JD Vance, Trump’s VP pick, once called him a ‘moral disaster,’ and possibly ‘America’s Hitler’

CNN —

Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick Ohio Sen. JD Vance was once a fervent critic of the former president. In private messages, he wondered ahead of Trump’s election whether he was “America’s Hitler” and in 2017 said the then-president was a “moral disaster.” In public, he agreed Trump was a “total fraud” who didn’t care about regular people and called him “reprehensible.”

“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 in a message to a friend in 2016. “How’s that for discouraging?”

In 2016 and 2017, Vance, then best-known for penning the best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy”said Trump was “cultural heroin” and “just another opioid” for Middle America. He also contemplated voting for Hillary Clinton (he ultimately said he planned to vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin.)

“Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us,” he tweeted after the “Access Hollywood” tape was published in 2016.

Sen. JD Vance speaks in National Harbor, Maryland in February.

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Vance also liked tweets that said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” and harshly criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk),” Vance wrote in a deleted-tweet.

Trump’s vice president announcement on Monday caps a dramatic reversal on Vance’s part. He made his most critical