Scratch their surface and you see exactly what he’s trying to do: stand up strong for intolerance and corruption

Given how impetuous Donald Trump is, his vice-president, JD Vance, strikes some Americans as a more stable alternative. A good bet, some of the Maga faithful believe, as the 2028 Republican nominee for president, and the eventual occupant of the Oval Office.

Every bit as rightwing as Trump but more serious and predictable – that seems to be Vance’s pitch to the public. And he clearly wants to be president; he’s as ambitious as they come.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

Magazine invites readers to judge Vance’s ‘assessment’ of Trump, whom he called ‘cultural heroin’ during first term

The Atlantic on Saturday republished a JD Vance essay that dismissed Donald Trump as “cultural heroin” exactly 10 years earlier, bringing back to the fore his evolving from a critic of the president to his vice-president.

In an editor’s note, the magazine said it was republishing the essay on the occasion of its 10th anniversary – and the US’s semiquincentennial – “so that our readers can judge for themselves how well his assessment [of Trump] … has stood the test of time”.