Republican JD Vance, picked by Donald Trump as his running mate for the US elections, has been kind to the former president in the past. A harsh critic in the past, the Ohio Senator had called Trump a "moral disaster" and "America's Hitler".
But now a Vice-Presidential nominee, he finds himself "overwhelmed with gratitude" to be running alongside Trump. "What an honour...he delivered peace and prosperity once, and with your help, he'll do it again," said a confident Vance on X.
A White House candidate usually picks a running mate who can appeal to new voters or compensate for weaknesses in image or policy - though Trump has picked a white conservative like himself.
In a 2016 message to a former law school roommate, Vance had said he went "back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical as***le like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," Washington Post reported.
Josh Mclaurin, the roommate, had shared the message on social media in 2022 when Vance was contesting the Senate race.
Vance had also called Trump a "cultural heroin" and a "new pain reliever" - who promised easy solutions to social problems of suffering communities, but "could not fix what ails them".
"Trump's promises are the needle in America's collective vein... Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they'll realize it," he had written in a 2016 piece for the Atlantic Magazine.
He had also said he "can't stomach Trump" in a 2016 interview.
"I think that he's noxious and is leading the White working class to a very dark place," he told NPR's Terry Gross.
Vance had lamented Trump's video of bragging about groping women. His now-deleted online post read: "Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us."
Another post, which too stands deleted, called Trump "reprehensible". "Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this, I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us," the post read.
Vance had even admitted he was "never Trump guy" and never liked Trump, in an interview with Charlie Rose.
He had also called the then-president a "moral disaster" and "just another opioid", and agreed in public that Trump was a "total fraud" who didn't care about the people.
The list runs long.
