Fox News host Bret Baier on Tuesday listed off some of the harshest things that Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) has said about Donald Trump, and asked the senator about his supposed “evolution” on the former president.
Vance, reportedly a contender to be Trump’s 2024 vice presidential pick, was once fiercely critical of the former president, but reinvented himself as a staunch Trump ally, ultimately nabbing Trump’s endorsement during his 2022 Senate campaign.
“You’ve said: ‘I’m a never-Trump guy,’ ‘never liked him,’ ‘terrible candidate,’ ‘idiot if you voted for him,’ ‘might be America’s Hitler,’ ‘might be a cynical a-hole,’ ‘cultural heroin,’ ‘noxious’ and ‘reprehensible,’” Baier pointed out.
Baier told Vance that “the left” could seize on those comments, “and they’re probably gonna be put in ads, should you be chosen as the VP pick.”
“How do you deal with them now?” he asked.
“Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump,” Vance said. “I didn’t think he was gonna be a good president, Bret. He was a great president. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m working so hard to make sure he gets a second term.”
Vance has previously expressed similar sentiments when asked about his flip-flop.
During his Senate run, super PACs supporting his opponent invested in attack ads that featured Vance’s past anti-Trump remarks, including since-deleted tweets from 2016 calling Trump an “idiot” and “reprehensible.”
Vance’s former college roommate, then-Georgia state Rep. Josh McLaurin (D), also came forward during the campaign with a screenshot of a 2016 message he received from Vance that described Trump as either a “cynical asshole” or “America’s Hitler.”
McLaurin said he shared the message to demonstrate “the magnitude of this guy’s bad faith.”
Vance was one of the Republican lawmakers who flocked to Trump’s criminal trial last month to show fealty as the former president fought felony charges of falsifying business records to conceal a 2016 hush money payment. Trump was ultimately found guilty on all counts.