Now that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is the official vice presidential running mate for former President Donald Trump, much of the focus turns to one of his most awkward flaws as a candidate: his lengthy history of attacking and condemning Trump.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow provided a number of clips of Vance, a former venture capitalist who was elected to the Senate in 2022 on a hard MAGA platform, going after the former president, and proclaiming him unfit for office.
In one such segment, Vance explained in 2016 he was seriously considering a vote for Hillary Clinton, but if not would vote third party or "write in my dog" rather than back Trump for president.
"In addition to that clip you saw of him ... [he] said he believes a woman when she testified that she was sexually assaulted by Trump. He believed her, not Trump," said Maddow. "He also liked a tweet around the same time saying Trump had committed serial sexual assault. Another one just calling Trump a 'monster.' He's called Trump a 'moral disaster.' He's called him, 'cultural heroin.' He's called him 'regrettable.' He's also called him 'an idiot.' J.D. Vance is a good writer. He wrote a very good New York Times op-ed that Trump is 'unfit for our nation's highest office.' He wrote to his former roommate, 'I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon, or that he is America's Hitler.' How is that for discouraging?"
Flash forward to today, Maddow said, and "after ... the assassination attempt against Trump that bloodied the former president, that killed a man, that wounded two others, J.D. Vance, now a U.S. senator, posted online that it was Democrats' criticism of Trump as anti-democratic that in his words, led directly to the assassination attempt against Trump."
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And there's a clear reason why he was willing to prostrate himself to do that, she added.
"Political observers went on the record saying that if J.D. Vance was still on the shortlist to be considered to be Trump's running mate," all of his former attacks on Trump "surely would have disqualified him. But he says that Democrats' criticism led directly to the assassination attempt, despite the fact that he himself called Trump 'America's Hitler'" — and it secures him a chance at the vice presidency.
Watch the video below or at the link here.
Rachel Maddow lists the ways J.D. Vance attacked Trump www.youtube.com
