Vance privately said Trump 'failed to deliver' in 2020: He 'will probably lose'

27 September 2024

When now-Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) was competing with former Ohio Treasury Secretary Josh Mandel for the GOP nomination in Ohio's 2022 U.S. Senate race, he relentlessly hammered his opponent for being insufficiently MAGA and not pro-Donald Trump enough. Mandel said the same thing about the "Hillbilly Elegy" author, but Vance received Trump's endorsement, won the primary and went on to defeat former Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee, in the general election.

Now, in 2024's presidential race, Vance is Trump's running mate. When asked why he went from being a scathing critic of Trump in 2016 to a publicly enthusiastic supporter in 2020, Vance typically responds that he changed his mind after seeing Trump make good on the promises of his 2016 campaign.

But according to the Washington Post Peter Jamison, Vance was privately saying very different things about Trump in 2020.

Jamison, in an article published on September 27, reports that "previously unreported messages" Vance sent in 2020 show that he "harshly criticized his future running mate's record of governance and said Trump had not fulfilled his economic agenda."

In a February 2020 message that the Post has obtained, Vance wrote, "Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy)."

Later, in a June 2020 message, Vance predicted a victory for now-President Joe Biden and wrote, "I think Trump will probably lose."

In contrast, Vance now says that Congress shouldn't have certified the 2020 election results.

Jamison reports, "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 messages show that Vance still took a dim view of Trump's achievements long after 2016 — and after almost four years of observing how the man he now calls 'the best president of my lifetime' behaved in office."

Read Peter Jamison's full Washington Post article at this link (subscription required).

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