VANCE SAID IT BEST

J.D. Vance left behind far more than a stray insult about Donald Trump. He left years of statements, interviews, essays, tweets, emails, direct messages, and recorded appearances that described Trump in language severe enough to read now like an indictment written by the man who later became his vice president. The record began before the 2016 Republican nomination had even been settled. In December 2015, writing privately to his Yale Law School classmate Sofia Nelson, Vance said, “If he would just tone down the racism, I would literally be his biggest supporter.”

On December 9, 2015, the language sharpened. Vance wrote, “I’m obviously outraged at Trump’s rhetoric, and I worry most of all about how welcome Muslim citizens feel in their own country.” He continued, “And there have always been demagogues willing to exploit the people who believe crazy shit.” Then he added, “What seems different to me is that the Republican Party offers nothing that’s as attractive as the demagogue.” These were private statements, later released by Nelson, and they established the vocabulary Vance himself was already using around Trump: racism, demagoguery, fear, and political exploitation.

By February 18, 2016, Vance had carried the criticism into print. In a USA Today column, he wrote, “Trump’s actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd.” That was not a complaint about presentation. Vance had assigned a moral judgment to Trump's actual proposals.

That same month, in a private Facebook message to former Yale roommate Josh McLaurin, Vance wrote, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” The complete sentence is harsher than the two-word fragment that usually survives in political montages. Vance was weighing two models for Trump: a cynical Nixon-like operator or something vastly darker.

By April 2016, Vance put the question of presidential fitness into one sentence in a New York Times opinion essay: “Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.” There was no ambiguity in the judgment. Vance had moved from criticizing Trump's rhetoric and policies to declaring him unfit to be president.

On July 1, 2016, during an MSNBC Morning Joe appearance, Vance compared Trump's political appeal to narcotic relief: “What Trump is, is just another opioid.” He followed it with the consequence of that comparison: “At the end of the day, the problems are still going to be there.” Vance's argument was that Trump could soothe anger while leaving the conditions beneath it untouched.

Three days later, Vance expanded the metaphor in his Atlantic essay “Opioid of the Masses.” He wrote, “Trump is cultural heroin.” He continued, “He makes some feel better for a bit.” Then came the prediction: “But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.” Vance pushed the metaphor even harder: “Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” He also attacked the substance behind the promises: “He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t.” This was a sustained written case that Trump's political strength rested on emotional intoxication without a workable cure.

During a summer 2016 appearance on The Matt Jones Podcast, host Matt Jones called Trump a fraud who was exploiting people. Vance responded, “I do too.” He continued, “I agree with you on Trump, because I don’t think that he’s the person.” Then he supplied his own judgment: “I don’t think he actually cares about folks.” Precision matters here. The exact “fraud” sentence belonged to Jones, but Vance explicitly agreed with it and immediately questioned whether Trump cared about the people whose anger and loyalty were fueling his campaign.

On August 17, 2016, Vance told Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air what that judgment meant at the ballot box. “My current plan is to vote either third party or, as I joked to my wife, I might write in my dog because that’s about as good as it seems.” He even contemplated voting for Trump's Democratic opponent: “But, you know, I think there’s a chance, if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, that I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton.” He then returned to his likely choice: “But I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump.” His explanation followed: “I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”

In another recorded 2016 appearance that later resurfaced, Vance reduced his assessment to candidate and character: “Trump is a really bad candidate and frankly, I think he’s a really bad person.” In a separate recorded interview from that year, he said, “I don’t know who I’m going to vote for.” Then he made one option definite: “I’m definitely not going to vote for Trump because I think that he’s projecting very complex problems onto simple villains.” Vance's criticism was not confined to Trump's manners. He accused him of turning complicated problems into campaigns against simplified enemies.

The private Nelson correspondence became even more severe as Election Day approached. On September 22, 2016, Vance wrote, “The more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer.” He immediately emphasized the sincerity of the claim: “I really believe that.” Five days later, on September 27, he said publicly on PBS NewsHour, “There are definitely -- there is definitely an element of Donald Trump’s support that has its basis in racism or xenophobia.” He also distinguished that element from the economic distress experienced by many Trump voters, but he still put racism and xenophobia squarely inside his description of Trump's coalition.

By October 2016, Vance’s private language about Trump had become brutal. He wrote, “He’s such a fucking disaster.” Then, “He’s just a bad man.” Then, as a separate punctuated utterance, “A morally reprehensible human being.” None of those lines required interpretation to become damaging. They were Vance's own character judgments.

After the Access Hollywood recording became public, Vance turned his criticism toward Christians who defended Trump. In a since-deleted tweet, he wrote, “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man.” He closed with, “Lord help us.” The rebuke was religious as well as political. Vance treated apologetics for Trump as conduct other people were watching and judging.

In another deleted October tweet about Trump, Vance wrote, “My god what an idiot.” On October 9, he made the personal consequences of Trump's campaign explicit: “Trump makes people I care about afraid.” He specified whom he meant: “Immigrants, Muslims, etc.” His conclusion was direct: “Because of this I find him reprehensible.” He ended in religious terms again: “God wants better of us.”

During an October 2016 MSNBC Hardball appearance discussing a sexual-misconduct allegation against Trump, Vance attacked Trump's credibility through sarcasm. “At the end of the day, do you believe Donald Trump, who always tells the truth?” Then he punctured the line himself: “Just kidding.” He followed it with, “Or do you believe that woman on the tape?” The exchange did not formally adjudicate the allegation. It did something else that is difficult to soften: Vance publicly treated the idea of Trump as reliably truthful as a joke.

On October 18, 2016, Vance stated his political identity plainly in a Charlie Rose interview: “I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy.” He followed it with, “I never liked him.” He also explained the political distance between his understanding of Trump voters and his view of Trump himself: “But I also don’t like Trump himself, and that made me realize that maybe I’m not quite part of either world totally.” By that point, the record contained moral condemnation, policy condemnation, warnings about racism and xenophobia, concern for immigrants and Muslims, skepticism about Trump's honesty, rejection of his fitness for office, and an explicit refusal to join him politically.

Trump won the election anyway. Vance's criticism survived the result. On November 9, 2016, the day after the election, Vance said on CNN, “My fear with Trump was always that he didn’t have great solutions.” The election had changed Trump's status. It had not erased the judgment Vance had spent the year documenting.

In March 2017, after Trump had taken office, Vance posted a since-deleted tweet that placed himself among people actively opposing the new president: “In 4 years, I hope people remember that it was those of us who empathized with Trump’s voters who fought him most aggressively.” The sentence demolished any attempt to confine his opposition to a bruising Republican primary. He was writing about President Trump, after the inauguration, and describing himself among those who intended to fight him aggressively.

On June 22, 2017, Vance's private language remained just as severe. Discussing the Republican health-care bill and a possible populist political lane, he wrote, “Can you imagine running as an anti-AHCA populist who thinks Trump is a moral disaster.” He followed it with, “Where’s my constituency?” Trump was no longer merely the candidate Vance feared might govern badly. Vance was privately describing the sitting president as a moral disaster.

The record reached deep into Trump's actual presidency. In February 2020, after roughly three years of watching the administration govern, Vance wrote privately, “Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy).” That sentence is especially devastating to any sanitized version of the timeline because it judged Trump's performance after years in office. Vance was no longer predicting failure. He was describing what he believed had already failed.

In June 2020, Vance added one final judgment in the recoverable anti-Trump chronology: “I think Trump will probably lose.” It was an electoral prediction rather than another moral condemnation, but it belonged to the same surviving record of skepticism. The criticism had lasted from the opening months of Trump's rise through the closing year of his first term.

That leaves 49 documented statements in the recoverable record. The language ranged from racism, xenophobia, demagoguery, fear, dishonesty, moral failure, and presidential unfitness to opioids, heroin, simple villains, a bad man, a morally reprehensible human being, a moral disaster, and a governing record Vance said had thoroughly failed to deliver on economic populism. Some statements were public. Some were private. Some were deleted later. Some were written carefully for publication. Others were spoken on television or radio. Their forms differed. Their direction did not.

Reducing this record to a youthful insult or a stray “Never Trump” phase requires stripping away the record itself. Vance did not merely say that he disliked Donald Trump. He built a vocabulary for what he believed Trump was doing, whom he believed Trump was harming, how he believed Trump manipulated his supporters, why he believed Trump was unfit for office, and why he believed Christians should stop apologizing for him. He carried that judgment past Election Day, past inauguration, and into Trump's presidency. He said it best.