JD Vance's Beloved Fuhrer
I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler.— J.D. Vance
In April 2022, Josh McLaurin, JD Vance’s former Yale roommate and then a Georgia state representative, released screenshots of their 2016 conversation. Vance said, "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler."
Messages released in 2024 showed Vance remained dissatisfied with Trump three years into his first term. He predicted Joe Biden would win the election, saying Trump “so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism.”
Recently, when asked whether Biden actually won that election, Vance responded that he "is focused on the future".
Vance did not dispute the screenshots. During the 2024 Trump-Vance campaign, he told the New York Times he had been too focused “on the stylistic element of Trump” and “completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration.” On other occasions, Vance said he had changed his mind or that he had “believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of [Trump’s] record.” He did not identify those stories.
In 2025, he accused politicians including Gavin Newsom of encouraging political violence by “saying these people are part of an authoritarian government.” Like Vance, Newsom has compared Trump to Hitler.