JD Vance: 5 things to know about Trump's VP pick
2. Once a staunch critic of Trump
Like many in the Republican Party, Vance expressed skepticism and disdain about Trump leading the Republican ticket in the 2016 presidential election. In July 2016, after Trump had clinched enough delegates to become the Republican nominee for president, Vance wrote an op-ed in The Atlantic titled “Opioid of the Masses.”
“Trump is cultural heroin,” he wrote. “He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
Vance continued: “What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing.
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“It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan,” Vance added. “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 great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals.”
“So long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning,” Vance lamented.
He further elaborated on his dislike of Trump in an appearance on the PBS program “Charlie Rose” shortly before the 2016 election as he reflected on the appeal of the then-candidate’s message to the white working class.
“I think Donald Trump is not the right candidate for this group of voters,” he said. “What’s going on and what Donald Trump has done is change the focus of the white working class from a sort of engaged, constructive politics to a politics of pointing the finger.”
As he noted that “there is a movement to sort of gloat over the fact that the elites were right about Donald Trump,” Vance declared “I’m a never Trump guy, I never liked him.” Vance detailed how “I sort of exist uneasily in the world of the elites and I exist uneasily in the world of the non-elites back home.”
“The media has sort of asked me to be this spokesman for the white working class voter who’s voting for Trump,” he explained. Vance once again identified himself as “somebody who doesn’t like Trump” while stressing, “I understand where Trump’s voters come from.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
