competitor between 2020 and 2023.

And Vivek Ramaswamy’s brother, Shankar, is also involved with the same kind of research as Danish phamaceutical firms. Small world, isn’t it? Trump just attracts people who want to take over the world to him like he’s a magnet and they’re iron filings. They can’t suck up hard enough.

Denmark does not believe it needs American forbearance, much less interference, to be a major player.

“Boykot Varer Fra USA”—“Boycott goods from the USA”— has almost 93,000 members who refuse to buy American goods in protest of U.S. bellicosity toward Denmark. In March, in the midst of a similar boycott and sell-off, Tesla new-car sales in Denmark fell by a vertiginous 65.6 percent.

Finally on Wednesday evening, the long-promised tariffs hit. Stocks tumbled in after-hours trading. Everyone was watching Europe.

But quietly, on the very same day, the Danish shipping company AP Møller-Maersk announced it had bought a railway connecting ports at either end of the Panama Canal. This undermines Trump’s other imperialist plan: to claim territory in Central America. Denmark, clearly, is not going down without a fight.

The geopolitical map is being redrawn now that Trump/Vance are stumbling and bumbling along. MAGA ways may sound good to MAGAs but they bomb on the world stage. Vance is a particularly noxious force in foreign policy because people know Trump is a moron but they know Vance has some intelligence and so his choice to be a destructive force is noted and it is disrespected. Vance is still in the stage where he believes he can push through all of Trump’s crazy ideas but that won’t last long.

Greenland was the litmus test. Then the ludicrous tariffs, affecting a U.S. military base and even penguins became the punchline of jokes. Tomorrow the markets open, again. Let’s see what we’re talking about this time on Tuesday. Unless there’s some miracle on the horizon, it’s going to become apparent that Trump isn’t walking back this idiocy. Or, perhaps he will. The only constant in Trump world is uncertainty.

**********

Zoomers, if you can spare a bit of green energy to help us on our endless mission through cyberspace, reporting on all this madness, we would be grateful. All proceeds go to pay overhead, so we can stay in the game. And thank you most of all for coming here to read. You are the wind beneath our wings. Ursula

Support the site with a subscription today and see no more ads!

Go Ad-free Now!