"America's Hitler": What Trump's New Running Mate J.D. Vance Once Called the Former President
BREAKING: Donald Trump announces his VP pick, who has a long history of attacking… Donald Trump.
On Monday afternoon in Milwaukee, the guessing game came to an end as Donald Trump announced J.D. Vance as his 2024 vice-presidential running mate at the Republican National Convention.
Now, these days, the junior Republican senator from Ohio, elected in 2022, is a full-fledged Trump toady, denouncing the prosecution of the GOP presidential candidate in New York as a “sham trial” and praising Trump’s record as a “great president,” but he used to be a self-proclaimed “Never Trump guy” back in 2016.
I happened to interview him for a panel discussion on the threat posed by Trump on my old Al Jazeera English show, ‘UpFront,’ in September 2016, less than two months before the presidential election.
“He’s exploiting some of the racism that’s there, but he’s also exploiting people’s fears and pointing it in a direction that maybe they wouldn’t go on their own,” Vance told me, referring to Trump. “I think that he is leading people in a very dark direction.”
Today, Vance has joined Trump in “exploiting people’s fears” and “leading” them in that “very dark direction.” He is a proud part of the GOP 2024 presidential ticket.
For the 39-year-old Ohio senator, former venture capitalist, and best-selling author, it has been a remarkable - and remarkably shameless - transformation from “Never Trump guy” into Trump loyalist, Trump booster, and, now, finally, Trump running mate.
I thought it might be useful to put together a list of pretty damning quotes about Trump, from Vance, from 2016. He now claims he was “wrong about Donald Trump” and regrets his earlier attacks on the former president (and, as CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and his colleagues have documented, he has since deleted many of his most critical tweets).
Nevertheless, as November fast approaches, Democrats may want to start using some of these old quotes from Vance in their anti-Trump attack ads. #justsayin
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On Trump’s fascism…
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vance wrote in a message to a former college roommate in February 2016. “How’s that for discouraging?”
On Trump and ‘Access Hollywood’...
“Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us,” Vance tweeted on the day that the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape leaked on Oct. 7, 2016, in which Trump could be heard bragging about his ability to “grab” women by their genitalia.
On allegations of sexual assault against Trump…
“This is sort of he-said, she-said, right?” Vance said on MSNBC, referring to an accusation from a woman called Jessica Leeds, who claimed Trump groped her. “And at the end of the day, do you believe Donald Trump, who always tells the truth? Just kidding. Or do you believe that woman on the tape?”
Per CNN, Vance later also ‘liked’ a tweet accusing Trump of having committed “serious sexual assault.”
On finding Trump “reprehensible”...
“Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us,” Vance said on Twitter in October 2016.
On Trump’s (lack of) intellect…
“My God, what an idiot,” he once tweeted about the GOP presidential nominee.
On Trump’s “absurd” policies…
“I quickly realized that Trump’s actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd,” Vance wrote in a piece for USA Today in February 2016.
On Trump as “cultural heroin”...
“Trump is cultural heroin,” Vance wrote in an essay for The Atlantic in 2016, referring to the way in which Trump seemed to offer white working-class voters “an easy escape from the pain” of addiction and despair.“ He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
On (not) voting for Trump…
“I’m a Never Trump guy,” Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in October 2016. “I never liked him.”
In fact, Vance later boasted that he was voting for independent candidate Evan McMullin in November 2016.
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Given Vance has demonstrably U-turned on Trump in such a blatant and brazen way, we could call him shameless, or corrupt, or dishonest, or cynical, or endlessly ambitious. However, given the last guy who agreed to be Trump’s running mate almost got killed by a pro-Trump mob incited by Trump himself, perhaps we should actually call the brand-new Republican vice presidential candidate… brave.
Thank you for pointing out how thoroughly Trump has captured a whole political party and the shameless people who have been corrupted.
Vance's "cultural heroin" remark was very insightful. But that was then, this is now. He's turned his back on the very people he purported to care about in his "hillbilly elegy" to do what soulless, opportunistic Republicans always do--lie their asses off for just another taste of political heroin.