That was nearly a decade ago, when Trump’s political rise coincided with Vance’s rise as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir of growing up poor in Ohio.
 "From skeptic to enthusiast: Senator J.D. Vance's dramatic turn to Trump")
Donald Trump, Trump, J.D. Vance, Vance (Photo: Reuters) NYT
Simon J. Levine
July 16
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Sen. J.D. Vance, who on Monday joined former President Donald J. Trump’s 2024 presidential endorsement, once described the new vice presidential nominee as a kind of “cultural heroine” and privately feared that Trump would become “an American Hitler.”
That was nearly a decade ago, when Trump’s political rise coincided with Vance’s rise as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir about his impoverished childhood in Ohio.
“This election season, many Americans seem to be reaching for a new painkiller,” Vance wrote in a 2016 Atlantic article called “Opioids for the Masses,” adding, “It enters not the lungs or veins, but the eyes and ears, and into the mind: Donald Trump.”
Times change.
By 2018, Mr. Vance had softened, as he believed that Mr. Trump, however crude, was listening to the grievances of the people he wrote about. When Mr. Vance ran for the Ohio Senate in 2022, he found the racially game-changing endorsement of Mr. Trump, who six years earlier had called himself a “Never Trumper.”
“Trump’s actual policy proposals range from the immoral to the absurd,” Vance wrote in a 2016 USA Today op-ed. That same year, he told NPR that Trump was the only presidential candidate to try to tap into rural resentment, but that he was “leading the white working class into a very dark place.”
Vance supported Trump’s reelection in 2020 and announced his candidacy for the Ohio Senate the following year. He has apologized for calling Trump “reprehensible” and deleted numerous critical social media posts.
“I regret being wrong about the guy,” he told Fox News in July 2021.
After Trump’s 2020 loss, Vance made unfounded claims of widespread election fraud. “I’m sure there were people who voted fraud on a massive scale,” he told a Youngstown, Ohio, newspaper, and has repeatedly maintained the election was not free and fair.
After Vance endorsed Trump, the former president threw his precious support in the face: “Vance may have said some not-so-nice things about me in the past, but I now understand,” Trump said in his endorsement.
Vance responded on Twitter, saying he was “deeply honored” and that he supported Trump’s administration policies. “He’s been and always will be a great fighter for hardworking Americans in the White House,” he wrote.
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