J.D. Vance loves Donald J. Trump. But that hasn’t always been the case.
The Ohio senator—and Trump’s new VP pick—has been a stalwart defender of the presumptive presidential nominee, helping to downplay the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and praising his populist approach to politics. At least he has been recently. When Trump was running for president, the message was very, very different.
By deleting old tweets and flip-flopping on policy, the Ohioan has transformed himself from “never-Trumper” to good ol’ MAGA boy.
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But the internet never forgets, and neither do we. Here are some of the best of Vance’s attacks on Trump.
“America’s Hitler”
Oof. Shortly after Vance secured Trump’s thumbs-up for his Senate campaign, an old law school roommate emerged to gum up the works, sharing a screenshot of a text conversation they’d had back in Feb. 2016.
“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 texted Josh McLaurin. “How’s that for discouraging?”
In a statement to the Ohio Capital Journal at the time, Vance’s campaign manager did not deny the authenticity of the message. “It’s laughable that the media treats J.D. not liking Trump six years ago as some sort of breaking news, when they’ve already covered it to death since this race began,” Jordan Wiggins said. “Clearly, President Trump trusts that J.D. is a genuine convert.”
Indeed, Trump had said as much in his endorsement letter, acknowledging that Vance “may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades.”
(A month after endorsing Vance, Trump forgot his name at a Nebraska rally. “We’ve endorsed J.P. — right? J.D. Mandel, and he’s doing great.”)
“Cultural Heroin”
As everyone came to the realization that Trump was likely to clinch the 2016 Republican nomination for president, Vance took to the venerable pages of The Atlantic, writing in an op-ed titled Opioid of the Masses that “Trump is cultural heroin,” and his campaign promises “the needle in America’s collective vein.”
Vance explained that Trump offered band-aid solutions to complex issues—promising to build a wall to stem the flood of illegal opioids flowing over the border, for instance.
“He makes some feel better for a bit,” Vance wrote. “But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
“I can’t stomach Trump”
Vance told NPR as much in Aug. 2016. Short and sweet.
“I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump,” he told Terry Gross. “I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
If necessary, Vance added, he might even “have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton” if it appeared as though Trump would win.
Vance later said that, while he did vote third-party in 2016, he turned around and voted for Trump in 2020.
“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
The same month as the NPR interview, Vance penned another op-ed, this one for The New York Times, in which he opined that “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”
The Tweets: “Reprehensible”
In Oct. 2016, Vance went on a mini-tweet storm after the Access Hollywood tape emerged showing Trump bragging about what he could get away with around women.
“Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us,” Vance tweeted.
Two days later, he added, “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.”
The following March, he said in another tweet, “In 4 years, I hope people remember that it was those of us who empathized with Trump’s voters who fought him the most aggressively.”
Unsurprisingly, these posts were all later deleted around the time he began seeking Trump’s crucial endorsement for the Senate.
“A Never-Trump guy”
“I’m a Never-Trump guy,” Vance told Charlie Rose in an interview just a few short weeks before Trump was elected president. “I never liked him.”
Vance, who penned a controversial memoir about growing up in rural poverty that was later adapted into an Oscar-losing film, had been brought onto Rose’s show to be a white working-class whisperer, explaining the demographic’s infatuation with Trump.
“I mean, one of the things that’s really driving attraction to Donald Trump is not any special quality of Donald Trump himself, but of the fact that folks feel very resentful at the media establishment, the political establishment, the financial establishment and so forth,” Vance told Rose.
“And so, one of the things that I really started to recognize as a teenager is that folks are very cynical, pessimistic and, because of it, sort of alienated from the broader American community… I didn’t quite expect it would take the form that it’s taken, but I’m not surprised.”
