Potential VP pick Sen. J.D. Vance once liked tweets harshly critical of Trump
By Em Steck, Andrew Kaczynski and Allison Gordon, CNN
(CNN) — Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a leading candidate to be Donald Trump’s vice president, liked tweets in 2016 and 2017 that harshly criticized Trump and his policies — including one speculating that Vance could serve in former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s administration.
Other tweets liked by Vance said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” and, in a since-removed set of tweets, harshly criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – something Vance now defends Trump over.
Vance’s past anti-Trump stances have been well-documented, but these new examples, unearthed by an extensive review of Vance’s past social media activity, demonstrate they were more widespread and scathing than previously known.
Their discovery also comes as Vance has solidified his standing in Trump’s inner circle as a frequent defender of the former president and is among a handful of people under consideration to be Trump’s vice-presidential pick.
As CNN’s KFile previously reported, Vance deleted past anti-Trump tweets ahead of his announcement in July 2021 that he would run for the open Ohio Senate seat. Vance once privately wondered whether Trump was ‘America’s Hitler’ in February 2016, and a few months later wrote in The Atlantic that Trump was “cultural heroin.”
Vance also said he even contemplated voting for Clinton, but ultimately said he would vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin for president in 2016.
Once regarded as a “Trump whisperer” for his understanding of the aggrieved White working class and a self-described “Never Trump” Republican, Vance shot to fame over his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” published in June 2016. Vance was a frequent guest on cable news programs and later became a CNN contributor in 2017.
His subsequent transition from vocal Trump critic to staunch supporter has been widely scrutinized. Vance has become a key surrogate for the former president and routinely defends Trump on television, including during his hush money trial in New York last month. Vance also helped orchestrate Trump’s June 6 fundraiser in San Francisco with tech industry donors. Trump is expected to meet with congressional Republicans in Washington, DC, on Thursday.
In a statement to CNN, Vance cited Trump’s “many successes in office” and claimed that realizing the “corporate media and Deep State’s” coordinated efforts to undermine Trump changed his perspective.
“I’m proud to be one of his strongest supporters in the Senate today and I’m going to do everything in my power to ensure President Trump wins in November – the survival of America depends on it.”
Prior to the publication of this story, Vance’s communications director sent along two supportive statements from Donald Trump Jr. and Jason Miller, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign.
Trump Jr. criticized news outlets for repeatedly covering Vance’s past anti-Trump comments writing, “We’re 100% confident that JD is America First to the core” and “no one in the Senate has been a stronger supporter of my father.” Trump Jr. added they were “long past all of this,” saying they had “discussed it with him at length.”
Miller wrote, “It’s important to keep in mind that politics is ultimately politics,” and likened Vance’s past criticism to criticism by Kamala Harris of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primary over his past opposition to desegregation busing in the 1970s.
In an interview published Thursday, Vance told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat about his political conversion to a pro-Trump Republican.
“Like a lot of other elite conservatives and elite liberals, I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration,” Vance said.
Anti-Trump social media activity from 2016
CNN reviewed Vance’s past likes on Twitter, the platform now known as X, before X changed its policy to make users’ likes private and hidden from others.
A majority of the newly uncovered social media activity dates from the last five months of the 2016 presidential campaign. They include Vance liking a number of anti-Trump posts on Twitter, including those criticizing Trump’s immigration policies, acknowledging antisemitism from Trump supporters, questioning the integrity of voting for Trump over Clinton and even raising concerns over Trump having access to the country’s nuclear codes as president.
In February 2016, Vance liked a tweet featuring a photo of Trump, two women and O.J. Simpson with the caption, “Here is an old picture of one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs. Also in picture: OJ Simpson.”
Vance also liked tweets from August 2016 that praised his book and envisioned a role for him in a potential Clinton administration and another tweet suggesting he could provide Clinton with the “seeds to a plan to defeat Trump.” But Vance soon began liking several tweets with the hashtag #NeverHillary through October 2016.
While promoting his memoir and appearing on news programs in 2016, Vance liked a series of tweets calling then-candidate Trump a “monster” and a “nemesis of the GOP.” He also liked a tweet acknowledging “threats and derogatory terms Trump supporters hurl at Jews.” He even liked a tweet from CNN anchor Jake Tapper criticizing Trump’s tweet about a woman’s appearance amidst then-first lady Melania Trump’s campaign against cyberbullying.
He also liked a tweet that read, “Does any dad (or future dad) want to look his daughter in the eye and explain why he voted for Trump instead of 1st woman president?”
Among the harshest tweets Vance liked was one that called out Trump after the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced, capturing previously unaired lewd and sexually aggressive remarks by the presidential nominee. “Maybe the Central Park 5 could take out a full-page ad to condemn the coddling of thug real estate barons who commit serial sexual assault,” the tweet read.
Other tweets Vance engaged with criticized signature Trump policies, including Trump’s hardline position on immigration and the tax cuts from 2017.
In August 2017, Vance criticized Trump’s response to the White supremacist violence in Charlottesville earlier that year, linking in a since-deleted tweet to a TV segment that called Trump a “coward” for his response, and then liked a tweet indicating he did not consistently support the GOP or Trump.
“There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk),” Vance wrote, while also criticizing left-wing violence.
“You may not like @JDVance1’s view – but it’s hard to pin him down as consistently supporting views of either Trump or GOP,” read the tweet Vance liked.
Pro-Trump pivot
Despite his earlier harsh criticism of Trump, by 2021, Vance dismissed left-wing condemnation of Trump’s comments — where Trump equated White nationalist protestors and counter-protestors as “fine people on both sides”— as “the ridiculous race hoax in Charlottesville.”
Ahead of his Senate campaign that year, Vance apologized for previously calling Trump “reprehensible,” in tweets first uncovered by CNN’s KFile.
“Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016,” Vance told CNN in 2021. “I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance said, adding he thought Trump was a good president.
In a previously unreported blog post Vance wrote in April 2010 under his previous legal name, J.D. Hamel, he wrote in support of legal immigration, advocating to “massively increase” the number of migrants allowed into the country.
“Border security is a good start, but if we plan to control the border, then we must also plan to massively increase the number of legal migrants allowed into the country,” Vance wrote. “The day that America no longer welcomes decent, hardworking foreign nationals is the day that our nation loses something very central to its character and its economic diversity.”
Vance told CNN, “It was a stupid opinion from 15 years ago when I was in my twenties. All anyone needs to do is check my voting record as a Senator to see that I have consistently opposed increased immigration levels into America.”
Vance said in September 2016 that Trump’s immigration policies were overly simplistic.
“At the heart of Trump’s immigration message is that if we had less immigration, we would have much better jobs,” he said. “I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. My own sense is that Trump definitely simplifies these problems. I don’t think if you build a great Mexican wall, all of a sudden, all of these steel mill jobs are going to come back to southern Ohio, but it at least gives people something to latch onto.”
Three months ago, Vance reiterated his support for Trump’s immigration policies. In an interview on Fox Business Vance said, “If we don’t get control of the southern border – tens of millions of illegal aliens are now in our country, tons of fentanyl killing over 100,000 people – we don’t have a country anymore if we don’t get control of that border.”
This story has been updated with more information.
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