JD Vance on Trump

Posted on: 2024-07-19 - Fixed link

JD Vance has had some pretty strong things to say about Trump. Now he's Trumps pick for vice president. So let's wander down memory lane and ponder how he's on board with (his words) "Americas Hitler". I'm assuming at the time he wasn't using it as a complement. Maybe now he thinks it is. Who knows?

Vance is unusual in Trumps orbit, because Trump typically requires nothing less than complete debased simpering fealty. If he doesn't get that well the person and their surrounding family are going to be on the receiving end of childish insults, and cast as "the enemy". In Pences case there is a direct line to the gallows. It's not clear quite why Vance gets a pass but it's probably related to his silicon valley cartoon doomsday villain mentor Peter Theil. Vance is Theils obedient puppy proxy. In the end it was probably Theil's motley crew of tech billionaires money that's sealed the deal.

Theil famously said "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible". It does make sense in so far as Trump is fully on board the throwing out democracy, as long as he's the dictator. How that for "freedom"?

Vance is also unusual in that most people first work with Trump and then later talk about how he's a "fucking moron", "a threat to democracy" or John Kellys "[Trump is] a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators” and “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”.

Vance seems to have had a pretty good handle in the past on what Trump is all about. If he was so profoundly wrong then (he wasn't), why should anyone believe he's right now (he isn't)? Which all assumes he has "changed his mind", when the more likely explanation is he's a cynical and shameless opportunist. So probably not someone you want anywhere near the levers of power.

"Americas Hitler"

In the message, Vance wrote that Republicans had neglected "lower-income, lower-education white people," leaving an opening for a "demagogue" like Trump. "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a--hole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," Vance wrote.

The Week

"My god, what an idiot."

Also included in the ads from Club for Growth Action and USA Freedom Fund were some of Vance’s since-deleted tweets criticizing the former president.

“My god what an idiot,” Vance wrote in one of the tweets. It was one of many tweets now deleted.

MSN

"I'm a Never Trump guy."

“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy,” Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2016, while publicizing his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” “I never liked him.”

“As somebody who doesn't like Trump, myself, I sort of — I understand where Trump's voters come from,” Vance later said in the Rose interview. “But I also don't like Trump himself, and that made me realize that maybe I'm not quite part of either world totally.”

MSN

"Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation's highest office."

“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office,” he wrote in the op-ed, describing his own families’ adoration and commitment to Trump.

MSN

"Opioid of the Masses"

In a 2016 article in The Atlantic, “Opioid of the Masses,” Mr. Vance wrote: “During this election season, it appears that many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever.” He went on: “It enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.” But, he argued, Mr. Trump was not the solution.

New York Times

“I find him reprehensible,” Mr. Vance wrote in 2016 on Twitter, saying that Mr. Trump made immigrants and Muslims in the United States afraid.

“In 4 years, I hope people remember that it was those of us who empathized with Trump’s voters who fought him most aggressively,” he wrote in another Twitter post from 2017 after Mr. Trump won.

"Lord help us."

Vance began to publicly change course when he launched his Senate campaign in 2021. He deleted tweets from 2016 that included him calling Trump “reprehensible” and an “idiot.” In another deleted tweet following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape on which Trump said fame enabled him to grope women, Vance wrote: “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us.”

PBS