J.D. Vance may be Donald Trump's vice presidential pick in the 2024 election, but it seems there was a time when he wouldn't have even been willing to vote for him. One of Vance's former Yale Law School classmates, who is transgender, has come forward with more than 90 emails and text messages they exchanged with him before they had a falling out in 2021, and it paints quite a different picture of the man Vance is claiming to be today — especially when it comes to his feelings on his running mate.
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According to what Nelson told The New York Times, they were close friends with Vance and even attended his wedding, but in 2021, they stopped speaking after Vance said that he supported a ban on gender affirming care for minors in Arkansas. Now, Nelson is coming forward with dozens of text messages from Vance, with the majority of the conversations taking place from 2014 to 2017.
In multiple texts, Vance shared his distaste for Trump as a presidential candidate in the 2016 election — and that's putting it mildly. Trump was running against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"I’m counting my lucky stars that I live in a place where I don’t have to vote for her (because the margin will be so huge), because I know I could never support Trump if it really mattered," Vance, who was living in California at the time of the election, wrote.
In an email he sent in October 2016, Vance called Trump "a morally reprehensible human being."
In another exchange, he pointed out that Black people would suffer under Trump's presidency if he was elected, writing, "the more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer. I really believe that."
When Nelson wrote to Vance in December 2015 about a Muslim friend who said women no longer felt safe wearing hijabs in public, Vance once again shared his concerns.
"I'm obviously outraged at Trump's rhetoric, and I worry most of all about how welcome Muslims feel in their own country," he said, later going on to refer to Trump as a "demagogue" who was "willing to exploit the people who believe crazy s—."
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At one point in their conversations, Vance even said that he hated the police after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in October 2014.
"I hate the police. Given the number of negative experiences I've had in the past few years, I can't imagine what a Black guy goes through," he wrote.
This isn't the first time that Vance has been called out for opposing Trump in the past. In early July 2024, Rosie O'Donnell (among others) pointed to several different quotes and tweets that Vance has shared to point to his public condemnation of Trump, many of which have since been deleted.
One of the tweets said, "Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us."
In a statement to the New York Times, Vance spokesperson Luke Schroeder said:
"It’s unfortunate this individual chose to leak decade-old private conversations between friends to The New York Times. Senator Vance values his friendships with individuals across the political spectrum. He has been open about the fact that some of his views from a decade ago began to change after becoming a dad and starting a family, and he has thoroughly explained why he changed his mind on President Trump. Despite their disagreements, Senator Vance cares for Sofia and wishes Sofia the very best."
