The Republican vice presidential candidate argued as recently as 2020 that Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism.”
JD Vance speaks to a crowd during a rally at the Berks County Fairgrounds on September 21, 2024, in Leesport, Pennsylvania.(Matthew Hatcher / Getty Images)
When Democrat Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance take the stage for Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, Vance can be counted on to sing the praises of his running mate, former president Donald Trump.
That’s what vice presidential candidates do.
Unfortunately for Trump—and Vance—the Ohio senator’s praise for the former president will have a hollow ring to it.
On the signature economic issues that both Republicans claim to hold dear, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee is now on record as having given his boss a grade of “F.”
“Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy),” Vance wrote in a direct message to an acquaintance in February of 2020, when then-President Trump was finishing his term in the White House.
Trump was elected in 2016 on a vow to make the American economy work for working families. But his presidency was the antithesis of what he promised as a candidate. Trump instead turned his energies toward serving the billionaire class. He supported massive tax cuts for the rich, filled top positions with corporate insiders and Wall Street flunkies, refused to back efforts to organize workers, and neglected efforts to keep factories in struggling communities open. As United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain says, “The bottom line is this, Donald Trump doesn’t care about working-class people, and he showed it when he was president.”
Republicans have tried to push back against such criticism. But, now, a cache of previously unreported direct messages from Vance—which the recipient of the messages turned over to The Washington Post—reveals that the Democrats, union leaders, and economists weren’t alone in ripping Trump’s record.
Vance, a millionaire venture capitalist who wrote a cynical book about his Appalachian roots, has, like Trump, long tried to present himself as a champion of working-class Americans. Once a stark critic of Trump who suggested that the billionaire real estate developer was a “reprehensible” human being who might be “America’s Hitler,” Vance changed his tune as he began to pursue a career in Republican politics.
The suddenly enthusiastic Republican claimed to have adjusted his viewpoint after being impressed by Trump’s presidency. “I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance signaled in 2021, as he was bidding for the Ohio US Senate seat that he eventually won in 2022 with Trump’s backing. “I think he was a good president, I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.”
Now, we learn that, in private, Vance remained a critic for nearly all of Trump’s presidency.
The Trump-Vance campaign now claims that the conflicting statements from the vice-presidential nominee are being misinterpreted. But it is hard to misread the senator from Ohio’s blunt assertion that Trump “thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism.”
The truth, as revealed by his own words, is that Vance was not nearly so impressed with Trump’s economic record as he claimed to be when he was trying to win the former president’s favor — a pursuit that would eventually be rewarded with a place on the Republican Party’s 2024 ticket. Indeed, the direct messages that the Post obtained reveal that Vance apparently rejected a chance to join the Trump administration.
“I’ve already turned down my appointment from the emperor,” wrote Vance, who referred to the former president as “Emperor Trump.”
Now, of course, Vance claims that Trump was a great emperor, er, president.
And, of course, Vance is lying.
John NicholsTwitterJohn Nichols is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation. He has written, cowritten, or edited over a dozen books on topics ranging from histories of American socialism and the Democratic Party to analyses of US and global media systems. His latest, cowritten with Senator Bernie Sanders, is the New York Times bestseller It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism.