J.D. Vance, author of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, said he regretted the deleted anti-Trump tweets and asked people to ‘not judge him’ amid his bid for an Ohio Senate seat.

[ad_1]

JD Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” poses for a selfie near the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 27, 2017. Vance becomes the nation’s grumpy and rustic interpreter. The book has sold nearly half a million copies since late June. Vance, a rural Ohio producer and former Marine and Yale School graduate, owns the best-selling book in the country. He has become a CNN commentator, on-call speaker, and plans to return to Ohio from SF where he worked as a manager at an investment firm. Astrid Rieken/The Washington Post via Getty

JD Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” poses for a selfie near the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., Jan. 27, 2017. Vance becomes the nation’s grumpy and rustic interpreter. The book has sold nearly half a million copies since late June. Vance, a rural Ohio producer and former Marine and Yale School graduate, owns the best-selling book in the country. He has become a CNN commentator, on-call speaker, and plans to return to Ohio from SF where he worked as a manager at an investment firm. Astrid Rieken/The Washington Post via Getty

Author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance discussed his deleted anti-Trump tweets on Fox News on Monday.

The Ohio Senate candidate said he regretted criticizing the former president.

Vance earlier visited Mar-a-Lago to get Trump’s endorsement in the crowded GOP primaries.

See more stories on the Insider Business page.

J.D. Vance, author of the best-selling “Hilbilly Elegy,” addressed his anti-Trump history on Fox News Monday, retracting his past criticism of the former president as the race for an open Ohio seat in the U.S. Senate heated up among Republican candidates. .

Vance announced his candidacy for the seat of retired Ohio Senator Rob Portman last week, in a nationwide grassroots campaign in the spirit of former President Donald Trump.

But the venture capitalist, who has the support of conservative billionaire Peter Thiel and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, is now facing his first major controversy, after CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski last week recalled several of Vance’s previous tweets criticizing Trump.

Vance, who recently visited Mar-a-Lago, Florida to bid for Trump’s initial endorsement, described the former president as “reprehensible” for his treatment of “immigrants, Muslims, etc.” In the deleted tweets since 2016. He also said he would not vote for Trump, but for independent Evan McMullen.

On Monday, Vance addressed the tweets for the first time, telling Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna that he regretted his earlier stance.

“Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump again in 2016,” he said. “And I ask people not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I was so open that I said those critical things and I’m sorry for them, and I’m sorry for being wrong about the guy.”

“I think he was a good boss,” Vance added. “I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he faced a lot of criticism.”

The story continues

Vance, who once told The Daily Beast Matt Lewis that Trump gave the white working class “an excuse not to look inward [and] In order not to ask difficult questions about themselves and their communities,” he has made a general change of mind regarding his feelings for the divisive former president since he first began exploring running for Senate.

Vance said Monday that he has faced criticism for standing up for Trump voters and their beliefs.

“I think that’s the most important thing, not what I said five years ago, but whether you’re willing to stand up and take the hits to actually defend the interests of the American people,” Vance said.

Vance’s opponents are already using the revealed tweets as ammunition – a development he told Fox News he had been expecting.

Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who is also running for Portman’s Senate seat in 2022, tweeted Thursday that he and Vance have “one thing in common — none of us voted for Donald Trump.”

Several Republicans and Democrats have already entered the Senate primaries and the race is shaping up to be one of the most watched of the election cycle.

Read the original article on Business Insider

[ad_2]