Prior to the 2020 election, several years before running for a Senate seat representing Ohio, now-Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) engaged in private messaging where he complained that Donald Trump "fail to deliver" on his policies and correctly predicted that he would lose to now-President Joe Biden.
According to a report from the Washington Post's Peter Jamison, Vance contacted a writer he admired via Twitter, now known as X, and exchanged pleasantries and engaged in banter about politics where he jokingly agreed that the man he is running with in 2024 had been acting like an "emperor."
As Jamison notes in his report, the recipient of the messages is being kept anonymous to avoid retaliation after they shared those conversations with the Post.
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According to the news report, "In the direct messages — sent during Trump’s final year in office to an acquaintance over the social media platform then known as Twitter — Vance harshly criticized his future running mate’s record of governance and said Trump had not fulfilled his economic agenda."
In particular, Vance wrote in February of 2020, “Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy)," before later adding in a June message, "I think Trump will probably lose.”
According to the WaPo's Jamison, "The critical messages, shared with The Post by their recipient on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about retaliation, cast doubt on Vance’s oft-recited account of how and when he embraced Trumpism. They were written years after Vance’s previously reported remarks attacking Trump, such as his statements in 2016 that Trump was 'reprehensible,' 'cultural heroin' and possibly 'America’s Hitler.'"
The report went on to note that a spokesperson for Vance did not deny the VP candidate wrote the messages and then insisted they were, "not meant as a criticism of the former president, but of 'establishment Republicans who thwarted much of Trump’s populist economic agenda to increase tariffs and boost domestic manufacturing in Congress.'"
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