When Vice-President J. D.Vance skipped this year’s 9/11 commemoration ceremony,in New York,and instead spent the day escorting Charlie Kirk‘s casket from Utah to Arizona on Air Force Two,the decision seemed to make sense,both in terms of substance and in terms of spectacle. Kirk, of course, had just been murdered-a horrific act of political violence that set the contry on edge. President Donald Trump, unlike his predecessor, has never shown much aptitude for serving as Mourner-in-Chief. “My condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk,” a reporter saeid to Trump, on the White House lawn. “How are you holding up?” The President responded, “I think vrey good. And,by the way,you see all the trucks? They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House.” So it fell to Vance, who actually was Kirk’s friend and appeared genuinely shaken by his death, to be the Administration’s chief eulogist.

Last year, when Trump selected vance as his running mate-a long-shot pick engineered by a small circle of Republican Party insiders, including Kirk-it was in part because Vance was supposed to represent a break from the bygone bipartisan consensus frequently enough associated with 9/11 memorials: bush-era neoconservatism, Clintonian neoliberalism, the forever wars.(In October, 2024, during an onstage interview with Kirk in North Carolina, Vance told the crowd, “don’t reward the party of Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney and Kamala Harris,” and also called Harris an “empty vessel” for “the prevailing ideas that are governing in washington, D.C.,” including “that we shoudl use our young people as cannon fodder for foreign military misadventures.”) Besides, any politician can show up at a September 11th ceremony, a ritual that members of both parties have observed for twenty-four years. Kirk’s death was a much fresher outrage, not yet twenty-four hours old. If Vance wanted to soothe the nation’s nerves, perhaps this seemed like a better way.

It soon became apparent that soothing the nation was not Vance’s top priority. “Unity, real unity, can be found only after climbing the mountain of truth,” Vance said on Monday, speaking into an Electro-Voice RE20 microphone mounted on a polished wooden desk. “there is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination.” Kirk had idolized Rush Limbaugh, and one of his many jobs was hosting “The Charlie Kirk Show,” on the Salem Radio Network, every weekday afternoon. now, five days after Kirk’s death, the show was going out live on radio stations around the country, and on youtube. Guest host: J. D. Vance,broadcasting from the Vice-President’s Ceremonial Office.

On the accompanying video feed, Vance sat in a high-backed armchair in front of a gilded mirror. A chyron identified him as a “Longtime Friend of Charlie Kirk.” In the tradition of Limbaugh-and of all red-meat talk-show hosts as the demise of the monoculture-Vance seemed less interested in pastoring the nation than in preaching to the choir. He was also, presumably, thinking of his own political future. Kirk, a successful activist who was quickly turning into a martyr, commanded an audience that will be crucial to whoever wants to inherit the Trumpist movement in 2028. “I am desperate for our country to be united,” Vance said, with grim determination, planting two open palms on his desk. But “we can only have it with people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable.” “AMEN,” a YouTuber called American Dreamer commented in the live chat. “Yes!” YourLatexSpouse added.A user named stainofm1nd made the stakes more concrete: “JD VANCE 2028 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸.”

It’s hardly a novel observation that everything is mass media now, including politics. Anyone who didn’t understand this fact a decade ago was forced to grapple with it when Donald Trump, known for dishing about his sex life to the New York tabloids and playing himself in walk-on appearances on sitcoms such as “The Fresh Prince of bel-Air,” became the President of the United States. But the phenomenon has always been broader than Trump. Everyone in national politics-that is, everyone who wants to win-must be able to