Who is the real JD Vance?: How a friendship was broken by political ambition

Read time: 4 minutes

In brief:

• JD Vance's remarkable journey from a working-class background to Yale Law graduate, bestselling author, and now Vice President of the United States has been marked by a dramatic ideological transformation.
• According to a former close friend, Sofia Nelson, Vance has completely abandoned his principles of mutual respect and political integrity.
• Nelson characterises Vance as a chameleon who has reversed his stances on key issues like marriage equality and immigration, adopted more inflammatory rhetoric, and reinvented himself politically to advance his career.

Working class kid, Yale Law graduate, bestselling author and Vice President of the United States; JD Vance has been on quite a ride in his 40 years.

But it’s not just his class, status, wealth and power that’s evolved over the decades - it’s his ideology.

JD Vance was once a different person - one of Trump’s harshest critics, referring to him as an “idiot” and “reprehensible” - so how did he become his right-hand man, and the second most powerful person in the United States?

A former close friend of his, Sofia Nelson, has a simple answer to that question; Vance has sacrificed his core values in the name of political advancement.

The Detroit-based public defender, who was at Yale Law School with JD Vance and attended his wedding, was referred to by Vance as his ‘progressive lesbian friend’ in his famous 2016 Hillbelly Elegy memoir,.

Nelson says that although the two never shared a political ideology, when they were friends the Vice President was committed to a fundamental principle of mutual respect, even across political divides.

But that mutual respect was lost when Vance “decided to tie himself to Trump” - and it resulted in a falling out.

“We lost touch in 2021 when he started expressing national views that I felt attacked my identity, personally as a transgender person, as well as the identities of people that I consider close to me,” Nelson says.

“There has to be a foundation of mutual respect there that was certainly lost when he decided to tie himself to Donald Trump”

In 2016, when the two were still friends, Vance was very critical of Donald Trump, but Nelson says he came to believe there was “no advancement politically for him without aligning himself with Donald Trump”.

“And so he had to completely reverse himself and turn his back on a lot of what I thought were our shared values of even if you disagree, you treat everyone with mutual respect.”

Vance’s changing ideology has left many questioning ‘who is the real JD Vance?’ - the one critical of Trump and tolerant of others, or the current VP, who Nelson says “abandoned that at every level of his public persona”.

“At some point you become who you're playing in public,” Nelson says.

“So who the real JD Vance is at this point, I think we have to take him at his word that he is who he tells us he is.”

Nelson points to examples of how Vance has abandoned his core values, pointing to his changing stance on marriage equality - once for, now against.

In another, Nelson says; “He understood Donald Trump's rhetoric to be very harmful to naturalized Americans and making them feel like they didn't belong in their own country, and now he espouses rhetoric even more cruel and dismissive.”

Ultimately, the once-friend of the VP believes that Vance is a chameleon; “a hollow, ambitious person who is willing to adopt whatever ideology is necessary to advance their career.”

This includes a newfound disdain for Europe - a stark contrast to the person Nelson remembers once enthusiastically travelling the continent with his wife.

Looking ahead, Nelson believes that Vance “certainly” has ambitions to become President - a frightful thought for the old friend; “I hope that's not our future.”

“But I hope that Donald Trump won't get elected, and here we are.”

Listen to the full interview on Thew News Agents USA.