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Donald Trump’s running mate texted extensively with a right-wing activist known for spreading fabricated smear campaigns against Democrats and even denying the atrocities of the Holocaust during a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) discussion.
JD Vance and Charles (”Chuck”) Johnson conversed about a wide range of subjects, according to text messages obtained by The Washington Post, including the war in Ukraine, UFOs, US-Israel policy and Jeffrey Epstein. The conversation occurred over the encrypted messaging app Signal; the texts were provided to the Post by Johnson as Vance seeks the vice presidency on the Republican 2024 ticket.
A spokesperson for the Ohio senator confirmed the validity of the texts but claimed to the Post that Johnson “spam” texted Vance, and that the senator only responded to “push back” against Johnson’s wilder claims.
“JD usually ignored him, but occasionally responded to push back against things he said,” William Martin told the Post.
But the examples published by the Post do not only show moments of disagreement between the men. Vance can also be seen soliciting Johnson’s opinion on various topics, while making admissions and other remarks of his own seemingly aimed at impressing the far-right conservative activist.
“Dude I won’t even take calls from Ukraine,” Vance wrote in October of 2023, in one text obtained by the Post. “Two very senior guys reached out to me. The head of their intel. The head of the Air Force. Bitching about F16s.”
In other moments, though, Johnson could be seen badgering the senator over his connections to donors such as Sheldon Adelson and his former law professor Amy Chua, as well as his political positions. Vance clearly grows irritated with Johnson in one exchange obtained by the Post: “Stop sending me weird messages. I find your threatening tone enraging.”
Vance’s ties to the far-right fringe of the Republican Party have made him an outlier in the Senate GOP and are part of the reason his pick as Donald Trump’s running mate was seen by analysts as a nod to the the party’s most diehard base of supporters, rather than a pickup that would benefit the campaign win over undecided voters. Trumpworld has cast Vance as a hardspun son of Appalachia whose connections to “real America” are more genuine than those of his Democratic rivals.
The Trump campaign has already faced questions about how closely Vance was vetted as a running mate before he was picked. The revelation of his texts with Johnson, a well-known conspiracy theorist, is likely to just add to those questions.
Johnson’s political activism and embrace of bizarre and often simply false causes is well-documented. Most famous for his efforts to smear Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer as a sexual harasser with forged documents during the Trump presidency, the bearded, ginger-haired conspiracy theorist wrote that same year on Reddit that he had “never believed the six million figure”, referring to the number of known deaths in the Holocaust.
His views at the time resulted in a media controversy for Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who had invited Johnson to attend Trump’s first State of the Union address to Congress as his guest. Johnson has maintained that he was not being truthful in that Reddit discussion, and instead was supposedly attempting to test the platform’s speech policies.
Vance’s addition to the Trump 2024 ticket has already been a source of headaches for the Republican former president, who has seen his poll numbers slip as Vance became embroiled in his own controversy just days after becoming the vice presidential nominee. Comments he made to a conservative group in 2021 accusing Americans who do not have children of having less of a stake in the country’s future became the target of renewed criticism. The Ohio senator has attempted to deflect from the deeper political points he was making by focusing on criticism of his description of Democrats as “childless cat ladies” — a description he maintains is accurate.
Democrats have labeled Vance’s views “weird” and gone on the attack against their Republican rivals, sensing blood in the water. They are set to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, at their party’s convention later this month.
