Report: Yet Another Example That JD Vance Used to Hate Donald Trump

Newly disclosed messages from the Washington Post show that Vance condemned the former president’s choices during Trump’s first term.

JD Vance holding up one finger

Mother Jones; Gage Skidmore/Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

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.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate