Before falling down the MAGA rabbit hole, J.D. Vance was warm, personable, and even sent a trans friend baked goods after top surgery.
In an article recently published by The New York Times, Vance’s former Yale classmates and teachers describe a Vance that is very different from how he portrays himself today. Apparently, he thrived at Yale, brought home-baked goods to a friend recovering from top surgery, and said he thought Trump could be “America’s Hitler.”
Today, Vance is strongly anti-trans and -LGBTQ+ in general and has pushed anti-trans legislation throughout his time in Congress. A previous friend of Vance and his wife, Sophia Nelson, told the Times that he had previously brought them homemade baked goods while they were recovering from top surgery.
However, this friendship ended in 2021 when Vance publicly supported the Arkansas bill banning gender-affirming care for minors (a ban which was recently blocked). “It hurt my feelings when he started saying hateful things about trans people,” Nelson says.
Another Yale friendship that fell apart for Vance after purporting anti-trans ideology is with Democrat Georgian Senator Josh McLaurin. They quickly bonded, as they both went to state schools before Yale. Still, the pair fell apart as McLaurin witnessed Vance prioritize his political ambitions over holding to his own opinions. “He realized that the only way that he could realize and give effect to his own anger in politics was to identify with the MAGA movement,” McLaurin explains.
McLaurin evidences Vance’s changing views by releasing text messages between the two during the 2016 primary election, where Vance is seen saying, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, also seemed to have had a change of character due to Vance’s political career. In a post on his now-private X account, Dr. Peter E. Hamilton, a former Yale-China Teaching Fellow with Usha, expressed that she had changed since they worked together. “Usha was a very organized and thoughtful person—serious about teaching and making a difference on issues such as women’s rights,” Hamilton says. “Painful for me to see her on the RNC stage now.”
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