Commentator who reportedly influenced JD Vance’s politics calls Trump admin a ‘failure’ and ‘tragedy’

Curtis Yarvin, a right-wing political commentator whose philosophy on government has reportedly influenced Vice President JD Vance, criticized the Trump administration for failing to overhaul the U.S. government to end democracy.

In a lengthy Substack post published on December 27, Yarvin declared the second Trump administration “a tragedy” for not utilizing its energy in early 2025 to consolidate power to begin forming a more one-party system.

“The administration failed, collectively, to realize that (a) the excitement of potential real change was how all its crackling political energy was generated, and (b) the energy would stop if the offensive stopped moving,” Yarvin wrote.

Yarvin, who rose to prominence in the 2010s by writing under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, has long called for conservatives to rise to power and shape the government system away from democracy and toward a form of monarchy run by a national CEO of sorts.

The political commentator said the Trump administration had the trappings to do this, but instead fell back into the traditional system of checks and balances, while also allowing Democrats to maintain positions of power.

“Last winter’s shock-and-awe Trump is vanished now,” Yarvin wrote. “The administration is simply too well-integrated with the permanent government. This marriage is terrible, but it is still a marriage.”

Yarvin went on to explain how the Trump administration’s initial sweeping overhaul generated energy among like-minded individuals, but said that energy has died down and only a “very sharp conflict or crisis” could regenerate it.

Yarvin’s philosophy on democracy is that it is “pointlessly stimulating the human power instinct” and that only real change can occur when a single individual is in charge. While his ideas are contradictions of the current U.S. system, they are nothing new.

While Yarvin’s prominence in conservative media has grown, with appearances on Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News show and “The Charlie Kirk Show,” he has also maintained an arms-length distance from major administration figures.

Notably, Yarvin has brushed off claims that he influenced Vance. In a July 2024 Substack post, Yarvin said he had “barely even met” Vance, whom he referred to as a “random normie politician.”

In 2021, Vance mentioned Yarvin’s political philosophy on a “Jack Murphy Live” podcast episode – though the then-Ohio Senate candidate claimed it was “too pessimistic.”

At the same time, Yarvin was among the informal “guests of honor” invited to Trump’s inauguration in January, thanks to his influence with prominent political donors such as Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen.