FRAUD FLASHBACKS: Vance Said Trump Was “Too Cautious” In Calling Out Racism After Charlottesville
May 20, 2022
For Immediate Release:
May 20, 2022
Columbus, OH — Before he decided to run for U.S. Senate, J.D. Vance lambasted Trump’s approach to inciting a deadly rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
As a paid CNN contributor in 2017, Vance said, “If I was President Trump in this situation, I’d spike the football. This is one of the things that really unites the entire country. Racism is bad. Nazism is bad. We fought a war to defeat Nazism. And the president should not just be — there’s a sense in which he’s ambivalent or too cautious about coming out and criticizing this stuff.”
Now, in the wake of the Buffalo terrorist attack that left 10 dead, J.D. Vance said, “Can’t we just condemn whenever anybody commits an act of violence and leave the politics out of it for a little bit?” Quite the departure from his forceful condemnation of racist violence just five years ago.
This isn’t the only time Vance has changed his tune on race since launching his U.S. Senate campaign. Vance has called immigrants “dirty” on the campaign trail after condemning Trump for using xenophobic appeals in 2016. Vance also previously acknowledged that there are “obviously still advantages to being white” but now condemns the concept of white privilege on the campaign trail. And Vance has promoted antisemitic Soros conspiracy theories, saying, the “result of his ‘philanthropy’ is death and crime across America” despite previously liking a tweet implying Trump supporters were antisemitic.
This week, Vance gained attention for rhetoric on the campaign trail that echoed the deadly white supremacist rhetoric identified in forums across the internet, according to experts on hate speech. It’s rhetoric he likely would have condemned years ago.
“J.D. Vance is a fraud and a phony who will say anything to further his own political career – even if it makes Ohioans less safe. With his positions changing by the day, how can Ohioans trust anything California Vance says?” said Michael Beyer, a spokesperson from the Ohio Democratic Party.
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