Vance called Trump ‘unfit’ for office before 2022 Senate run
The Atlantic on Saturday republished a roughly 10-year-old essay in which Vice President JD Vance, then a private citizen, described Donald Trump’s political appeal as “cultural heroin” and said his supporters would eventually realize he was not the answer to their problems. The magazine, in an editor’s note accompanying the July 4 republication, said it was running the essay on the 10th anniversary of its original publication and the U.S. semiquincentennial “so that our readers can judge for themselves how well his assessment [of Trump] … has stood the test of time.”
In the essay, Vance argued that many Americans turned to Trump as a “pain reliever” amid a social crisis involving mounting distrust in government and economic decline. “To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution,” Vance wrote. “He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” He predicted that Trump “makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
Before entering politics, Vance worked at Mithril Capital Management, Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, and had just published “Hillbilly Elegy,” a bestselling memoir of his Rust Belt upbringing. According to the Guardian, Vance described himself as a “never Trump guy” and called Trump “America’s Hitler” and “unfit” for office. He said Trump was “leading the white working class to a very dark place.”
Vance reversed course when he ran for the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022 and won with Trump’s endorsement. He went on to become Trump’s running mate for the 2024 presidential campaign, which Trump won. Vance has said he changed his mind after witnessing the results of Trump’s policies before his first term ended. Now a ferocious defender of the president, according to the Guardian, Vance is widely expected to seek the presidency in 2028, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The republication comes as Trump’s approval ratings remain near historic lows, the Guardian reported, amid his mass deportation campaign, failure to reduce prices as promised, and involvement in a war in Iran alongside Israel after pledging to avoid new wars. On Saturday, Trump marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with a speech declaring a “golden age,” one day after attacking what he called the U.S.’s brewing “communist menace” as a democratic socialist political movement gains ground ahead of November’s midterm elections, building on Zohran Mamdani’s becoming New York City mayor in January.
David Frum, a senior Atlantic editor who knew Vance early in his political career, told NPR in 2024 that the limits politicians set for themselves are telling. “I think he walked across it,” Frum said of Vance. “I think he told us in advance what it was. It was Donald Trump, and he walked across it.”