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 all the things has change into.

“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, printed Thursday

The Trump-Vance marketing campaign has, within the ultimate push, gone all out within the bro-podcast area 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 coated a variety of subjects, however essentially the most notable theme—given the notably gendered nature of this marketing campaign tactic—was Vance’s effort to outline the GOP because the celebration 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 probability to attach assist of Donald Trump to increased testosterone ranges. Rogan was making a distinct argument—that martial arts encourage a conservative worldview as a result of they emphasize the significance of laborious 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 chubby,” Vance mentioned, with out clarifying in what approach Democrats had been plotting in opposition to public well being. “It means we’re going to be extra liberal.” It’s potential that Vance is referring to the physique positivity motion, but it surely’s laborious 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 had been uninterested in 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 approach saying, so long as these males additionally embraced standard concepts about gender and masculinity.

Transgender girls, 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 risk to societal masculinity. Vance argued that transgender girls had been forcing youngsters to see their genitals by sporting brief skirts in public. (“If that’s what you’re doing, you’re a pervert.”) He asserted that Huge Pharma was pushing hormones on youngsters. He dismissed the thought of transgender youngsters 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 in opposition to transgender women in sports activities. (“I’m terrified she’s gonna get bludgeoned to dying as a result of we’re permitting a 6-foot-1 male to compete along with her.”)

On the floor, Vance might not appear to be the perfect Trump surrogate on the subject of poisonous masculinity: He, in contrast to 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 be a Harvard Regulation–educated mental, so he is aware of the right way 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 all the way down to a wild principle: that white dad and mom are incentivized to encourage their youngsters to determine as transgender with the intention to get them into Ivy League Colleges. Vance mentioned:

If you’re a, you understand, middle-class or upper-middle-class white guardian, and the one factor that you just care about is whether or not your baby goes into Harvard or Yale, clearly that pathway has change into loads more durable for lots of upper-middle-class youngsters. However the a technique that these folks can take part within the DEI paperwork on this nation is to be trans, and is there a dynamic that’s occurring the place, if you happen to change into trans, that’s the technique to reject your white privilege.

It’s a patently absurd principle. There isn’t a proof that anybody has ever inspired their baby to go themselves off as transgender for school admissions. And but, if you happen to look previous the novelty of the argument, you possibly can see how this declare suits into the worldview Vance is selling: The social-order liberals need disadvantages for white folks, to Vance’s thoughts. In an unfair system during which oppression is critical to win esteem, white persons are compelled to hunt out contorted methods to determine 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 advised that they need to not really feel obligated to problem old school concepts about masculinity and gender—and J.D. Vance is completely happy to ship.