JD Vance was reminded Wednesday that he had once referred to Donald Trump as “America’s Hitler” after the vice president blamed Democrats for political violence, and demanded they stop calling opponents “Nazi.”
In a fiery speech after a shooting at an ICE detention facility in Dallas, Vance said to stop political violence, the left must stop its rhetoric about the Trump administration – a position he has taken more aggressively since his friend, conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was assassinated.
“If you want to stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi,” Vance said, to applause. “If you want to stop political violence, look in the mirror.”
Vance added that those who “encourage violence” against law enforcement through their rhetoric can “go straight to hell.”
But online, multiple people pointed out that Vance once used similar rhetoric to refer to his now-boss.
A report from the Ohio Capital Journal revealed that, in 2016, Vance texted his then-roommate that he thought Trump was “America’s Hitler.”
“Why did @JDVance call Trump ‘America’s Hitler,’” Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell wrote on X in response to the clip of Vance.
The Lincoln Project, a political action committee opposed to Trump, sarcastically responded: “Does ‘America’s Hitler’ count @VP?”
“Fun Fact: It was JD Vance who called Donald Trump ‘Hitler,’” X user Alex Cole wrote.
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office responded with a screenshot of a headline referring to Vance’s “Hitler” comment. “According to JD Vance, JD Vance is going to hell because JD Vance compared Trump to Hitler!” the message said.
Newsom and his team have been using the Democratic governor’s social media to troll Trump, Vance, and other senior members of the administration in push back to their agenda.
Another X user asked the platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, to remind users of Vance’s comment about Trump as well.
Vance’s previous criticisms of Trump are well-documented. Before being endorsed by Trump, the vice president had said he was “wrong” about the president and regretted posting criticisms of him on X, formerly Twitter.
When confronted about his former beliefs about Trump during the vice presidential debate last year, Vance reiterated that he was wrong about Trump and then blamed the media for swaying his opinion of Trump in 2016.
“I’ve always been extremely open about the fact that I was wrong about Donald Trump,” Vance said, during the debate. “I was wrong first of all because I believed some of the media stories that turned out to be dishonest fabrications of his record.”
Ultimately, Vance’s past negative comments about Trump did not hurt his chances of becoming his running mate in the 2024 election.
So far, Vance has displayed deep loyalty to the president, and taken the same position as him on various matters, including polarizing language about Democrats and the left perpetrating political violence.
