When Donald Trump announced that his running mate would be JD Vance, media outlets were quick to point out that the Ohio Senator had been fervently opposed to the former president, going as far as to label the tycoon "a moral disaster" and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
"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," Vance wrote in a message to a friend in 2016. "How's that for discouraging?"
But, as time progressed and Vance elevated his profile all the way to the vice presidential candidacy, he moved on to embrace Trump and echo much of his anti-immigrant rhetoric.
However, Vance's past positions are still coming back to haunting, with CNN now reporting this week that, back in 2012 when he was a law student at Yale, he wrote a critical article about the Republican Party's stance on immigration and its approach to minorities. In it, he went as far as to accuse the GOP of alienating key demographics such as Blacks, Latinos, and young voters, describing the party as "openly hostile to non-whites."
The article was brought to light by Brad Nelson, one of Vance's college professors, who revealed to CNN that the vice-presidential candidate asked him to delete the article in question in 2016 so that he could have an easier time getting a job in Republican politics. The article, titled "A Blueprint for the GOP," remains viewable on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.
"A significant part of Republican immigration policy centers on the possibility of deporting 12 million people (or 'self-deporting' them)," Vance wrote. "Think about it: we conservatives (rightly) mistrust the government to efficiently administer business loans and regulate our food supply, yet we allegedly believe that it can deport millions of unregistered aliens. The notion fails to pass the laugh test. The same can be said for too much of the party's platform."
Vance has completely changed his stance since. Just last month he said about Trump's take on the issue:
"I think it's interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let's start with 1 million. That's where Kamala Harris failed. And then we can go from there,"
He has also said over the past weeks that illegal immigration creates higher crime rates and was the main proponent of the now infamous and false theory of Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
In the 2012 article, Vance also argued that the Republican Party would have problems if it did not adjust for the country's changing demographics. He criticized the GOP's adherence to supply-side economics, comparing it to supporting outdated policies like Soviet containment. "Republicans lose minority voters for simple and obvious reasons: their policy proposals are tired, unoriginal, or openly hostile to non-whites," Vance wrote.
On Sunday, Vance defended his shift in stance on NBC's Meet the Press, citing Trump's attention to what he called the "public health disaster" in Springfield, Ohio, which he claimed had been ignored by the media and political opponents. Vance pointed to Trump's focus on such issues as a reason for his change from a critic to a supporter.
"The reason that I changed my mind on Donald Trump is actually perfectly highlighted by what's going on in Springfield. Because the media and the Kamala Harris campaign, they've been calling the residents of Springfield racist, they've been lying about them. They've been saying that they make up these reports of migrants eating geese, and they completely ignore the public health disaster that is unfolding in Springfield at this very minute. You know who hasn't ignored it? Donald Trump."
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