JD Vance speaks at a Chase the Vote rally at Generations Church in Mesa, ArizonaGage Skidmore/Zuma
Surprise, surprise. JD Vance’s self-proclaimed seamless journey from a “Never Trump” conservative in 2016—who called the former president potentially “America’s Hitler”—to a fervent supporter of the man in 2020 may not be the complete story.
According to a Friday report from the Washington Post, in February 2020, Vance condemned Trump’s choices during his first term in office in private messages on X. “Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy),” the VP choice reportedly wrote to a source that has remained anonymous due to worries over a vitriolic response.
In another DM sent in June 2020, Vance predicted that his future running mate would lose to Joe Biden in the presidential election. When Trump was actually defeated, Vance asserted that Democrats stole the election.
William Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, told the Post that Vance’s remarks about Trump’s poor execution of his promises for the economy were not targeting the former president but “establishment Republicans who thwarted much of Trump’s populist economic agenda to increase tariffs and boost domestic manufacturing in Congress.”
“Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy),” the VP choice reportedly wrote.
“Fortunately, Sen. Vance believes that Republicans in Congress are much more aligned with President Trump’s agenda today than they were back then, so he is confident that they won’t run into those same issues within the party,” Martin added.
In other messages, Vance appeared receptive to government-led health care, saying Medicare for All “is a net positive, maybe not (details matter).”
This brings into question when and why Vance underwent a change of heart on Trump. When asked about this, Martin did not respond to Mother Jones’ request for comment.
We previously noted how Vance’s transformation to a champion of the former president may be genuine—he’s clearly studied the influences of the newly-established right with references to Nazi Germany and seizing the administrative state for themselves. But even if Vance makes his reasoning clear, he serves as an example of how elites can justify in their own minds that they can vote for Trump—because when they do so, they tell themselves they helping the working class (or, actually, the white working class), despite all the evidence to the contrary.
As Vance said at the Republican National Convention in July: “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future.”
Or, in other words, it has a shared history and common future for a certain kind of people.
