JD Vance, once a critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race, is now Trump's pick for vice president in 2024. Vance has changed his stance from criticising Trump to supporting him strongly since winning a Senate seat in 2022.
Trump announced his decision on Monday on Truth Social, saying after careful thought, he believes Vance is the best choice for vice president. He praised Vance for defending the Constitution and supporting the military.
Vance responded on X, thanking Trump for the honor and pledging to work towards prosperity and peace. Despite his past criticisms, Vance has been actively promoting Trump's agenda lately.
Critics, however, point to Vance's previous statements that conflict with his current support for the MAGA movement.
Let's have a look at what he said before.
Early Criticisms And Assessments
In his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, Vance offered penetrating insights into the struggles of the white working class, concurrently critiquing Trump’s influence:
From Hillbilly Elegy (2016): "Whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say: ‘The feeling that our choices don’t matter.’"
"Every two weeks I’d get a small pay-check and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else."
On race and the opioid epidemic, Vance commented in January 2017 to the Guardian:
January 2017, The Guardian: "There’s absolutely been a difference in a way I think the country has responded psychologically to the crack epidemic versus the opioid epidemic. So I think a lot of black Americans are completely justified in being sensitive about that fact."
Political Evolution And Alignment With Trump
Despite his early reservations, Vance’s stance shifted markedly during his 2021 Senate campaign in Ohio, where he secured Trump’s endorsement and ultimately won the Senate seat. His transformation from a critic to a supporter of Trump’s policies on various issues has been a subject of scrutiny:
February 2016, Private Message: "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."
April 2016, The New York Times: "Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office."
July 2016, The Atlantic: "Trump brings power to those who hate their lack of it, and his message is tonic to communities that have felt nothing but decline for decades … Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it."
October 2016, PBS: “I’m a never Trump guy. I never liked him.”
October 2016, Now-deleted Tweet: “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.”
March 2017, Now-deleted 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.”
July 2021, CNN: “Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016. And I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy.”
Views On Key Issues
Vance’s views on contentious issues such as abortion and the Ukraine conflict have evolved alongside his political journey:
September 2021, Spectrum News: "Two wrongs don’t make a right … It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question to me is really about the baby. We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life.”
October 2022, Cincinnati.com: “Ohio is going to want to have a different abortion policy from California, from New York, and I think that’s reasonable.”
May 2024, CBS: “What Donald Trump has said, which is very consistent with what I said during my own campaign, is that the gross majority of abortion policy is gonna be made at the state level.”
On the Ukraine conflict, Vance expressed his views on various occasions:
February 2022, Bannon’s War Room Podcast: “I think it’s ridiculous that we’re focused on this border in Ukraine. I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”
February 2024, Conservative Political Action Conference: “I think that it is absurd for us to devote so many resources, so much attention and so much time to a border conflict 6,000 miles away when our own southern border is wide open. We’ve got to focus more on our problems close to home.”
October 2021, American Leadership Forum: "I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man."
On controversial topics like the ‘great replacement theory’ and the 6 January 2021 Capitol attack:
April 2022, Campaign Event: “You’re talking about a shift in the democratic makeup of this country that would mean we never win, meaning Republicans would never win a national election in this country ever again.”
January 2022, X: “These people are political prisoners, and their captivity is an assault on democracy.”
April 2022, PBS: “I think the election was stolen from Trump.”
February 2024, ABC: “If I had been vice-president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the US Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020. I think that’s what we should have done.”
May 2024, CNN: “I’m extremely skeptical that Mike Pence’s life was ever in danger … I think, look, January 6th was a bad day. It was a riot. But the idea that Donald Trump endangered anyone’s lives, when he told them to protest peacefully, it’s just absurd.”
Assasination Attempt On Donald Trump
Reflecting on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Vance expressed his perspective:
July 2024, X: “Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Also, Vance stirred a controversy recently after he mentioned that he and a friend had been talking about which country might become the first "truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon".
"Maybe it's Iran, maybe Pakistan kind of counts, and then we sort of decided maybe it's actually the UK since Labour just took over," he stated last week at a UK Conservatives conference.
Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, on the other hand, downplayed Vance's remarks, noting his tendency to make provocative statements.
