JD Vance’s law school roommate calls VP nominee a ‘hypocrite’ who ‘adopted the MAGA mindset wholesale’

Ohio junior senator and vice-presidential nominee JD Vance is a “hypocrite” who “sold his soul” and will unquestioningly help advance twice-impeached former president Donald Trump’s hard-right agenda if the pair manage to take the White House in November.

That’s according to attorney Josh McLaurin, who spoke to The Independent about his former Yale Law School roommate, now vying for the number two spot in American politics.

It only took a few years for the 39-year-old Vance to go from a so-called Never Trumper to be “not just a cheerleader for Trump, but to be arguably the nation’s biggest cheerleader for Trump,” McLaurin said on Wednesday. “There aren’t even really words.”

“I believe that he has adopted the MAGA mindset wholesale,” McLaurin said. “I think that he personally wants to see a lot more destruction of institutions and norms than your average elected Republican does. And I think that he’s allowing his deep-seated anger—and who cares where that anger is from—to motivate him to make this complete ideological conversion.”

When the two roomed together in 2010 and 2011, Vance was able to hold a contemplative conversation with peers, even peers he disagreed with, according to McLaurin, an Atlanta trial lawyer and Democrat elected to the Georgia statehouse in 2018.

“He’s obviously a very smart person,” McLaurin went on. “And he’s personable, one-on-one. But he has chosen to drink the Trump-era poison that the Republican Party has to offer, so that he can maximize his influence in the short run.”

A Vance spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

As the Republican National Convention kicked off Monday in Milwaukee, Trump announced Vance as his running mate. Shortly after the news