“It reveals someone who believes that the history that the family should inherit, and indeed, the history that should be determinative in the story of the Vance family, is the history of the eastern Kentucky Vances, and not the Vances from San Diego, which is where his wife is from and from where her Indian parents are from….And I just think the construction of this notion reveals a lot about someone who fundamentally believes in the supremacy of whiteness and masculinity, and it’s couched in a sort of halcyon re-visitation of his roots, but it is actually really revealing about what he thinks matters, and who America is, and that America is a place for people with a shared Western background.”
— MSNBC host Alex Wagner on night three of MSNBC’s live coverage of the Republican National Convention, July 17, 2024.