How often Trump’s vice presidential candidate JD Vance attacked him

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After months of speculation, Donald Trump has finally announced that JD Vance will be his running mate in this year’s presidential election to face Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

The former president, who narrowly escaped assassination on Saturday when a gunman opened fire at his rally in Pennsylvania, announced his vice presidential nominee on Monday as the Republican National Convention began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

For months, Trump has been holding virtually open casting calls to succeed Mike Pence as his running mate. At various points, Ohio Senator Vance, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik were reported to be in the running.

As the proceedings progressed, the candidates vied for Trump’s favor by speaking at his rallies, defending him on cable television and social media, and even appearing at his hush-money trial in New York to show their support.

Although he was able to outdo his rivals, Vance was not always loyal to Trump.

Here are all the cases in which he spoke out against his running mate:

JD Vance

In August 2016, during Trump’s first campaign for the White House, the Ohio senator told ABC News that he did not believe Trump offered “many solutions” to the problems of rural working class America.

In a separate interview with Charlie Rose that same summer, Vance – who became famous as the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy – said he was “never a Trump guy.”

He then went even further, telling Kentucky radio host Matt Jones that he thought the businessman was a “fraud.”

“I don’t think he really cares about people. I think he just recognizes there was a gap in the conversation,” he said.

In another interview in August of the same year, Vance said he might even be willing to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election to prevent a Trump victory.

“You know, I think if I feel like Trump has a really good chance of winning, I might have to hold my nose and vote for Hillary Clinton,” Vance admitted.

After his later entry into Republican politics, CNN reported on a series of Vance’s now-deleted tweets. In one of them, from the summer of 2017, he called Trump a “moral disaster” and said he had “no domestic agenda other than tax cuts.”

In another statement, he said: “I’m torn between the view that Trump could be a cynical asshole like (Richard) Nixon, who wouldn’t be so bad (and might even prove useful), and the view that he could be America’s Hitler.”

He later apologized for the tweets and tried to explain his conversion to Trumpism.

“Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump,” he told Fox News’ Bret Baier in June. “I didn’t think he would be a good president, Bret. He was a great president, and that’s one of the reasons I’m working so hard to get him a second term.”

“If you are wrong about something, you should change your mind and be honest with people.”

What the other candidates said about Trump

Marco Rubio

The fact that the Florida senator is converting to Trump so late is particularly surprising given the fierce disputes between him and the Republicans in the 2016 primaries, when they were bitter rivals in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination.

During their election campaigns, Trump regularly called Rubio “Little Marco” and accused him of sweating profusely.

Rubio, meanwhile, mocked Trump for his use of spray tan and bronzer.

At a campaign rally in February 2016, Rubio called Trump a “con artist” and said, “He runs with the idea that he’s fighting for the little people. But he’s spent his entire career making life miserable for the little people.”

“If you have all your friends thinking about voting for Donald Trump, don’t let your friends vote for fraudsters.”

At another rally that same month, Rubio said: “He always calls me ‘Little Marco.’ He’s taller than me, about 6’6″, so I don’t understand why he has the hands of someone who’s 5’2 – and you know what they say about men with small hands…”

When Rubio dropped out of the race in March of this year, he told CNN: “In the years to come, many people on the right, in the media and among voters in general are going to have to explain and justify how they fell into the trap of supporting Donald Trump.”

The Floridian has since rejected the attacks on Trump, claiming: “It was an election campaign.”

Doug Burgum

The governor of North Dakota was not as critical of Trump as some of the other favorites, but once said he would never do business with him.

When asked by NBC News in July 2023, Burgum replied, “I don’t think so. I just think it’s important that you’re judged by the society you move in.”

Burgum has since retracted his criticism, saying: “I wish every American could see him the way Kathryn (Burgum, his wife) and I have gotten to know him over the last six months, because this guy is tireless, he’s dedicated, he’s smart, he’s funny. He’s not at all like he’s portrayed in the press.”

“If you asked me the same question today, I would say: I would definitely do business with him.”

Tim Scott

The South Carolina senator has suspended his own campaign for the Republican nomination and has now emerged as one of Trump’s most staunch supporters.

However, he has not always been so accommodating, once admitting to CNN that Trump is sometimes “racially insensitive.”

In August 2017 – a month after the deadly violence at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia – Scott criticized Trump’s stance toward the far right, telling NPR, “What we want to see from our president is clarity and moral authority. And that moral authority is compromised… There’s no doubt about that.”

The following July, he told CNN that he had difficult conversations with the then-president about race.

“Yes, they are tough,” the senator said of these discussions. “They are painful. It is uncomfortable to sit in the Oval Office and talk to the president about things you completely disagree about.”

He added: “He hasn’t changed his perspective. I certainly can’t change my perspective. Mine is shaped by my experience.”

Later, as Trump’s rival for the 2024 nomination, he criticized the frontrunner for not supporting a federal abortion ban, telling NBC’s Meet the press: “President Trump said he would negotiate with the Democrats and move away from what I believe is the right thing to do, which is a 15-week deadline at the federal level.”