Sen. JD Vance, who went from Trump critic to VP pick, said a dinner with CEOs in 2018 had him rethinking his politics.
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A month before former President Donald Trump tapped Sen. JD Vance to be his running mate, the Ohio Republican — and Trump-critic-turned-loyalist — cited a 2018 dinner meeting with CEOs as a turning point in his political evolution.
In an interview with The New York Times published in June, Vance explained a bit about how he came around to Trump and how his politics evolved.
Vance told the outlet that in 2018, he was invited to an event hosted by the Business Roundtable, a nonprofit lobbyist group made up of CEOs. It had been about two years since Vance entered the national stage when his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy" — which offered an explanation for the embrace of Trump-like views among the white working class — shot to the top of The New York Times bestseller list.
Vance said he was seated next to a CEO of a major hotel chain at dinner whom he described as a "caricature of a business executive, complaining about how he was forced to pay his workers higher wages."
The CEO was complaining about the labor market and how Trump's actions at the border had impacted his relationship with his employees.
Vance told the Times the CEO then turned to him and said, "Well, you understand this as well as anybody. These people just need to get off their asses, come to work and do their job. And now, because we can't hire immigrants, or as many immigrants, we've got to hire these people at higher wages."
When recounting the moment to the Times, Vance said, "The fact that this guy saw me as sympathetic to his problem, and not the problem of the workers, made me realize that I'm on a train that has its own momentum, and I have to get off this train, or I'm going to wake up in 10 years and really hate everything that I've become."
"And so I decided to get off that train, and I felt like the only way that I could do that was, in some ways, alienating and offending people who liked my book," he continued.
Vance has expressed support for the government having a more hands-on role in the economy than most Republicans.
Vance has previously supported raising corporate taxes and the minimum wage and was critical of "right-to-work" policies favored by Republicans that can negatively impact unions. He has also cosponsored a bill to end tax-free mergers for big corporations.
"The emergence of Trump has caused a populist, aggressive side of the GOP to split off on economics, and Vance is one of the leaders of that populist caucus," Brian Riedl at the center-right Manhattan Institute told the Post. "Trump is much more economically populist, anti-free trade than traditional Republicans, and Vance has pushed hard to support this new populist economics in the GOP."
The outlet reported that some business leaders and major GOP donors were against Trump picking Vance as a running mate.
The Post also noted that some of Vance's prior economic positions appear to be at odds with Trump, whose policies he will presumably adopt as his running mate. Trump's broad policy positions on the economy include deregulation, further cutting corporate tax rates, and a smaller federal government.
Before Vance's shift toward Trump, he was an outspoken critic of him. During his first run for president, Vance was critical of the then-candidate in interviews and tweets. He called Trump "reprehensible," said he could be "America's Hitler," and referred to himself as a never Trumper.
But in 2021, when campaigning for the US Senate seat in Ohio, Vance came out in support of Trump and said he had been wrong about the president. The evolution baffled many people who were fans of Vance's book.
His embrace of Trump has also coincided with winning his race and a growing fan base on the right — and potentially the vice presidency.
