On the 4th of July, 2016, The Atlantic published a rather brutal condemnation of Donald Trump. The then-Republican candidate, the opinion piece argued, “is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
The piece added, “What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution … He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.”
The author of the piece was a young man by the name of JD Vance — who, eight years later, would become Trump’s hapless running mate.
The Atlantic article was part of a larger case the Ohioan made at the time against the GOP’s then-candidate. Vance described himself as “a Never Trump guy” and said he didn’t vote for him in 2016. The same year, Vance wrote, “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.” By one account, Vance also sent a private message to his law school roommate in which he questioned whether Trump might be “America’s Hitler.”
In the years that followed, Vance — according to his version of events — underwent a political metamorphosis of sorts, making the transition from Trump critic to Trump sycophant. By way of an explanation, the Ohio Republican, while running for the U.S. Senate in 2021, said he changed his mind about the former president because Trump “actually honored his promises” while in the White House.
At least, that’s what Vance said publicly. In private, according to a new Washington Post report, Trump’s running mate apparently had a different perspective as recently as 2020.
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.”
According to the Post’s account, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Vance wrote in February 2020, “Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy).”
In a separate message sent four months later, the future senator added, “I think Trump will probably lose.” That, of course, was before Trump really did lose — in a race about which Vance has gladly peddled partisan conspiracy theories.
Around the same time, Vance also claimed via direct message that he’d “turned down” an undisclosed job offer from Trump, which, if true, would be entirely new information.
In case this weren’t quite enough, the Post also obtained a separate 2020 message in which Vance wrote that a government-run Medicare-for-all health care system “is maybe a net positive, maybe not (details matter).” In case this isn’t obvious, this isn’t even close to Republican orthodoxy on health care policy. Vance’s team didn’t exactly deny any of this, and the vice presidential nominee’s spokesperson confirmed to the newspaper that the senator remembers writing the messages. The spokesperson nevertheless complained that the Post did not disclose the name of the person Vance communicated with and said the comment about Trump failing to deliver on economic populism was the fault of “establishment Republicans” in Congress. Stepping back, a variety of political observers have wondered aloud whether Vance overhauled his perspective on Trump for the sake of political convenience — his political ambitions depended on a public change of heart — or because of a sincere conversion to MAGAism. If the Post’s reporting is accurate, it sheds new light on the probable answer.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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