Vice’s Hard-Right Turn to Trumpism

VICE News once covered the border with videos that exposed the hardships faced by immigrants, such as “The Human Cost of Hardening the US-Mexico Border” and “What It’s Like To Raise Your Child In An Immigration Detention Center.”

It was quite a shift, then, when just before the election, Vice News uploaded to its YouTube channel a video originally titled: “This is How Illegals are Sneaking into the USA.” Vice News later retitled the video to “This is how people are Sneaking into the USA,” walking back language that had overtly dehumanized immigrants by referring to them as “illegals” rather than people.

The video appears to be representative of a new era for the media company. Best known for helping define the Brooklyn hipster aesthetic and publishing provocative original reporting in its heyday, Vice Media collapsed in recent years, going from a company valued at multiple billions of dollars with a show on HBO to declaring bankruptcy, laying off hundreds of workers, and being sold for $350 million to a hedge fund.

Vice co-founder Shane Smith stepped down as CEO in 2018, but has remained the company’s executive chair with a reported $8 million salary in the interim and retained control throughout. This summer, he took on the role of Vice’s editor-in-chief. Now, he’s the on-camera talent for a new slate of video content called “Shane Smith Has Questions.” The Canadian-born journalist’s focus seems to be trained on the southern border, with an editorial line closer to Trump campaign fearmongering than hard news reporting. (Smith is not to be confused with Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes, who left the media company and established the far-right militant group the Proud Boys).

In a recent short video titled “This will Fix the Border Crisis,” Smith asks Art Del Cueto, spokesperson and vice president for the National Border Patrol Council, “How do you win this war on immigration or migration?” Del Cueto answers, “What you do is detain people, you start detaining people that are coming across.” Cueto previously stated that he would resign if Kamala Harris won the election and has since gone on to praise Donald Trump’s choice of “border czar” Tom Homan.

Smith followed it up on Monday with a video titled “Chinese Nationals are Crossing the Mexico Border,” in which he interviews Todd Bensman, a fellow at the anti-immigration think tank Center for Immigration Studies.

Immigration isn’t Smith’s only topic, however. Other videos uploaded in recent weeks include “Bill Maher on Elon Musk getting Cancelled by the Left,” which features Maher complaining about the California Coastal Commission rejecting a proposal to launch SpaceX rockets from the Vandenberg Air Force base in October. In the video, Smith takes the opportunity to make nice with Musk: “We at Vice — and I publicly apologize, Elon — used to shit on him, and I’d be like, ‘Why are you shitting on the guy? He’s great.’”

The producers of Smith’s show have reportedly been contacting conservative podcasters to attempt to book them on the show, according to Semafor.

Vice’s homepage doesn’t amplify Smith’s videos, posting instead articles on pop culture, with some political stories including an account of a woman maced by Christian nationalist Nick Fuentes and a piece about “How Barron Trump and the ‘Bro Vote’ Helped Sway the US Election.”

Vice could not be reached for comment, as Vice’s publicly listed press email address now appears to be a private Google Group that doesn’t accept external emails.

In recent months, the Vice News account on X has also been publishing clips with headlines like “Who Is the Deep State?” and “Is Elon a genius?” Multiple YouTube users were perplexed at Vice’s new content, asking “Did Vice get bought out by Elon or Jeff or something?” and “What the hell happened with this channel?”