J.D. Vance's Chilling Promise: 'I’m Ready To Take Over'

Curtis Yarvin supplies the ideology. Peter Thiel supplies the cash. And Vance smiles for the cameras.

In a recent interview, Vice President J.D. Vance declared, “Should a tragedy happen, I’m ready to take over.” Stark words from a man who, until now, has mostly been photographed on extended vacations – however there was a reported rendezvous in Montana with Rupert Murdoch, the Fox News kingmaker himself.

Vance, Peter Thiel’s golden child, lies in wait as whispers of the president’s decline spread across the internet. Elon Musk has already abandoned his half-baked “American Party” stunt, leaving the tech broligarchy to quietly plan for a post-Trump reality.

And when the teachings of neo-reactionary thinker and blogger Curtis Yarvin start filtering into the West Wing, America won’t be dealing with a fading cult of personality anymore – but blatant and outright fascism. It will be something far more organized, and far more dangerous.

Which makes the president’s disappearing act all the more unsettling. This is a malignant narcissist who hasn’t stayed out of the headlines since the 1970s – there is zero chance he would nearly vanish over a long weekend, the prime season for staged golf photos with celebrities were something not going on with his health. The White House isn’t telling us the full story. And maybe the vice president already knows.

Weekend at Donnie’s

The White House can drag out the corpse, prop him up in a golf cart, and call it vitality — but the public isn’t buying it anymore. Something is going on with Trump. For five days, the president went missing: No Oval Office appearances, no rage-posting, no staged golf shots. Then, finally, a photo drops on Labor Day – President Trump looking frail, almost bald underneath his MAGA-themed USA hat, face swollen and droopy, hands still bruised. A man who has lived for the spotlight suddenly looked like he was running from it.

And then on Tuesday morning, he stumbles into the oval office thirty-five minutes late for a press conference to announce the relocation of the U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama, saying, “From now on Huntsville will be known as ‘Rocket City.’” A decision with enormous national security and economic consequences for Colorado reduced to the performance of a barely functioning president. Further weaponization of the federal government ahead of midterms he is projected to struggle in–disguised as a grievance over mail-in voting which he branded “corrupt.”

It wasn’t a sign of strength — it was survival theater. Like Weekend at Bernie’s, only this corpse is still speaking, still trying to project strength while the cameras catch that bruised ego and those bruised hands. This is the same guy who once mocked Hillary Clinton for fainting in the heat, who built his brand on “strength” and dominance — and now he looks like the punchline of a shitty joke, propped up for the cameras while his press team spins it as strength.

If that scene wasn’t bizarre enough, he followed it up by confirming a U.S. Navy strike on a reported drug-smuggling vessel departing from Venezuela. A lethal attack that sank the boat in the Southern Caribbean which was justified as part of a narcotics crackdown by the administration but could be seen as an act of war. The reports come amid a massive U.S. Navy build up off of Venezuela’s coast, ostensibly deployed to fight the drug trafficking. Venezuelan president Maduro responded by mobilizing millions of militia and warning the country was at “maximum preparedness for any aggression.”

So now, in one afternoon, we got the relocation of Space Command because of mail-in voting politics, broadcast by a visibly diminished president, then a lethal naval strike dropped like a theatrical surprise. And that’s how Weekend at Donnie’s becomes more than a parody: It’s a warning. His physical unraveling becomes a stage for authoritarian posturing overseas–and the vultures, domestically and internationally, are already circling.

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Living in Curtis Yarvin’s World

Curtis Yarvin, better known by his blogger alias Mencius Moldbug, is the man quietly writing the code for America’s authoritarian future. He’s not on TV, he’s not running for office, and most people couldn’t pick him out of a lineup. But his ideas are everywhere in the bloodstream of MAGA and Trump’s GOP – particularly Silicon Valley’s billionaire class.

Yarvin’s central thesis is blunt: Democracy is broken. Scrap it, and replace it with a corporate monarchy where a CEO-like sovereign runs the country (or world) like a startup. No “messy elections,” no checks and balances, no media watchdogs. He calls the press and universities “the Cathedral” – an indoctrination machine that has to be dismantled – and even branded his purge plan with a cute acronym: RAGE, Retire All Government Employees. Fire the bureaucrats, silence the critics, govern by decree.

If it sounds like the plot of a bad dystopian novel, it’s not: It isn’t staying on Substack, 4chan, or any fringe blogs. Silicon Valley has been passing his words around like scripture for years. Yarvin launched a project called Urbit, a new internet built on hierarchy and ownership. Early backing came from Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, two of the most powerful men in the tech sector. They knew exactly what Yarvin stood for – and still went out of their way to assist him.

And now his worldview has jumped from tech manifestos to the White House. J.D. Vance has quoted Yarvin by name, borrowing arguments about torching civil service and stacking government with loyalists. When Vance talks about “firing every bureaucrat,” he’s running Yarvin’s playbook. The same goes for the disdain of the courts, the obsession with hierarchy, the gleeful hostility towards our institutions. It’s all Yarvin 101.

The billionaires love it because it sanctifies their own power and beliefs: They are a chosen class. And Vance, the millennial heir apparent, loves it because it gives him a ready-made rationale for smashing every guardrail in sight.

That’s what people miss when they laugh off these ideas as some crazy fringe blogger spewing into the void. He’s already won. His vocabulary – “the Cathedral” – is MAGA gospel among people like Stephen Miller and Vance. His purge plan will become a live policy option. His worldview – hierarchy over equality, order over rights – is the skeleton for a movement that no longer bothers to hide what it wants or cares about the human race.

So when J.D. Vance says he’s “ready” to take over, don’t just picture the boy scout pledging his duty. Picture Curtis Yarvin whispering in the background, smiling, as the fascist software finally boots up.

J.D.’s Owners

J.D. Vance’s entire story is a corporate rebrand masquerading as a memoir. Hillbilly Elegy sold him as the voice of Appalachian grit – the Marine who made it to Yale, the boy from Middletown who climbed out. What it really did was make him palatable to venture capital. Yale stamped the pedigree, the book gave him the narrative, and Peter Thiel wrote the checks.

After law school, Vance didn’t go back to Ohio to fight for the people he claimed to represent. He went to Silicon Valley, working at Thiel’s Mithril Capital. In 2020, he launched Narya Capital, a $93 million fund whose LP list reads like a dystopian venture roll call: Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Eric Schmidt. The same oligarchs who want to privatize everything from housing to healthcare were underwriting the “hillbilly populist.” The grift was right there and their ownership of him in the fine print.

When Vance ran for Senate, Thiel didn’t just endorse – he bought him. Over $10 million into a Vance-only super PAC, Protect Ohio Values, designed to drag him across the finish line and into public office. The investment paid off: Trump endorsed him, the money blitzed opponents, and Vance walked into the U.S. Senate already owned. The same man who once called Trump “cultural heroin” and fretted about “America’s Hitler.” But principles don’t survive when your campaign is bankrolled by dark money.

Now as vice president, he’s the vessel for something much darker. His rhetoric about purging bureaucrats, ignoring courts, and smashing institutions doesn’t come from nowhere – it’s Yarvin’s manifesto, scrubbed clean for cable news. Yarvin supplies the ideology; Thiel supplies the cash; and Vance smiles for the cameras.

This is not a self-made man. This is a leveraged buyout of American politics, packaged in flannel and sold back to voters as authenticity. If Trump collapses, Vance won’t hesitate – because he doesn’t answer to you.

He answers to the men who already paid for him.

Fighting Fascism Going Forward

If Trump actually keels over soon and J.D. Vance takes the wheel, the show gets darker, not more hopeful. Trump’s cult of personality has always been the glue – the rallies, the memes, the endless need for attention. Vance doesn’t have that. He can’t mesmerize a crowd the way Trump does. Which means to hold power, he has to lean even harder into the operating system Curtis Yarvin designed: Smash the bureaucracy, strip away the remaining guardrails, and run the country like a hostile corporate takeover.

The roadmap already exists. Schedule F, Trump’s old scheme to reclassify tens of thousands of civil servants into fire-at-will political appointees, is ready to go. Expect Vance to make it gospel: purge the “disloyal” mid-levels, replace them with yes-men, and leave the courts struggling to keep up. Add in Project 2025’s playbook to centralize decision-making, starve agencies, and rule through executive orders, and you get a government where one man – or his owners – dictates policy. That’s the destruction of democracy.

Without Trump’s charisma, the movement needs fear and force. That means the Insurrection Act dusted off for any protests, ICE and DHS agents stationed at polling places, and emergency powers stretched until they snap. It means making daily life more difficult – at the V.A., at the post office, at your job site – until people start believing the lie that democracy itself doesn’t work. That’s Yarvin’s dream: government as punishment, hierarchy as salvation.

So what do we do? Name it. Fight it early. Don’t let “efficiency” branding disguise loyalty purges. Democrats need war rooms ready to file injunctions the moment Schedule F reappears. State attorneys general should be building joint lawsuits now. Blue states and even pragmatic purple legislatures can pass their own guardrails – protect whistleblowers, shield workers from retaliation, outlaw voter intimidation at polling places. Public-sector unions and civil-rights group need mutual-aid funds and strike plans in case the purge hits.

Most of all: Keep the cameras on. Oversight hearings, FOIAs, subpoenas – drag every staffing memo and power grab into the public arena. Fascism feeds on darkness and denial.

This isn’t abstract. If Vance takes over, we’re not debating whether or not America slides toward a post-democratic reality. We’re staring at a software install that’s already written, financed, and ready to load. Fighting back means treating every line of Yarvin’s words as a battlefield – legally, politically, culturally – every single day.

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