https://truthout.org/articles/j-d-vance-who-once-called-trump-americas-hitler-tapped-for-trump-vp/
Trump Chooses J.D. Vance, Who Once Called Trump “America’s Hitler,” as His VP
The Ohio senator is known to many as a political opportunist who has cozied up to racists and the wealthy.
Donald Trump announced on Monday that he has chosen J.D. Vance as his running mate for the 2024 election — an opportunistic Republican senator from Ohio with a history of criticizing Trump and promoting white supremacist ideas.
Trump made the announcement ahead of the Republican National Conference in Milwaukee, where he is slated to accept the Republican presidential nomination.
“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Vance, a venture capitalist who regularly cavorts with fascists and racists, was elected to the Senate in 2022 with no previous experience in an elected position. Though he first came to prominence for detailing his working class background in his much-criticized memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and has positioned himself as a populist, he now bears a close resemblance to the rich elites he publicly disparages.
When he first became a pop culture figure, Vance was known for being a never-Trump conservative who loudly and consistently denounced the former president. When Trump was on the campaign trail in 2016, Vance wrote in a New York Times op-ed that he believed Trump is “unfit for our nation’s highest office” and argued in a Guardian op-ed that Trump was not fit to govern for the white working class. He once said that Trump was akin to “America’s Hitler.”
But, during his bid for Senate, Vance made an opportunistic heel-turn on Trump; after Trump’s election, Republicans adopted a de facto platform of fealty to Trump over any other priority and made it clear that Trump critics were not accepted in the party.
At the same time, Vance made bedfellows with some of the same right-wing extremists the Republican Party has aligned itself with.
After Trump’s dismissive response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Vance said that Trump missed an opportunity to criticize the white supremacists and neo-Nazis who attended the rally. But by 2021, Vance’s opinion had shifted: what he once condemned as a white supremacist, neo-Nazi march was now supposedly a “ridiculous race hoax” dreamed up by Democrats wishing to sow division.
Now, he regularly spouts dangerous right-wing rhetoric, vilifying immigrants, defending racism and promoting white supremacist theories. He has also accepted campaign funds from a slew of wealthy donors and industry executives; in the background of Vance’s transformation has been his close relationship with right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, who has donated extensively to Vance’s campaign and was a major reason for Vance’s victory.
Being Trump’s vice president, however, comes with certain dangers. During the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack, Trump expressed support for calls from the mob of his loyalists to “hang Mike Pence,” as Pence refused to participate in the plan to keep Trump in office after his loss in the 2020 election. Pence, then Trump’s vice president, has said that the incident was a close call.
And, as the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday reminded the world, the right is increasingly embracing political violence, putting politicians and those who are politically involved in the U.S. in danger; an atmosphere that Vance himself has stoked.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter: @zhang_sharon.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-j-d-vance/
Just More Evidence That J.D. Vance Is a Fraud
As long as you ultimately kiss the ring, you get total absolution in Trump world. But the junior senator from Ohio has traveled farther than most.
On the day convicted felon Donald Trump made his triumphal (?) return to the US Capitol, which is still standing although his thugs ransacked it on January 6, CNN published a great story about all the terrible things Ohio Senator J.D. Vance said and promoted about Trump on social media and elsewhere before (and shortly after) Trump was elected. Vance, you might have heard, is reportedly on the short list to be Trump’s vice president.
OK, I know: These people can’t be shamed (e.g., Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham; the list goes on). As long as you ultimately kiss the ring, you get total absolution in Trump world.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy reveling in the hypocrisy of Vance, who became the supposed bard of the white working class after his memoir Hillbilly Elegy came out. The New York Times promoted it as “a tough love analysis of the poor who back Trump.” CNN made him a contributor after the book’s publication.
Be sure to read the CNN piece yourself. But a few points jumped out at me.
I remembered that Vance had been a Trump critic. I didn’t remember how harshly. Or how self-servingly. (CNN revealed some of this when Vance declared his run for Senate, but much of it is new.) Never forget: He called the man he now creepily worships “cultural heroin” in The Atlantic. His brand was conservative morality, which he found lacking in his “hillbilly” family.
After the Access Hollywood tape came out, Vance liked a tweet that read: “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.”
He also, rather vainly, promoted tweets that suggested he might have a role in a future Hillary Clinton administration, although he eventually pivoted to #NeverHillary.
As late as August 2017, he denounced Trump’s Charlottesville riot comments, praising the “very fine people on both sides,” and writing, “There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk).” As CNN has previously reported, he deleted his Trump-critical Charlottesville comments before declaring his Senate run.
In short, he’s a charlatan launched by mainstream media as the “white working class” whisperer, even though he was working in investment banking when he wrote his book largely blaming the poor for their own poverty.
But again, as you could predict, Vance is unapologetic for his hypocrisy. He told CNN that realizing the “corporate media and Deep State’s” work to undermine Trump changed his mind.
“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.” The grandiosity, it hurts.
Donald Trump Jr. vouched for him. “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 campaign factotum Jason Miller, intriguingly, compared Vance’s past criticism of Trump to Vice President Kamala Harris’s criticism of President Joe Biden when she was running against him in the Democratic primary four years ago. “It’s important to keep in mind that politics is ultimately politics,” he said.
It’s also important to keep in mind that most Republicans have sold their souls and their values to the convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assaulter who has lost control of his business empire for fraud. The gulf between the values that first made Vance famous and his pro-Trump stance today is wider than it is for most. Should he become Trump’s VP pick, I’ll look forward to seeing him on the debate stage with Kamala Harris.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joan Walsh, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation, is a coproducer of The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show and the author of What’s the Matter With White People? Finding Our Way in the Next America. Her new book (with Nick Hanauer and Donald Cohen) is Corporate Bullsh*t: Exposing the Lies and Half-Truths That Protect Profit, Power and Wealth In America.
https://zeteo.com/p/trump-vance-vice-president-rnc-america-hitler
"America's Hitler": What Trump's New Running Mate J.D. Vance Once Called the Former President
BREAKING: Donald Trump announces his VP pick, who has a long history of attacking… Donald Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/03/us/ohio-indiana-primary-election
Midterms 2022J.D. Vance Wins Republican Senate Primary in Ohio
Mr.
Vance, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, beat a crowded field with the help
of a Trump endorsement. He will face Representative Tim Ryan, a
Democrat, in November.
by Shane Goldmacher and Jazmine Ulloa
May 4, 2022
New York Times
Vance’s win was a strong affirmation of Trump’s continued grip on his party’s base
CINCINNATI — J.D. Vance, the best-selling author whose “Hillbilly Elegy” about life in Appalachia illuminated a slice of the country that felt left behind, decisively won the Ohio Senate primary on Tuesday after a late endorsement by Donald J. Trump helped him surge past his rivals in a crowded field.
Casting himself as a fighter against the nation’s elites, Mr. Vance ran as a Trump-style pugilist and outsider who railed against the threats of drugs, Democrats and illegal immigration, while thoroughly backpedaling from his past criticisms of the former president.
The contest, which saw nearly $80 million in television advertising, was one of the most anticipated of the 2022 primary season for its potential to provide an early signal of the direction of the Republican Party.
The result delivered a strong affirmation of Mr. Trump’s continued grip on his party’s base. But a fuller assessment of Mr. Trump’s sway will come through a series of primaries in the next four weeks — in West Virginia, North Carolina, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Mr. Vance had been trailing in most polls behind Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer who had also aggressively pursued Mr. Trump’s backing, until the former president’s mid-April endorsement helped vault Mr. Vance ahead. A third candidate, State Senator Matt Dolan, ran as a more traditional Republican, sometimes mocking his rivals for their unrelenting focus on the former president instead of Ohio issues and voters.
Cheers went up at Mr. Vance’s Cincinnati election party when The Associated Press called the race shortly after 9:30 p.m.
“The people who are caught between the corrupt political class of the left and the right, they need a voice,” Mr. Vance said in his victory speech. “They need a representative. And that’s going to be me.”
Mr. Vance is an unlikely champion of the Trumpian mantle, after calling the former president “reprehensible” in 2016 and even “cultural heroin.” But he had changed his tune entirely by 2022, and Mr. Trump called to congratulate him on his victory on Tuesday evening, according to a person briefed on the call.
With more than 90 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Vance was leading across almost the entire state. But the results also captured some of the tensions and demographic trade-offs of a Republican Party pulled in different directions as Mr. Dolan was strongest in the voter-rich cities of Cleveland and Columbus...
...
In the Senate race, Mr. Vance will now face Representative Tim Ryan, a 48-year-old Democrat from the Youngstown area who has positioned himself as a champion of blue-collar values and has not aligned with some of his party’s more progressive positions.
If Mr. Vance prevails in the fall, the 37-year-old graduate of Yale Law School and investor would become the second-youngest member of the Senate, the chamber’s youngest Republican and a rare freshman who would arrive in Washington with a national profile.
His book had achieved best seller status not just from conservatives but liberals, who in the wake of the 2016 election had used it as something of a decryption key to understand Mr. Trump’s appeal in rural reaches of the country.
Mr. Vance’s metamorphosis from an outspoken “Never Trump” Republican in 2016 to a full-throated Make America Great Again warrior in 2022 echoes the ideological journey of much of the party in recent years. Republicans have moved closer and closer to the former president’s hard-line policy positions on issues like trade and immigration, and to his combative posture with Democrats and on cultural issues that divide the two parties. For some Republican voters, the primary was animated by fears that traditional family values and a white American culture were under attack by far-left Democrats, establishment Republicans and elites.
From the very start, Mr. Vance did have a crucial financial benefactor: His former boss, Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor who pledged $10 million to Mr. Vance even before he formally joined the contest and who added millions more in the final stretch to trumpet Mr. Trump’s endorsement in the last weeks.
The Senate primary was unusual in the extent that it unfolded in two places at once. In Ohio, there was the typical fevered competition for votes, in town halls, debates and television ads. In Florida, there was the battle for Mr. Trump’s approval at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s private club, with public shows of fealty, lobbying by surrogates and shuttle diplomacy. In one episode last year, multiple Ohio candidates vied for Mr. Trump’s support in front of one another at an impromptu meeting at Mar-a-Lago.
In a verbal flub that seemed almost fitting to how the candidates ran, Mr. Trump accidentally conjoined the names of two rivals over the weekend. “We’ve endorsed J.P., right?” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Nebraska. “J.D. Mandel.”
Mr. Trump’s endorsement set off a frenzy among Ohio Republicans who questioned Mr. Vance’s Republican credentials, with rivals circulating fliers online and at a Trump rally accusing him of being a Democrat in disguise and resurrecting his past comments against Mr. Trump...
Mr. Mandel had been the front-runner for much of the race, casting himself as the true pro-Trump candidate (“Pro-God. Pro-Guns. Pro-Trump” was the tagline in his TV ads). But that became an all-but-impossible argument to prosecute in the final weeks after Mr. Trump picked Mr. Vance.
“If the whole issue in the campaign is who is most Trump-like, expect it to work against you when you don’t get the endorsement,” said Rex Elsass, an Ohio-based Republican strategist.
At a restaurant in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood on Tuesday, more than a dozen Mandel supporters and campaign volunteers struck an optimistic tone at the start of the night, expressing confidence. But it was not too long before Mr. Mandel took the podium to deliver the news.
Mr. Mandel told the crowd that he called Mr. Vance “to congratulate him on a hard-fought victory” and would do what he could to help get him elected. “The stakes are too high for this country to not support the nominee,” Mr. Mandel said to a round of applause in the room.
