Vance highlights Trump’s ability to read people, criticizes expertise of elites | Today’s news
During an appearance on Sean Hannity’s podcast, US Vice President JD Vance offered a personal assessment of President Donald Trump’s character, describing what he believes to be one of the president’s most notable and lesser-known qualities.
Vance praised Trump’s ability to assess people and determine their motives, suggesting the president has an unusual talent for discerning honesty and deception.
“He has the best instincts about human beings of anyone I’ve ever met,” Vance said. “There’s almost like a spiritual dimension where he understands whether someone is telling him the truth or not.”
The vice president said he continued to be impressed by Trump’s ability to judge the intentions of those interacting with him.
“He understands whether someone is trying to get him or not … it’s fascinating to me,” Vance said.
Ability to judge motives
According to Vance, Trump’s instincts are especially valuable given the constant stream of influential individuals seeking meetings and policy decisions from the White House.
“He’s the president of the United States, right? You have people coming to the White House all the time asking for things,” Vance explained.
Vance said Trump is particularly adept at distinguishing between requests made for personal gain and requests made with the national interest in mind.
“And he has an uncanny ability to sniff out whether that person wants this thing because it’s good for America or he wants it because it’s good for him.”
She learns from her grandmother
During the discussion, Vance also reflected on his own intellectual journey, describing a time in his life when he believed that education and rational analysis provided all the answers.
“I became arrogant about what I knew,” Vance explained.
He remembered underestimating his grandmother’s wisdom, despite considering her to be highly intelligent.
“My grandmother, who was again the smartest person I ever met, a devout Christian but by no means an educated woman, I thought of her as a simpleton, as a jerk.
Vance said his views at the time were influenced by atheism and the belief that formal education equaled greater understanding.
“At that time I called myself an atheist and I had this arrogance in me that I knew everything and people like my grandmother didn’t know things.”
Read also | JD Vance defends US-Iran peace deal, slams Israel critics
Criticism of elite institutions
Vance argued that elite institutions, including colleges and universities, often encourage an overreliance on rational analysis while rejecting instinct and lived experience.
He criticized what he described as “hyper-rational” thinking, which he believed undervalued practical wisdom and intuition.
Experts ‘didn’t learn a single lesson’
The vice president also took aim at political, military and economic experts, arguing that many have failed to learn from past policy mistakes.
“I think so many of the things that people said about Donald Trump … they were pundits who assumed they knew everything about the economy. They were military pundits who assumed they knew everything about foreign policy,” Vance said.
Vance concluded by arguing that many members of the expert class were responsible for significant national problems while avoiding accountability.
“When you look back, it was a bunch of people who screwed up the country, but they didn’t learn a single lesson from it.”
Read also | Vance Delays Trip to Switzerland for Iran Talks
