MSNBC's Rachel Maddow devoted a chunk of her weekly Monday night show to exposing a little-known fact about Ohio Senator and GOP Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance.
Maddow prefaced the segment by saying she had been sitting on the story for a while because she didn't quite know how to tell it. But on the eve of the VP debate between the historically unpopular Vance and his very popular Democratic opponent, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Maddow felt it was time to share what she knew about Vance.
Following her usual storytelling path, Maddow begins with a brief history of extreme right-wing Republicans trying to shut down American universities, eventually tying it in with the current effort by MAGA Republicans under Donald Trump to not only do the same but to also end the Department of Education under a Project 2025 regime.
Maddow shows a video of JD Vance explaining in his own words how his "lack of faith that democracy can deliver" on his conservative ideals, then introduces the influences behind Vance's preference that the United States government be "ripped out like a tumor" and instead run by a dictator.
"I think, if any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country," Vance says in the interview clip from 2021.
Most significantly, Maddow shines a light on Vance's ties to right-wing tech billionaire Peter Thiel and right-wing influencer Curtis Yarvin. Watch the entire segment, below.