J.D. Vance Tries To Make Up For Past As Trump Critic In Selectively Edited Clip

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) shared a notably shortened clip that featured him gushing over Donald Trump’s “success” after Fox News’ Shannon Bream confronted him on his past criticism of the former president on Sunday.

While interviewing Vance, Bream pointed to reporting from The New York Times over the weekend that referred to the senator’s shift from someone who called the former president “loathsome” and an “idiot” to reportedly being on Trump’s vice presidential shortlist.

The Fox News anchor later brought up David Frum, a Trump critic and ex-speechwriter for former President George W. Bush who has known the senator for years and who described Vance as having “sunk to the depths of political degradation.”

“Now, he’s not changed over the last few years,” Bream noted of Trump. “He’s the same guy we’ve been knowing for a long time. So what’s changed with you that you’re OK with the behavior and you’re supporting him and maybe joining his ticket?”

Vance shared a clip to his account on X (formerly Twitter) that begins after Bream’s question and shows just the senator’s response in which he talks up the former president’s administration.

“The policies and the results were really there. We had low inflation, we had rising wages, and we had a world that wasn’t on fire. And now, after four years — three years — of Joe Biden, we have rising inflation, a stagnating economy, and it seems like a crisis in every single sector of the world,” Vance declares in the clip.

“If you can’t look at the four-year accomplishment of Donald Trump and say, ‘From the perspective of 2015, I was wrong. I didn’t think he would be a good president. He was a great president,’” he continues. “That’s not about, you know, sinking to political degradation. That’s looking at reality and recognizing that Donald Trump was a success.”

Vance, who has said it would be “a great honor” to be Trump’s VP pick, addressed his past criticism of the former president in a 2022 interview with New York Magazine.

“I think there are so many reasons I was wrong about Trump, but I’m happy that I was wrong about Trump,” he said.

Vance — who got the former president’s endorsement during his 2022 Senate campaign — currently maintains a friendship with Donald Trump Jr. where the two communicate over the phone “nearly daily” and attempt to meet up if they’re in the same city, sources told The Times.

Social media users mocked Vance on Sunday over his sharing of the clip.