J.D. Vance

James David Vance (born James Donald Bowman; August 2, 1984) is an American politician, author, and venture capitalist serving as the junior United States senator from Ohio since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he is the party's nominee for vice president in the 2024 election.

2016

 * 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. How's that for discouraging?
 * From a screenshot (February 2016), as cited in "Vance wondered whether Trump was 'America’s Hitler,' says former roommate sharing screenshot", Ohio Capital Journal (April 19, 2022)


 * Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.
 * Anger about the wars isn't the only reason voters support Mr. Trump. But his willingness to say what other G.O.P. candidates won't reflects what people like most about him: his complete break with the party elite. Because the last time Republican voters put a member of that elite in the White House, he sent their children on a bloody misadventure.
 * "Why Trump’s Antiwar Message Resonates with White America", The New York Times (April 4, 2016)


 * There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they'll realize it.
 * "Opioid of the Masses", The Atlantic (July 4, 2016)


 * 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.
 * I think that I'm going to vote third party because I can't stomach Trump. I think that he's noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place. And ultimately I just don't share Hillary Clinton's politics.
 * "'Hillbilly Elegy' Recalls A Childhood Where Poverty Was 'The Family Tradition'", NPR (August 17, 2016)


 * Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.
 * Tweet (October 2016), as cited in "Senate hopeful J.D. Vance apologizes for criticizing Trump as 'reprehensible' in deleted tweets", CNN (July 6, 2021)


 * Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us.
 * Tweet (October 2016), as cited in "Senate hopeful J.D. Vance apologizes for criticizing Trump as 'reprehensible' in deleted tweets", CNN (July 6, 2021)
 * Following The Washington Post account of the Donald Trump Access Hollywood tape on October 7, 2016


 * I think this election is really having a negative effect especially on the white working class. What it’s doing is giving people an excuse to point the finger at someone else, point the finger at Mexican immigrants, or Chinese trade or the Democratic elites or whatever else.
 * Said in an interview in October 2016, cited in "JD Vance was once 'never Trump'. Now he's his running mate", BBC (July 16, 2024)


 * My God what an idiot.
 * About Donald Trump, in a tweet in October 2016, cited in "‘My god what an idiot’: J.D. Vance gets whacked for past Trump comments", Politico (October 23, 2021)


 * Trump's biggest failure as a political leader is that he sees the worst in people and he encourages the worst in people.
 * Interview: "J.D. Vance on Why Life Might Get Worse for the White Working Class", Time (November 3, 2016)


 * My fear with Trump was always that he didn't have great solutions.
 * "The Daily 202: Why the author of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ is moving home to Ohio", The Washington Post (December 21, 2016)

Interview, Slate (August 25, 2016)

 * "Compassion, and Criticism, for the White Working Class", Slate (August 25, 2016)


 * Donald Trump is frankly dangerous.


 * My view is both that Trump is tapping into some racially ugly attitudes, but also that he is leading people to racially ugly attitudes.


 * When people read Breitbart every single day and convince themselves that Barack Obama is a foreign terrorist, that is not a problem of government. That is a problem of community failure, and we have to recognize that.


 * I don’t think that 60-70 percent of working-class white voters would have supported a Muslim ban before Donald Trump said something about a Muslim ban. I think that all you have to do is go back to the most recent Republican president and the way that George W. Bush encouraged us to think openly and supportively about our Muslim citizens. There is an element here where I think it’s not just that Trump is exploiting something but he’s also leading the white working class to a very dark place.

2017–2018

 * At a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams. For that, I'll miss him, and the example he set.
 * Opinion: "Barack Obama and Me", The New York Times (January 2, 2017)


 * In 4 years, I hope people remember that it was those of us who empathized with Trump's voters who fought him the most aggressively.
 * Tweet (March 2017), as cited in "Senate hopeful J.D. Vance apologizes for criticizing Trump as 'reprehensible' in deleted tweets", CNN (July 6, 2021)


 * I quickly realized that Trump's actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd.
 * "Trump speaks for those Bush betrayed", USA Today (February 16, 2018)

2021

 * And I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy.
 * On Fox News (July 5, 2021), as cited in "Senate hopeful J.D. Vance apologizes for criticizing Trump as 'reprehensible' in deleted tweets", CNN (July 6, 2021)


 * [W]e are effectively run in this country – via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs – by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.
 * You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.
 * From the interview by Tucker Carlson on Fox News (July 29, 2021), as cited in "AOC hits back at JD Vance after he calls her and Pete Buttigieg 'childless cat ladies'’ who shouldn’t govern because they don’t have kids", The Independent (July 30, 2021)
 * Vice President Kamala Harris has two step-children with her husband Doug Emhoff.


 * If we want a healthy ruling class in this country, we should invest more, we should vote more, we should support people who actually have kids, because those are the people who actually have a direct stake in the future of the country.
 * From the interview by Tucker Carlson on Fox News (July 29, 2021), as cited in Grace Panetta "JD Vance, Trump’s VP Pick, Has Opposed Abortion and LGBTQ+ Rights", Ms (July 15, 2024). Reprinted from The 19th.


 * [On his opposition to abortion in cases involving incest or rape] It's not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it's whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child's birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.
 * The question to me is really about the baby [...] We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but, above all, we want women and young boys in the womb to have a right to life.
 * In an interview on Spectrum News (Columbus, Ohio; September 22, 2021), as cited in "Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance argues against need for rape and incest exceptions in abortion laws", The Washington Post (September 24, 2021)


 * This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, "well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term."
 * And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I'm skeptical. But it really didn't work out for the kids of those marriages. [...] And that's what I think all of us should be honest about, is we've run this experiment in real time. And what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that's making our kids unhappy.
 * Speaking at Pacifica Christian High School, California (September 2021), as cited in "JD Vance Suggests People in ‘Violent’ Marriages Shouldn’t Get Divorced", Vice (July 25, 2022)


 * There's something comparable between abortion and slavery [...] and that while the people who obviously suffer the most are those subjected to it, I think it has this morally distorting effect on the entire society.
 * On the Catholic Currents podcast (October 20, 2021), as cited in "Black state lawmakers take aim at Vance over comments likening abortion to slavery", Ohio Capital Journal (July 28, 2022)
 * The date of the podcast is taken from the linked source.

2022–present

 * I don't really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.
 * On Steve Bannon's War Room podcast (February 19, 2022), as cited in "GOP Senate candidate JD Vance said he doesn't 'really care what happens to Ukraine'", Business Insider (February 21, 2022)


 * We didn't not serve in the Marine Corps to go and fight Vladimir Putin because he didn't believe in transgender rights [...] Which is what the U.S. State Department is saying is a major problem with Russia.
 * On Steve Bannon's War Room podcast (February 19, 2022), as cited in "Says Joe Biden risks war with Russia because Vladimir Putin doesn't 'believe in transgender rights'", Politifact (February 21, 2022)


 * If your worldview tells you that it's bad for women to become mothers but liberating for them to work 90 hours a week in a cubicle at the New York Times or Goldman Sachs, you've been had.
 * Tweet (June 26, 2022), as cited in "From Yale to Newsmax, Usha Vance Has Helped J.D. Vance Chart His Path", The New York Times (November 1, 2022)
 * The Supreme Court had ended Roe v. Wade two days earlier.


 * We have built a foreign policy of hectoring and moralizing and lecturing countries that don't want anything to do with this. The Chinese have a foreign policy of building roads and bridges and feeding poor people, and I think that we should pursue a foreign policy, a diplomacy, of respect and a foreign policy that is not rooted in moralizing; it is rooted in the national interests of this country.
 * FIRE GRANTS AND SAFETY ACT--Continued (April 19, 2023)


 * The United States has provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long.
 * The question each European nation needs to ask itself is this: are you prepared to defend yourself? And the question the US must ask is: if our European allies can't even defend themselves, are they allies, or clients?
 * In the US, justifications for the war often depend on a contemporary domino theory: unless we stop Putin in Ukraine, he won't stop there. But the time has come for Europe to stand on its own feet. That doesn't mean it has to stand alone, but it must not continue to use America as a crutch.
 * "Europe must stand on its own two feet on defence", Financial Times (February 19, 2024)
 * The Domino theory during the Cold War postulated that if one country came under the influence of Communism, its neighbors would follow. It was used as an argument in favor of American intervention.

And I was talking about, you know, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it's Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it's actually the UK, since Labour just took over.
 * I have to beat up on the UK – just one additional thing. I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about, you know, one of the big dangers in the world, of course, is nuclear proliferation, though, of course, the Biden administration doesn't care about it.
 * At the National Conservative Conference in Washington DC (July 11, 2024), as cited in Jessica Elgot "Trump’s running mate says UK could be ‘first Islamist country’ with nuclear weapons", The Guardian (July 16, 2024).
 * The 2024 United Kingdom general election was held on 4 July 2024 resulting in the Labour Party gaining a parliamentary majority.


 * [On attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East from forces connected to Iran] They have attacked, certain militia groups have attacked and I think we've done the right thing, a proportionate response. If they hit us, we have to hit them back but if you're talking about an attack on the Iranian mainland, that would be a significant escalation right now that would be a mistake.
 * On Face the Nation (CBS, October 29, 2023) "JD Vance says he would not support authorizing military action in Iran", The Hill (October 29, 2023)

"'America’s Hitler': All the Times J.D. Vance Trashed Trump" (2024)

 * "'America’s Hitler': All the Times J.D. Vance Trashed Trump", The Daily Beast (July 15, 2024).


 * I’m a Never-Trump guy.
 * I never liked him.