JD Vance has admitted he once doubted Donald Trump’s abilities to be US president but insists he was won over by the policies and track record of a man he previously decried as “America’s Hitler” and “cultural heroin”.
The Republican vice-presidential nominee obliquely referred to his former hostility at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as he attempted to blame Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, for the policies of the Biden administration at the same time as accusing her of preparing to steal Trump’s ideological clothes.
His concession of past skepticism came after he accused Trump’s critics of wrongly forecasting his failure in office.
“The same people who screwed this country up for 30 years said President Donald Trump would fail. Remember that?” Vance said. “But I remember, I was myself – I didn’t fully believe in the promises of Donald Trump. He persuaded me because he did such a good job.”
He said Trump’s presidency was characterised by low petrol prices, affordable housing and rising wages, while inflation – which has become a political Achilles heel of Joe Biden’s presidency and, potentially, of Harris’s candidacy – was a non-issue.
Vance’s brief allusion to his anti-Trump past follows widespread accusations of flip-flopping on his previous views on the former president and 2024 Republican nominee. Trump unveiled Vance – a first-term senator from Ohio – as his running mate at last month’s party convention in Milwaukee.
The announcement drew widespread scrutiny of a litany of critical past comments by Vance, who described himself in 2016 as “a never Trump guy”, adding: “I never liked him.”
In his speech, Vance threw the flip-flop accusation back at Harris, who has been accused of ditching previous leftwing stances when she campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 2020. “I’m not sure that this is a woman who knows what she actually believes she is,” he said. “If you think about it, she’s just a cog in the wheel of a very corrupt system.”
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Going further, he accused Harris of trying to steal Trump’s most successful policies, including his advocacy of a crackdown on illegal immigration at the southern US border.
“I read a story this morning that her advisers are considering just copying all of Donald Trump’s policies,” Vance told supporters. “In fact, I’ve heard that for her debate in just a couple of weeks, she’s going to put on a navy suit, a long red tie, and adopt the slogan, Make America great again [Trump’s signature slogan].”