WORLD NEWS FOR MONTENEGRO DIASPORA
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AUTHOR:M.J. GDNUS
J.D. Vance, the 40-year-old vice president of the United States, has come under fire in recent days after he verbally attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a meeting in the Oval Office in Washington on Friday. Vance accused Zelensky of lacking gratitude for the United States and called his visit a "propaganda tour."
The visit was abruptly cut short, and world leaders rushed to support the Ukrainian president.
But before he became Trump's right-hand man, Vance was one of the most vocal critics of the man he is running for.
"Trump could be an American Hitler"
As Vice reported in 2022, Vance wrote in a private message to a former Yale roommate in 2016 that he thought Trump could be "an American Hitler."
Private Facebook messages with Josh McLaurin, Vance’s roommate at Yale, reveal his responses when McLaurin contacted him to ask for his opinion on the 2016 Republican primary.
“I don’t think most people are very ideological, and Trump, while I find him disgusting, strikes a nerve. You should read David Frum’s piece in the Atlantic about the Republican insurgency. But I’m not surprised by Trump’s rise, and I think the entire party has only itself to blame,” Vance told McLaurin.
“We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-educated whites, and I’ve been saying for a long time that we have to offer those people SOMETHING (and, hell, maybe even broaden our appeal to working-class blacks in the process) or a demagogue will do it. We’re at that point now. Trump is the product of the party’s collective neglect.”
Vance then said that Trump is either like former US President Richard Nixon - or Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. "I go back and forth between thinking that Trump is a cynical jerk like Nixon, who wouldn't be so bad (and might even be useful) or that he is America's Hitler."
In public appearances, Vance has been equally critical. In a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose, he said that he was "never Trump" and that he "never liked him".
Moreover, in an op-ed for The New York Times, Vance wrote that Trump is "unfit for the highest office of government".
"Trump is unfit for our nation's highest office. But to those humbled by defeat, he promises that we will win again. To those disheartened by a government that is unable to take care of the people it sent to war, he promises to take care of our veterans. To those voters who are angry at the politicians who sent their children to fight, bleed and die in Iraq, he says what no major Republican politician has said in a decade - that the war was a terrible mistake imposed on the country by an incompetent president," Vance said.
The turn began in 2022.
Vance's turn toward supporting Trump began during his 2022 Senate campaign, and Trump's eldest son is responsible for everything.
According to Business Insider, the relationship between JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr. began in 2016 when Trump Jr. read Vance's book and was delighted with it. According to a source close to both, Trump Jr. was "absolutely crazy" about the book.
Their friendship and political alliance developed during Vance's 2022 Senate campaign. Trump Jr. then became one of Vance's most important advocates, lobbying his father to endorse him for the Senate and later to consider him as a potential vice presidential candidate.
A key moment in their rapprochement came 43 days before the 2022 Ohio Republican primary, when Trump Jr. publicly endorsed Vance on Twitter, despite Vance's earlier criticism of Donald Trump. The endorsement was unexpected and significantly helped Vance's campaign.
His recent verbal spat with Zelensky in the Oval Office is just the latest example of his aggressive approach to diplomacy, which, according to NBC, reflects Trump's new approach to international relations.
Vance's shift from critic to one of his closest aides has raised many questions about his political consistency. However, he himself claims that he changed his mind about Trump after seeing the results he achieved as president.
