Years before JD Vance embraced Donald Trump and became his running mate, the Ohio senator appeared to express views of a different ideological bent, according to email correspondence with the politician’s former Yale University classmate that was published by The New York Times.
The emails show Vance, who had yet to embark on his run for the Senate, writing to his classmate Sofia Nelson, a Detroit-based public defender. Nelson, who is also transgender, told the Times that the two had a falling out after Vance said he supported an Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for minors. The law was overturned by a federal judge last year.
The correspondence between Nelson and Vance mostly dates between 2014 and 2017, the Times reported.
In them, Vance denounced the GOP’s embrace of Trump, calling the former president a “morally reprehensible human being,” and expressed disappointment with law enforcement after the killing of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, in 2014.
“I love the body camera movement, and anything that puts cops back in the mindset of service and protection instead of control and coercion,” Vance wrote to Nelson in 2014, the Times reported. “I hate the police. Given the number of negative experiences I’ve had in the past few years, I can’t imagine what a black guy goes through.”
Luke Schroeder, a spokesperson for Vance, said in a statement to Business Insider that was also shared with the Times that it was “unfortunate” that Nelson leaked “decade-old private conversations between friends to The New York Times.”
“Senator Vance values his friendships with individuals across the political spectrum. He has been open about the fact that some of his views from a decade ago began to change after becoming a dad and starting a family, and he has thoroughly explained why he changed his mind on President Trump,” Schroeder told BI. “Despite their disagreements, Senator Vance cares for Sofia and wishes Sofia the very best.”
Other emails published by the Times show further evidence of Vance’s known shift from a Never Trumper to a MAGA loyalist.
In 2015, Vance wrote that he was “obviously outraged at Trump’s rhetoric,” comparing him to a demagogue “willing to exploit the people who believe crazy shit.”
He also wrote in 2016 that “the more white people feel like voting for trump, the more black people will suffer.
“I really believe that,” he added.
Since Vance was chosen as Trump’s running mate in July, the senator’s old comments about the former president have resurfaced online — some of which have been used by Kamala Harris’ campaign to undermine Trump’s candidacy.
“Trump is a really bad candidate and frankly I think he’s a really bad person,” Vance can be heard saying in a 2016 recording shared by the Harris campaign.
In a text message to a different former Yale classmate in 2016, Vance wondered if Trump could be “America’s Hitler.”
Years later, when he launched his Senate campaign in 2021, Vance’s tone on Trump starkly pivoted.
The Senate-hopeful at the time began to repeat Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud and, in July 2021, told Fox News that he regretted criticizing Trump.
“Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016,” he told Fox News. “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.”
By April 2022, Trump endorsed Vance for Senate.
“JD is kissing my ass, he wants my support,” Trump said at an Ohio rally in 2022, in response to a Times story about GOP candidates, including Vance, who were reluctant to invite the former president to rallies. “Yeah, he said some bad things about me, but that was before he knew me and then he fell in love.”
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