Awkward moment Fox News host confronts Trump VP contender J.D. Vance over past tweets comparing the candidate to Hitler
- Bret Baier asked him if he called Trump “harmful and reprehensible.”
- Trump’s VP contender also compared him to Hitler and questioned his morality
Senator JD Vance says he was wrong about Donald Trump when he called him “reprehensible” and compared him to Hitler.
The Ohio senator faced a series of his most incendiary tweets criticizing Trump when Trump was running for the White House and JD Vance was a “never Trumper.”
Many of the digs already came to light during Vance’s 2022 run for Senate, but they are gaining new attention now that he is on Trump’s list of potential vice presidential running mates.
“You know, Senator, this is an evolution. And I know you’ve been asked about this before about past comments you’ve made about Donald Trump,” Fox News host Bret Baier asked Vance before reading some of his most startling remarks.
‘I’m a never-Trump guy’; ‘never liked him’; ‘terrible candidate’; ‘idiot if you voted for him’; ‘could be America’s Hitler’; ‘maybe a cynical bastard’; ‘cultural heroin’; “harmful and reprehensible,” Baier said. The comments appeared in an image on the network broadcast, when the host asked how Vance would handle his own past criticism if he were Trump’s running mate.
“Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump,” said Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who has compared Donald Trump to Hitler and called him a moral disaster but who is now on Trump’s shortlist for vice presidential running to become mate.
“Yes, I think the simple answer is that you have to respect the American people enough to get on the same page with them,” he said. responded. “Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump. I didn’t think he’d be a good president, Bret. He was a great president. And it’s one of the reasons I’m working so hard to make sure he gets a second term.”
He then tried to turn his own criticism of Trump into a parable about change, rather than what critics called expedient.
“I think that – if you’re wrong about something – you have to change your mind and be honest with people about that fact,” he said.
Those weren’t the only things the populist “Hillbilly Elegy” author said about Trump. And it was more than a criticism of his budget plans.
Vance called Trump a “moral disaster” in 2017, according to Twitter direct messages unearthed by CNN. He said Trump “had no domestic policy agenda other than tax cuts.”
Host Bret Baier played some of Vance’s biggest hits on Trump. ‘I’m a never-Trump guy’; ‘never liked him’; ‘terrible candidate’; ‘idiot if you voted for him’; ‘could be America’s Hitler’; ‘maybe a cynical bastard’; ‘cultural heroin’; “harmful and reprehensible,” said the host, forcing his guest to respond
“If you’re wrong about something, you have to change your mind and be honest with people about that fact,” Vance said
He also agreed with a host who called Trump a “total fraud,” saying, “I don’t think he really cares about people.” I think he just recognizes that there was a gap in the conversation, and that gap is that people from these regions of the country feel ignored.”
“I’m a Never Trump guy. I never liked him,” he told interviewer Charlie Rose in 2016.
He also “liked” tweets saying Trump had committed “serial sexual assault,” and a tweet calling him “one of the most hated, mean, stupid celebs in the US.” CNN reported.
His Yale Law School classmate shared one screenshot in 2022 from Vance ruminating: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical bastard like Nixon who wouldn’t be so bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?’