JD Vance, Trump's New Running Mate, Once Said Trump Could Be 'America's Hitler'

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) isn’t the first Republican to back away from his past criticism of Donald Trump, but his reversal may be the most startling.

In a 2016 private Facebook message to his former Yale Law School roommate, Democratic Georgia state Sen. Josh McLaurin, Vance said Trump could become “America’s Hitler.”

“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,” Vance wrote.

The comment came to wide attention in 2022 during Vance’s Senate campaign and was one of many critical statements that Trump looked past when he named Vance as his vice presidential running mate on Monday.

“Obviously he’s a sellout, but the bigger deal is he’s angry and vindictive. The perfect fit for Trump’s revenge,” McLaurin said on social media on Monday, shortly after Vance was announced as Trump’s VP pick. “JD’s rise is a triumph for angry jerks everywhere.”

Vance condemned Trump on multiple occasions in 2016 in interviews related to Vance’s bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which made him a go-to commentator on rural America and Trump’s political rise.

He argued that the then-Republican presidential nominee offered empty promises that wouldn’t fix the problems ailing communities like the one in Ohio, where Vance grew up.

“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,” Vance wrote in a July 2016 piece for The Atlantic.

Vance described himself as a “Never Trump guy” and called Trump an “idiot” in since-deleted tweets from that time. In an August 2016 interview with NPR, he even said he might vote for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for