JD Vance Shows His Improv Chops At EPIC Ole Miss TPUSA Event
Meanwhile, a 'progressive counter-programming' event flopped, badly.
Not only did Vice President Vance show up to a roar of applause at Wednesday’s TPUSA event, but he took the enormous risk of going off script and following Charlie’s recipe of answering unvetted audience questions.
The ‘secret sauce’ that made Charlie Kirk’s success so remarkable was the fact that he didn’t play to friendly audiences, but the often hostile audiences on campus as he opened the floor to any and all comers, engaging with what they had to say and interacting with them as people.
Which makes the public response at Ole Miss this week so remarkable. The TPUSA event with Erika Kirk and the Vice President was turning people away, while a meeting organized in reply, by the left, had something like a hundred people show up.
And the audience that came to TPUSA was cheering.
By now, you’ve seen something about their speeches on Social Media. But what was interesting in the bigger picture was how JD Vance took a political risk that hardly any ‘reasonable’ politician would ever dare take.
He took unfiltered questions. And if you don’t know how devastating a single question can be to a politician who sees himself as ‘up-and-coming’, recall Gary Johnson’s libertarian candidacy for POTUS in 2016, where his reaction to the refugee crisis in Syria that was the engine driving mass immigration in Europe forever branded him as a policy lightweight. ‘What’s Aleppo?’ It was so bad that even Gary used it as a benchmark for screwing up later questions.
With that as a backdrop, JD waded into the great unknown of open mic night with unvetted questions.
Here’s one example of how he handled himself:
🚨 NOW – JD VANCE: We've taken Christian values for granted. Treating everyone equal is a Christian concept. Great Britain, a Christian empire, abolished slavery. Eliminating child sacrifice – what did the Christian settlers do in the New World? They found civilizations m*rdering… pic.twitter.com/mqQfMlbu3i
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 30, 2025
And Will Cain putting it in context.
🚨 SO TRUE! On JD Vance taking COUNTLESS questions, unfiltered, at TPUSA: "Have you EVER seen a vice president subject himself to an open forum from young people? Just ask him whatever, he'll answer?"
Nope.
"The power that he has, the appeal, the draw…"
48. He's on his way. pic.twitter.com/JWqCWRZlQZ
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 30, 2025