J.D. Vance: From Trump critic to ardent supporter, from poverty to vice presidential nominee

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

68% : Vance's decision to endorse Trump in January 2023, well before some other vice-presidential hopefuls, served as an important demonstration of loyalty, that person added.
59% : Vance's personal relationship with Trump developed for the most part during the Republican presidential primary earlier this year, that person said.
54% : In the same interview, Vance said that he met Trump in 2021 and that the two grew closer during his Senate campaign.
53% : Biden eventually visited East Palestine roughly a year later, in February 2024.Behind the scenes, Vance has helped convince wealthy donors to open their wallets to Trump, according to two people with knowledge of Trump's fundraising operations.
50% : For instance, he agreed with Trump's contentions that free trade had hollowed out middle America by crushing domestic manufacturing and that the nation's leaders were too quick to get involved in foreign wars.
47% : "I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration," Vance told the New York Times in June.
45% : Democrats and some Republicans have questioned Vance's transformation, but Trump, who survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday, and many of his advisers see it as genuine.
45% : "His supporters, meanwhile, see his life story -- from poverty to the U.S. Senate and to the White House, if Trump wins -- as having the potential to help not just the Republican ticket in battleground states but also unify the country.
39% : Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, whom Vance has described as a mentor, told Reuters that Vance shifted his views on Trump because "he saw the successes that President Trump as president brought to the country.
37% : "He understands what Trump is running on and, unlike the rest of the Republican Party in Washington, agrees with it," conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, a Vance supporter, told Reuters.
34% : "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical (expletive) like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," he wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016.
30% : They point out that Vance's political beliefs dovetail with those of Trump, putting both men at odds with the old guard of the Republican Party, where foreign policy hawks and free market evangelists still hold sway.
29% : One issue where his position appears to have converged with Trump is abortion.
25% : In media interviews, Vance has said there was no "Eureka" moment that changed his views on Trump.
21% : He was harshly critical of Trump, both publicly and privately, in 2016 and during the opening stages of his 2017-2021 term.
20% : "What you see is some really profound opportunism," said Niven, the politics professor, who also said that Vance is "an echo to Trump, not a new voice.
8% : In February 2023, Trump and Vance visited East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a toxic train derailment, a trip that raised Vance's national profile.

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