Dubai: Republican JD Vance, Donald Trump’s pick as his running mate for this November US elections, was once a harsh critic of the former president.
The Ohio Senator in his private messages called Trump a “America’s Hitler” and a “moral disaster”.
Once self-described as “a Never Trump guy,” Vance called the billionaire an “idiot,” “total fraud” ,“noxious” and “reprehensible,” according to extensive reporting.
In 2016 and 2017, Vance, then known for penning the best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” said Trump was “cultural heroin” and “just another opioid” for Middle America.
Ahead of the 2016 election, He told CNN that he was “definitely not” voting for Trump and he also contemplated voting for Hillary Clinton.
“Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologise for this man. Lord help us,” he tweeted after the “Access Hollywood” tape was published in 2016, according to CNN.
Vance also liked tweets that said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” and harshly criticised Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
‘Trump whisperer’
“There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protesters 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 remarks when he was promoting his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which was published in 2016.
The book had catapulted him to fame as a “Trump whisperer,” capable of explaining Trump’s appeal to the White working class.
“I’m definitely not gonna vote for Trump because I think that he’s projecting very complex problems onto simple villains,” Vance told CNN’s Jake Tapper ahead of the 2016 election.
Dramatic U-Turn
But by 2020, Vance made a dramatic U-turn to establish himself as one of the billionaire’s most ardent defenders, telling podcaster Megyn Kelly after the election he voted for him, according to CNN.
He has deleted earlier tweets critical of Trump and instead passionately embraced his ideas, advocating a radical anti-immigration fight and uncompromising economic protectionism.
And he proved his loyalty by defending tooth and nail Trump’s unfounded theory that the 2020 election was stolen.
A year later, Vance announced he was running for Senate in Ohio and vied for Trump’s endorsement, which he ultimately received.
In 2014, he married Usha Chilukuri, a law school classmate and daughter of Indian immigrants. They have three children.
Vance later transitioned from law into the world of technology investment, joining Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital in 2017.
By then, his memoir was already striking a chord with working class Americans grappling with economic stagnation, drug addiction and cultural alienation.
It was made into an Oscar-nominated movie starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams, and Vance leveraged his personal story to become a sought-after commentator.
Vance came to the attention of Trumpworld when his book was picked up by the ex-president’s eldest son Don Jr - now a close friend and admirer of Vance, and reportedly a big influence in his VP nomination.
THE NEW RIGHT
Once an affable, bookish type, Vance has since become the kind of warrior on the Sunday morning TV circuit that Trump appreciates, lobbing verbal grenades against opponents and generally slinging mud on his mentor’s behalf.
His evolution mirrored a broader realignment within the conservative movement, as Trump tightened his grip on the party, allowing little dissent from critics and ending the careers of Republicans who criticized him in public.
Vance argues that the former president’s willingness to take on entrenched interests in both parties resonates with Americans frustrated by Washington’s perceived dysfunction and elitism.
Perfectly aligned with Trump’s America First movement on issues like immigration reform, economic protectionism and cultural conservatism, Vance has adopted the ex-president’s confrontational style.
But he appears further to the right on many issues including abortion, where he embraces calls for federal legislation and has argued against need for rape and incest exceptions to bans.
Politico suggested in a 7,000-word profile in March that Vance had become the figurehead of what it called “the New Right” - young conservatives trying to take Trump’s isolationist, anti-immigration America First movement in a more radical direction.
“Unlike Trump’s more conventional Republican followers, Vance’s New Right cohort see Trump as merely the first step in a broader populist-nationalist revolution that is already reshaping the American right.” it said.
“And, if they get their way, that will soon reshape America as a whole.”
-- AFP
‘I regret being wrong about the guy’
“I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance told Fox News in 2021.
Vance cited Trump’s “many successes in office” for changing his mind on the former president.
“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.”
Rags-to-riches parable
Vance’s pre-Washington life story — from humble beginnings in a fatherless Rust Belt home to military service, an Ivy League education and a Silicon Valley career — is the kind of rags-to-riches parable that delights conservatives.
Vance’s rise to Trump’s running mate completes a remarkable transformation for a 39-year-old senator now seen as the future face of the Republican party.
Vance is 39, nearly four decades younger than Trump, 78, marking a potential generational shift for the party and offering a fresh voice to Republican efforts to bolster their appeal to the working-class workers who were once a bedrock of the Democratic party in battlegrounds such as Michigan, Wisconsin and President Joe Biden’s home state of Pennsylvania.
Earlier this year, the Ohio senator warned those who don’t step into line behind Trump that he has “a long memory.”
“If you’re fighting Trump and his endorsed candidates politically today, don’t ask for my help,” he said.
In Congress, he has become one of Trump’s most ardent advocates, particularly over his numerous struggles in criminal and civil court.
“The Biden administration wants Trump to die in jail and they want to bankrupt his family. It is the biggest assault on democracy we’ve ever seen,” he said in a March post on X.
“If you’re too cowardly to call it out, you’re not ready for this moment in American politics.”
