On Tuesday local time, Donald Trump was officially locked in as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate for the American election in November. Author turned Ohio senator James David ‘JD’ Vance, a man who once called Trump “America’s Hitler”, was also announced at the Republican National Convention as the Vice Presidential candidate who will be running alongside Trump for the Republican party.
It’s an interesting choice for many reasons — but the juiciest is that in 2016 Vance talked a lot of smack about Trump publicly and privately. So what did he say? Let’s have a lil’ look!
When Trump was elected as President of the United States in 2016, Vance was rising as a public figure after he released his memoir Hillbilly Elegy that same year. Using his new platform, Vance was critical of Trump. But it wasn’t until 2022 that he became a US Senator.
In an article he wrote for The Atlantic aptly headlined “Donald Trump Is An Opioid For The Masses”, Vance essentially claimed that Trump was simply a loud-mouth bandaid for America’s issues.
“To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, in an interview with NPR, Vance claimed he would have to “hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton” because he “can’t stomach Trump.”
“I think that he’s noxious and is leading the White working class to a very dark place. And ultimately I just don’t share Hillary Clinton’s politics,” he quipped. Ouchie mama!!!!
But the juiciest, most loaded statements were sent by text to his former law school roommate Josh McLaurin in 2016. McLaurin later shared the messages on social media in 2022 when Vance was running for senate in Ohio.
“I never could have dreamed during those exchanges in 2016 that he would end up being one of the principal reinforcers of Trumpism only a few years later,” said McLaurin, per The Washington Post.
What did JD Vance’s text messages about Trump say?
In the text messages, Vance referred to Trump as “America’s Hitler” but let’s see what they said in full.
“But I’m not surprised by Trump’s rise, and I think the entire party has only itself to blame,” the text read, according to screenshots shared by McLaurin.
“We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people, and I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer those people SOMETHING (and hell, maybe even expand our appeal to working-class black people in the process) or a demagogue would.
“We are now at that point. Trump is the fruit of the party’s collective neglect. 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.
“How’s that for discouraging?” the message concluded.
Not an entirely glowing reference, is it?
It’s worth noting that in 2021, Vance did apologise for the statements he made about Trump in the past.
According to PBS, Vance deleted his negative tweets about Trump in 2021. Then, in an interview with Fox News, he requested that people don’t make judgements on his based on his previous statements.
“I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy. I think he was a good president, I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak,” he said.
So, just like the many romance stories on bookshelves around the world, Trump and Vance have an enemies-to-lovers kind of story. They’re both in the race together — let’s see how this whole election thing pans out for them. Maybe they’ll be smooching by the end? Or maybe it’s the death of democracy round two electric boogaloo. TBC.
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