'Less integrity than a Boeing 737': Comedian 'liberal redneck' recounts night out with JD Vance

Trae Crowder – a comedian and progressive influencer known as "the liberal redneck" — just revealed what Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) is like when the cameras aren't rolling based on a personal experience with the presumptive 2024 Republican vice presidential nominee.

In a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday from his truck, Crowder unleashed on the Ohio Republican and told his hundreds of thousands of followers that while he had a lot in common with Vance, he lost respect for him when realizing he didn't actually stand on anything he said. He noted that it was "disappointing" that the only time a "white trash hillbilly" like him would get into the White House was if he was an "Ivy League-educated venture capitalist who first rose to fame by selling us all out."

"That's like telling a kid, 'hey, you're gonna have a Mario-themed birthday party, but ia fat Italian dude drunk on mushrooms is gonna show up and kill his pet turtle.' It's like, 'that's not what I thought you meant,'" Crowder said in his thick Tennessee accent.

Crowder recalled how, in 2016, both he and Vance were frequently called upon to appear on cable news shows to explain to viewers why then-candidate Donald Trump was so appealing to low-income, working-class white voters (or to "explain Jim Bobs to bow ties," in Crowder's words). And on one particular night, Crowder said Vance attended one of his comedy shows with his wife and noted that the two were "loving that woke s—" he was saying onstage.

After the show, he and Vance went out for drinks, and Crowder noted that he and the 'Hillbilly Elegy' author "got to know each other a little bit," and that Vance only had one thing on his mind: "The existential threat we agreed Trump posed to the American people."

"Trump's VP pick is a Machiavellian sycophant who has less integrity than a Boeing 737," Crowder said, referencing the jet that crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing hundreds of passengers. "While I was not charmed by the man — in fact, it was like pounding beers with a spreadsheet — I did leave there thinking, 'at least there's some sane Republicans left.'"

After their night out, Crowder said he read Vance's book to see why it was so beloved by the "intelligentsia." He characterized the memoir as Vance throwing his entire culture under the bus to ingratiate himself with elites.

"It's like, 'you know how y'all think my people are inherently worthless pieces of s— with nothing to offer society? Well, you're right! We suck! But not me! I'm different! No, I once got paddled by a tycoon's son in Connecticut! Please accept me!' Right? And they did," Crowder said. "And that's when my opinion of him started to change."

"Me and JD have stuff in common — white trash, you know, pill-billy mamas... but I don't hate my people. I'd sooner throw it all away than line my pockets with predatory payday loans or big pill profits," he continued. "My people do not struggle to some inborn cultural affliction, but due instead to the capricious nature of the same masters he serves."

JD Vance’s best friend reveals moment he switched from Never Trump to MAGA

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) was once a face of the Never Trump movement, only to suddenly pivot to becoming one of former President Donald Trump's biggest supporters, and now his 2024 running mate. His shift was reportedly prompted not by politics, but by pop culture.

The Washington Post recently reported that the Ohio Republican — whose memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" was made into a movie directed by Ron Howard — was hoping for the film adaptation of his book to become universally celebrated by the Hollywood establishment as his book was by beltway media. But one of his closest friends said Vance was devastated when the film was laughed at by reviewers.

"When the 'Hillbilly Elegy' movie came out on Netflix in 2020, it was not just critically panned but greeted with intense online mockery, and the tenuous cultural diplomacy achieved by the book seemed to unravel for good," wrote the Post's Simon van Zuylen-Wood, noting that the Rotten Tomatoes audience score was 83% while the critics’ score was 25 percent. "According to Vance’s best friend from Yale, Jamil Jivani, the wounding commentary was the 'last straw' in his falling-out with elites."

"When the 'Hillbilly Elegy' movie came out on Netflix in 2020, it was not just critically panned but greeted with intense online mockery, and the tenuous cultural diplomacy achieved by the book seemed to unravel for good," wrote the Post's Simon van Zuylen-Wood, noting that the Rotten Tomatoes audience score was 83% while the critics’ score was 25 percent. "According to Vance’s best friend from Yale, Jamil Jivani, the wounding commentary was the 'last straw' in his falling-out with elites."

"Hillbilly Elegy" is about Vance's upbringing in a low-income suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, and how his experience growing up adjacent to working-class struggle and drug addiction shaped his worldview. The bestselling book made Vance a so-called "Trump whisperer" who was frequently invited onto cable news panels to help explain Trump's appeal to blue-collar white voters. And in that role, Vance rarely held back in his criticism of then-candidate Trump.

In one unearthed message to a friend in 2016, Vance referred to Trump as "America's Hitler" and "a cynical a—hole like Nixon." In audio that recently resurfaced from that same year while he was promoting his book, Vance agreed with Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones when he repeatedly called Trump a "total fraud."

"I don't think he actually cares about folks," Vance said.

But Jivani said that Vance's resentment with the elite liberal establishment happened when he was at Yale, and he frequently encountered coastal liberals who he felt looked down on communities like the one where he grew up.

“You’re sitting in a seminar room, you’ve got a professor who’s written a million books, surrounded by 20 students from San Francisco, New York, mostly, all pontificating about how to help poor people in America," Jivani said. “Yale’s approach is that judges, senators, policymakers can save the world. They completely omit the role of family, community and culture in people’s lives.”

"[Vance] is... illiberal in his instincts,” he added. “I don’t mean it as a slur. I mean it in a technical sense. He is skeptical of the political project of enlightenment liberalism, like, 'We’re all just autonomous individuals trying to self-actualize and maximize our own interests.'”