The episode was outrageous. But one thing was very clarifying.

That is Completely Regular Quote of the Day, a characteristic highlighting a press release from the information that exemplifies simply how extraordinarily regular every thing has grow to be.

“Have you ever seen all these research that mainly join testosterone ranges in younger males with conservative politics?” —J.D. Vance, in his three-hour interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast, revealed Thursday

The Trump-Vance marketing campaign has, within the remaining push, gone all out within the bro-podcast house in hopes of turning out the bottom. To that finish, in an episode launched Thursday, J.D. Vance made a three-hour look on the mom of all bro podcasts, The Joe Rogan Expertise. Vance and Rogan lined a variety of subjects, however probably the most notable theme—given the notably gendered nature of this marketing campaign tactic—was Vance’s effort to outline the GOP because the get together of masculinity.

For instance, when Rogan claimed that there have been “only a few issues that can flip you right into a conservative greater than martial arts,” Vance jumped on the likelihood to attach help of Donald Trump to greater testosterone ranges. Rogan was making a unique argument—that martial arts encourage a conservative worldview as a result of they emphasize the significance of arduous work. However Vance went forward with the implication that testosterone makes one a Trump voter.

“Possibly that’s why the Democrats need us all to be poor well being and obese,” Vance mentioned, with out clarifying in what manner Democrats have been plotting towards public well being. “It means we’re going to be extra liberal.” It’s attainable that Vance is referring to the physique positivity motion, nevertheless it’s arduous to know precisely what he meant.

Vance’s most heated factors about gender dwelled not on hormones however on LGBTQ+ points. He guessed, for instance, that Trump would win the “regular homosexual man vote” as a result of these males have been bored with being lumped in with gender-related debates. “Now you will have all this loopy stuff on prime of it that, they’re like, ‘No, no, we didn’t wish to give pharmaceutical merchandise to 9-year-olds who’re transitioning their genders,’ ” Vance mentioned. The Trump marketing campaign embraced homosexual males, he manner saying, so long as these males additionally embraced standard concepts about gender and masculinity.

Transgender ladies, the second nice boogeyman of the Trump marketing campaign’s fearmongering (immigrants are all the time first), got here up repeatedly as reminders of the menace to societal masculinity. Vance argued that transgender ladies have been forcing kids to see their genitals by carrying quick skirts in public. (“If that’s what you’re doing, you’re a pervert.”) He asserted that Huge Pharma was pushing hormones on kids. He dismissed the thought of transgender kids by speaking about his 4-year-old son figuring out as a dinosaur. (“I’m gonna take him to, like, the dinosaur transition clinic and put scales on him?”) He expressed concern that his daughter would get injured competing towards transgender ladies in sports activities. (“I’m terrified she’s gonna get bludgeoned to demise as a result of we’re permitting a 6-foot-1 male to compete together with her.”)

On the floor, Vance might not appear to be the perfect Trump surrogate on the subject of poisonous masculinity: He, not like Trump, has been married simply as soon as and has none of Trump’s gaudy-rich-man, reality-TV, grab-them-by-the-you-know swagger. However Vance can also be a Harvard Regulation–educated mental, so he is aware of tips on how to craft mental frameworks for Trump’s emotional outbursts.

So it’s becoming that his most weird argument round gender needed to do with elite establishments. It got here right down to a wild concept: that white dad and mom are incentivized to encourage their kids to establish as transgender with the intention to get them into Ivy League Colleges. Vance mentioned:

In case you are a, you realize, middle-class or upper-middle-class white dad or mum, and the one factor that you just care about is whether or not your youngster goes into Harvard or Yale, clearly that pathway has grow to be lots more durable for lots of upper-middle-class children. However the a method that these individuals can take part within the DEI paperwork on this nation is to be trans, and is there a dynamic that’s occurring the place, in the event you grow to be trans, that’s the solution to reject your white privilege.

It’s a patently absurd concept. There is no such thing as a proof that anybody has ever inspired their youngster to cross themselves off as transgender for faculty admissions. And but, in the event you look previous the novelty of the argument, you may see how this declare matches into the worldview Vance is selling: The social-order liberals need disadvantages for white individuals, to Vance’s thoughts. In an unfair system through which oppression is important to win esteem, white persons are pressured to hunt out contorted methods to establish with oppressed teams, making a twisted and tiring recreation of id fraud.

It’s a petty mindset that doesn’t acknowledge the disadvantages of really being oppressed. However to most of the 14.5 million followers on Spotify and 17.6 million subscribers on YouTube who will spend three hours of their day with Joe Rogan, it might hit dwelling. Many of those listeners wish to be instructed that they need to not really feel obligated to problem old school concepts about masculinity and gender—and J.D. Vance is joyful to ship.