Earlier this month in Washington, the Heritage Foundation hosted a screening of the first episode of the Angel Studios documentary series Live Not By Lies, based on my 2020 bestseller of the same name. It’s a film, and a book, about the perils of “soft totalitarianism” and it features the warnings anti-communist dissidents from the Soviet bloc have for the West today. I invited some good friends from all over to come to D.C. for the event. They sat in the audience listening to another friend, Vice President J.D. Vance, give a fulsome and very personal introduction.
My heart was bursting. I’ve wanted this man—the only politician in whom I have ever believed fully—to be president ever since he rose to fame following a viral interview he did with me in 2016. J.D. is the real deal, and I admire him almost without bounds. Vain as I am, it thrilled me that my friends were there to hear his words.
One of them sat in the audience, filled with affection for the vice president, and proud of her vote for him and Donald Trump.
The very next day was Trump’s “Liberation Day,” when he announced radical global tariffs. A week later, that same friend was facing the total destruction of her small business.
She depends entirely on imported raw materials from Latin America, which suddenly cost 30 to 40 percent more, and for which there are no U.S. suppliers. Her orders dried up overnight. “These are pretty much luxury goods, the kind of thing that people cut out first when times are hard,” she told me. “I’m going to be ruined. How am I going to support my kids?”
She supports Trump’s approach to China, but why on earth punish the whole world—and people like her—for the sake of resetting trade relations with Beijing? It’s a great question. I have no answers.
This divorced single mom, in her distress, was now cursing the same administration she voted for and, only days before, whose VP she had cheered on.