Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. said President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance are committed to the “intellectual scaffolding of a white nationalist agenda.” In an interview with MS NOW’s Nicolle Wallace, Glaude said Vance and “nationalist conservatives” believe in “a view of the founding where America’s perfection was secured in its beginnings.”

NICOLLE WALLACE, MS NOW HOST: I mean, I think since you, you probably wrote that sentence, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. The Republicans are gerrymandering majority minority districts out of existence, like not just messing with them, but eliminating them. And white supremacists like Nick Fuentes seem to have a platform and defenders in polite society. So it seems that the right is trying to tell you, you might have a point. EDDIE GLAUDE JR., PRINCETON PROFESSOR: Yeah, because this is going back to our first, the first part of our conversation, all the things, all the work that we did in the midst of a racial reckoning, which I use that phrase with you. And then here we are, and this is when I was writing the book, because I wrote it in this manic mode. I wrote it in nine months, Nicole. And I’m trying to make sense of it all. I said, well, the only thing I can conclude, because in the blink of an eye, we’re here. After all of the work we were doing, the only thing I can conclude is that people were lying. You weren’t telling me the truth. You were performing. Because how can we arrive here so quickly? And that’s that rage that kind of seeps to the top of the page, right? And so I think the evidence is in, we’re in a second lost cause, we’re in a second redemption. And this goes back to one of the central claims of the book. WALLACE: Why do you think J.D. Vance is so willing to write and say things that could very easily prove all your points? GLAUDE: Because he believes it. WALLACE: You think so? He called Trump America’s Hitler. GLAUDE: Yeah, but I think, you know, when I read Hillbilly Elegy, right, there are elements, you know, there’s an application of certain kind of Charles Murray-esque-like formulations to the white poor, but there’s something about the way he’s ambitious beyond any limit. So he’ll morph into anything. But I think ultimately, I think he believes some of this stuff about the nation. When I hear him on July 5th, 2025, at the Claremont Institute, saying America is not a creedal nation. VICE PRESIDENT J.D. VANCE: If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence, that’s a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time. What do I mean by that? Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Must we admit all of them tomorrow? If you follow that logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you. WALLACE: That’s insane. GLAUDE: On the day after July 4th, we’re not a creedal nation. He basically gave a blood and soil speech. I was like, oh, this is… And he’s part of the Nationalist Conservatives group. WALLACE: Yeah. GLAUDE: He’s part of the Claremont Institute group. And when you begin to dig deep into those particular intellectual spaces, you see what you see. And what you see is a kind of the intellectual scaffolding of a white nationalist agenda that he seems to be committed to. WALLACE: Which is more dangerous, that and those? Adherence or Donald Trump’s, you know, I think decades of smearing the Central Park Five and racist rental practices? Or is it the combination that’s so dangerous? GLAUDE: It’s the combination because Donald Trump’s kind of carnival barker kind of approach, right, has the kind of popular currency. But the actual effort to rip out the entrails of the infrastructure of the mid-20th century, to dismantle the [Great] Society, to dismantle the New Deal, this infrastructure of the civil rights movement and what came out of it. These people are engaging in a wholesale attack, and they have an intellectual rationale for it. WALLACE: Which is what? Which is what? GLAUDE: That, A, they believe that the country is fundamentally a white republic. B, they are deeply skeptical of the overreach of government on behalf of folk who they don’t believe to be central to their idea of the American Republic. And to be honest with you, they hold a view of the founding. This is a kind of small point, but they hold a view of the founding where America’s perfection was secured in its beginnings. Any talk about more perfect union, right, slanders the American project. So we can’t talk about black folk or women or working folk or LGBTQ plus communities as being a part of an ongoing effort to live up to the ideals of the country. Because for these folk, those ideals were secured in the beginning, and that’s all we need to do is to remember and restore.

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