Dave Portnoy says JD Vance ‘sounds like an idiot’

• Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, criticized Senator JD Vance’s idea to tax adults without children.

• “This is fucking stupid,” he wrote. “If you can’t afford a big family, don’t have a bunch of kids.”

• The letter reveals an interesting division within conservatism over the role of government.

On Friday, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy criticized Sen. JD Vance’s idea to tax adults without children more than parents with children.

The Ohio senator floated the idea in a 2021 podcast with conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, saying that “we should reward the things we think are good and punish the things we think are bad.”

“Let’s tax the things that are bad, not the things that are good,” says Vance, now Donald Trump‘s running mate, said at the time. “If you make $100,000, $400,000 a year and you have three children, you should pay a different, lower tax rate than if you make the same amount and you don’t have children.”

ABC News first reported the unearthed clip on Friday. In response, a spokesperson for Vance told the outlet that the idea is “no different in principle than the Child Tax Credit,” a policy Democrats have long supported.

But that idea didn’t sit well with Portnoy, who called it “fucking idiotic.”

“You want me to pay more taxes to take care of other people’s kids? Are we sure this guy is a Republican? Sounds like an idiot,” Portnoy wrote on X. “If you can’t afford a big family, don’t have a lot of kids.”

While the letter may seem to express one man’s views, it is indicative of the broader ideological fault lines within the modern GOP.

Portnoy himself is an influential figure on the right, whose media empire has helped popularize a movement in political thought known as “Barstool Conservatism.”

The movement, which is particularly popular among young men, is defined by a strong opposition to political correctness or “wokeness,” a generally libertarian outlook, and sometimes more socially liberal impulses. Portnoy, for example, opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

On the other hand, Vance is closely associated with the New Right and national conservatism, defined by its championing of nationalism and social conservatism, but also populism and a willingness to use government power to achieve certain goals. Both strands of conservatism have seen their influence grow in the Trump era.

Now that Vance has been chosen as Trump’s running mate, he is in a strong position to lead the party after Trump’s second term.

But the popularity of his ideas, and of national conservatism in general, is questionable. For now, he seems particularly vulnerable to criticism in a movement long characterized by libertarian thought.

Read the original article on Business Insider