JD Vance has questioned whether Trump is “America’s Hitler” in the past

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, has been a vocal critic of the former president. In private messages before Trump’s election, he asked if he was “America’s Hitler” and in 2017 called the then-president a “moral disaster.” In public, he called Trump a “total fraud” who didn’t care about ordinary people and called him “reprehensible.”

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical idiot like Nixon who wouldn’t be so bad (and might even be helpful) and that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vance wrote in a message to a friend in 2016.

In 2016 and 2017, Vance, then best known for writing the bestselling book “Hillbilly Elegy,” said Trump was a “cultural hero” and “just another opioid” for middle-class Americans. He told CNN before the 2016 election that he would “definitely not” vote for Trump and was also considering voting for Hillary Clinton (and eventually said he planned to vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin).

“Dear Christians, everyone is watching us as we apologize for this man. Lord, help us,” he posted after the “Access Hollywood” tape was released in 2016.

Vance also liked posts that said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of the most hated, villainous, and cretinous celebrities in America,” and sharply criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk),” Vance wrote in a tweet that was later deleted.

The announcement by Trump’s vice president on Monday (15) resulted in a dramatic change of stance from Vance. He made his most critical comments while promoting his 2016 memoir, which earned him a reputation as a “Trump whisperer” who explained Trump’s appeal to the white working class.

“I’m definitely not going to vote for Trump because I think he’s projecting very complex problems onto simple villains,” Vance told Jake Tapper of CNN before the 2016 elections.

But in 2020, Vance fully embraced Trump, declaring on Megyn Kelly’s podcast after the election that he had voted for him. A year later, Vance announced he was running for Senate in Ohio and ran with Trump’s support.

Early in the campaign, Vance was forced to apologize after the CNN recovered old posts, which he had deleted, from the 2016 campaign and early 2017 relating to the Trump administration.

“I said those things and I regret them, and I regret that I was wrong about this guy,” Vance told Fox News in 2021.

In a statement to CNN Last month, Vance cited Trump’s “many successes in office” that changed his mind about the former president.

“I am proud to be one of your strongest supporters in the Senate today and will do everything in my power to ensure that President Trump wins in November – the survival of the United States depends on it,” he said.

Vance won his 2022 Senate race by 6 percentage points, less than the 8.1 Trump won the state by in 2020.

Vance’s remarkable political shift is tied to a broader trend of realignment in the country and in the Republican Party as the party becomes a political movement of white, working-class voters.

“I don’t think he really cares about people”

In promotional commentary for his book, Vance frequently said that Trump played on or exploited the fears and prejudices of white working-class voters.

“And I can’t stand Trump because I think he’s a fraud,” a radio host told Vance as he promoted his book. “I think he’s a total fraud who exploits these people.”

“Me too. And it’s like you said, I agree with you about Trump because I don’t think he’s the right person. I don’t think he really cares about people,” Vance responded. “I think you recognized that there was a void in the conversation and that void is that people in these parts of the country feel ignored.”

In September 2016, Vance argued that Trump’s immigration policies, such as the “Great Mexican Wall”, were simplistic and aimed at giving people something to hold onto.

“At the heart of Trump’s immigration message is that if we had less immigration, we’d have a lot better jobs,” he added. “I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. My sense is that Trump definitely simplifies these issues. I don’t think if you build a big Mexican wall, all those steel mill jobs are going to suddenly come back to southern Ohio, but at least it gives people something to hold on to.”

Vance also argued in 2016 that if working-class whites attended church, they wouldn’t be as attracted to Trump.

“I think Trump provides that sense of community that a lot of white working-class people would have if they actually went to church,” Vance told New York Public Radio. “I think if people went to church a little bit more, they might not be as excited or attracted to the kind of social experience that Trump offers.”

Vance said racism influenced voters’ support for Trump

Vance also said racism and xenophobia played a role in Trump’s rise.

“There is definitely an element of support for Donald Trump that is based on racism and xenophobia, but many of these people are really hard-working people who are struggling in important ways,” Vance said in a September 2016 interview with “PBS NewsHour.”

“There are definitely some people who voted for Trump who were racist and voted for him for racist reasons,” Vance said in an interview at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

In statements to CNN In October 2016, Vance criticized Trump for “actively disenfranchising” black voters, claiming that this tactic was a long-standing Republican strategy.

“It’s not just that Donald Trump doesn’t speak out on issues of concern to minority voters or black voters, it’s that he seems to enjoy actively antagonizing many black voters,” Vance noted during a panel discussion.

In a July 2016 interview with the right-wing American Conservative, he added that Trump was “worsening” the problem of racial resentment by talking about “rapist immigrants and banning all Muslims” as part of his message.

Finally, Vance once posted that he found Trump reprehensible.

“Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. That’s why I find this reprehensible. God wants the best for us,” he wrote in October 2016.