Social media users have trolled JD Vance for claiming he “never” praises Barack Obama — despite a glowing op-ed about the former president seven years ago.
At a rally in Detroit, Michigan, on Tuesday, the GOP vice presidential nominee spoke highly of Obama’s response to a natural disaster as a point of comparison to the Biden-Harris administration’s response to Hurricane Helene — efforts that he has repeatedly attacked and spread falsehoods about.
“You’re never gonna hear me praise Barack Obama,” Vance said, before correcting himself: “You rarely hear me praise Barack Obama.”
But X users quickly pointed out that Vance has in fact praised Obama before — in the form of a 2017 New York Times op-ed article. Vance wouldn’t enter into the political arena for another five years, when he won an Ohio Senate seat in 2022.
In that piece, Vance, who documented his own childhood woes in his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, commended how Obama treated his family and carried himself, noting that if he had experienced his own traumatic upbringing, he never showed it. “He and his wife treated each other with clear love and respect, and he adored and cared for his children,” the op-ed read. “Whatever scars his childhood left, he refused to let those scars control him.”
Vance continued: “The president’s example offered something no other public figure could: hope. I wanted so desperately to have what he had — a happy marriage and beautiful, thriving children. But I thought that those things belonged to people unlike me, to those who came from money and intact nuclear families. “Yet here was the president of the United States, a man whose history looked something like mine but whose future contained something I wanted.”
Although his political ideology diverged from Obama’s, Vance wrote that he will miss the Democrat after he left office. “Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams,” he wrote. “For that, I’ll miss him, and the example he set.”
Other X users pointed out Vance has a history of flip-flopping on his opinions — including about his now-running mate.
“He’s not only praised [Obama], but he’s compared Trump to Hitler. So, there’s that,” one X user wrote.
Another remarked: “He’s both so confident in his own thoughts he has written countless Op Eds, and lies so naturally he contradicts himself with regularity.”
“Caught himself and said ‘rarely,’” another pointed out.
Despite the GOP vice presidential nominee’s favorable mention of Obama, later this week, the highly-influential Democrat plans to join Kamala Harris on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania, months after he exalted the vice president in a speech at the Democratic National Convention. He told the crowd: “America is ready for a new chapter. America’s ready for a better story. We are ready for a President Kamala Harris.”
The Ohio Senator’s comment came while comparing Obama’s response to a 2010 earthquake that rattled Haiti to the current federal response to Hurricane Helene.
The Secretary of Defense authorized 1,000 active-duty soldiers on October 2 to be deployed to North Carolina in help with the impacts of Helene, days after the storm ripped through the region.
Vance called it “disgraceful” that it took that long for the 82nd Airborne Division — a group of active-duty soldiers — to be deployed to North Carolina, which was ravaged by Helene, compared to the mere 48 hours it took for the military unit to touch down in Haiti. He noted that the 82nd Airborne Division’s headquarters is located in Fort Liberty, North Carolina.
While this particular unit may not have been dispatched to the state, US National Guardsman joined more than 700 North Carolina Guardsman on September 30 to help with recovery efforts, a statement from the Department of Defense read.
Since the Category 4 storm made landfall in Florida on September 26, Vance and Donald Trump have both been spewing conspiracies about the federal government’s recovery efforts. Now, the same region braces for yet another massive hurricane.
