JD Vance once feared Donald Trump might be “America’s Hitler”. Last Saturday, the Ohio senator claimed Democrats calling Trump “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs” caused the assassination attempt the former president survived.
But on Monday, after Trump made Vance his vice-presidential pick, worries about Vance’s own authoritarian leanings came straight to the fore.
“Trump picked JD Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme Maga agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Joe Biden’s re-election campaign chair, told reporters.
Vance has indeed said that if he had been vice-president on 6 January 2021, he would have done as Trump and his supporters demanded and blocked certification of results in key states won by Biden during the election weeks earlier.
