NYT: JD Vance once said he hated the police and condemned Trump

• The New York Times has gained access to old email exchanges between JD Vance and his former Yale classmate.
• The emails show an ideologically different Vance than before he supported Donald Trump.
• Vance once expressed his hatred of the police and condemned Republicans’ embrace of Trump.

Years before JD Vance embraced Donald Trump and became his running mate, the Ohio senator seemed to hold views of a different ideological bent, according to an email exchange with the politician’s former Yale University classmate published by the New York Times.

The emails show that Vance, who had not yet announced his Senate bid, was writing to classmate Sofia Nelson, a public defender from Detroit. Nelson, who is also transgender, told the Times that the two had an argument after Vance said he supported a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Arkansas, a law that was struck down by a federal judge last year.

The correspondence between Nelson and Vance dates mostly between 2014 and 2017, the Times reported.

In it, Vance condemned Republicans’ support of Trump, called the former president a “morally reprehensible human being” and expressed his disappointment with law enforcement following the killing of 18-year-old black man Michael Brown in 2014.

“I love the body cam movement and anything that puts police officers back in the mindset of service and protection rather than control and coercion,” Vance wrote to Nelson in 2014, the Times reported. “I hate the police. Given the many negative experiences I’ve had over the past few years, I can’t imagine what a black man goes through.”

Luke Schroeder, a spokesman for Vance, said in a statement to Business Insider, which was also seen by the Times, that it was “regrettable” that Nelson had “leaked 10-year-old private conversations between friends to The New York Times.”

“Senator Vance values ​​his friendships with people across the political spectrum. He has spoken openly about how some of his views from ten years ago have changed since becoming a father and starting a family, and he has explained in detail why he changed his mind about President Trump,” Schroeder told BI. “Despite their differences, Senator Vance cares about Sofia and wishes her the very best.”

Other emails published by the Times provide further evidence of Vance’s well-known transformation from a “Never Trumper” to a MAGA loyalist.

In 2015, Vance wrote that he was “obviously outraged by Trump’s rhetoric” and compared him to a demagogue “willing to take advantage of people who believe crazy shit.”

He also wrote in 2016: “The more white people feel like they want to vote for Trump, the more black people will suffer.”

“I really believe that,” he added.

Since Vance was selected as Trump’s running mate in July, the senator’s old comments about the former president have resurfaced online – some of which were used by Kamala Harris’ campaign to undermine Trump’s candidacy.

“Trump is a really bad candidate and frankly I think he’s a really bad person,” Vance can be heard saying in a 2016 recording shared by Harris’ campaign.

In a text message to another former Yale classmate in 2016, Vance wondered if Trump could be “America’s Hitler.”

Years later, as he launched his 2021 Senate campaign, Vance’s tone toward Trump changed radically.

The then-Senate candidate began repeating Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud and told Fox News in July 2021 that he regretted criticizing Trump.

“Like many others, I criticized Trump back in 2016,” he told Fox News. “And I ask people not to judge me for what I said in 2016, because I have been very forthright in saying that I said those critical things, and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy.”

In April 2022, Trump endorsed Vance for the Senate.

“JD is kissing my ass, he wants my support,” Trump said at a rally in Ohio in 2022 in response to a Times article about GOP candidates, including Vance, being hesitant to invite the former president to rallies. “Yeah, he said some bad things about me, but that was before he knew me, and then he fell in love with me.”