WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s hard to call someone “Hitler” and ingratiate yourself, let alone become the person you choose to help lead the country.
But Ohio Senator JD Vance’s changing position about Donald Trump The transformation from former critic of the former president to staunch ally is a metamorphosis shared by many of Trump’s potential running mates.
It is common for a running mate to put past disagreements with a presidential candidate behind him. Joe Biden had a remarkably sharp exchange with Kamala Harris in 2020 as both sought the Democratic nomination. Harris confronted Biden about 1970s comments about school busing and told him during a debate that she “didn’t believe you’re a racist,” even though he had made “hurtful” comments about being able to work with segregationist senators during his career. Biden chose her as his vice president anyway.
But the shift is most notable for Trump’s potential running mates, who in some cases must abandon long-held policy positions and recant fierce criticism.
Here’s a look at some of those shifts:
J.D. Vance
In a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose while promoting his book “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance called himself “a Never Trump guy” and said of the president-elect, “I never liked him.”
He told NPR that year, “I can’t stand Trump. I think he’s harmful and he’s taking the white working class to a very dark place.” He wrote an op-ed for The New York Times titled, “Mr. Trump Is Unfit for Our Nation’s Highest Office.”
Vance said he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, and his former roommate shared images of a text message Vance sent him that year in which he called Trump “cynical” and said he could be “America’s Hitler.”
But by the time Vance launched his campaign for Senate in 2021, his views closely aligned with Trump’s. He met with the former president and quickly won his support, giving him a crucial boost in the Republican primaries.
Vance has said he was “wrong” about Trump. In an interview this month on Fox News Channel, he was asked to explain his previous criticism.
“I didn’t think he was going to be a good president,” Vance said. “He was a great president. And it’s one of the reasons I’m working so hard to make sure he gets a second term.”
Even as a freshman, Vance stood out in the Senate as one of Trump’s fiercest defenders and as a rising voice on foreign policy. Vance aligned himself with the party’s more populist wing and has strongly opposed additional aid to Ukraine. Earlier this year he even traveled to the Munich Security Conference to argue against it.
When Vance’s name rose to the top of Trump’s list of potential running mates, he notably embraced positions that contrasted with former Vice President Mike Pencetold ABC News in an interview that he would not have immediately certified the results of the 2020 election.
He also said he was “really skeptical” about whether Pence’s life was in danger during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and called the bipartisan commission investigating the attack “a sham.”
Trump publicly and privately pressured Pence to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory during the congressional certification on January 6, 2021, something Pence had no power to do. Trump’s pressure campaign was a motivating factor in the mob’s violent attack on the Capitol, with many chanting “Hang Mike Pence” as they fought their way inside and searched for lawmakers. The House committee on January 6 found that the mob came within 40 feet of Pence as he was hastily evacuated from the Capitol.
Pence has emphatically refused to support Trump for another term in the White House.
Marco Rubio
Some of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s harshest comments about Trump came during the 2016 Republican presidential race. Trump began calling him “Little Marco” and mocking him. Rubio responded by insulting Trump’s makeup and the size of his hands.
Rubio also called Trump a “con artist” and “the most vulgar person to ever run for president.”
When ABC News listened back to some of Rubio’s comments from 2016 earlier this year, he responded by saying, “It was a campaign.”
He made similar statements in a recent interview with CNN, saying, “That’s like asking a boxer why he punched someone in the face in the third round. It’s because he was boxing.”
Their relationship improved dramatically when Trump was in the White House. And as Trump campaigned for president for the third time, Rubio applauded his proposals.
In the Senate, Rubio has long been a prominent voice on immigration and was a key member of a group that worked on a 2013 bill that included a path to citizenship for millions of people in the country illegally. Now Rubio says he supports Trump’s plan to use the U.S. military to deport those in the country illegally.
“We’re going to have to do something, unfortunately, we’re going to have to do something dramatic,” Rubio said in an interview with NBC in May.
When shown clips of his 2016 comments saying Trump’s plans for mass deportations were not realistic or workable, Rubio said “the issue has completely changed.”
The senator said the number of people entering the US had increased dramatically, calling it “an invasion of the country.”
Doug Burgum
Burgum was one of more than a dozen Republicans who ran against Trump in the 2024 primaries, but he withdrew in December and endorsed Trump before the election even started.
Previously, North Dakota’s governor had rejected the idea of a partnership with Trump.
In an interview last July on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Burgum, a businessman, was asked if he would ever do business with Trump and replied, “I don’t think so.” He added: “I just think it’s important that you are judged by the company you keep.”
The following month, he said in an interview with CNN that he would not serve as Trump’s vice president.
Like many other Republicans, Burgum was critical of Trump in 2016, when the “Access Hollywood” video was released in which Trump bragged about grabbing women by the genitals without their consent. Burgum, then a Republican candidate for governor, issued a statement calling Trump’s comments “offensive, wrong and unacceptable.”
Burgum has become an enthusiastic supporter of Trump this year, using his profile as a wealthy businessman and governor with knowledge of energy policy to help Republicans raise millions in fundraising, especially from high-dollar donors.
Elise Stefanik
When the New York congresswoman was first elected in 2014, she was known as a moderate Republican with ties to the party establishment, having worked in George W. Bush’s White House and on Governor Tim’s presidential campaigns Pawlenty of Minnesota and later Mitt Romney, and as an assistant to former Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan.
In 2016, she initially supported the campaign of Ohio Governor John Kasich. When Trump was the party’s nominee, she did not mention his name, saying only that she would “support my party’s nominee in the fall.”
She became a more outspoken supporter as the election approached, but made it clear that she sometimes disagreed with him. She criticized his comments on the “Access Hollywood” tape, disagreeing with his stance on NATO, his decision to withdraw from the historic Paris climate accord and his ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries, for example.
Those differences have faded over the years. Stefanik abruptly emerged as one of Trump’s most outspoken defenders during his first impeachment in 2019, and it’s a role she’s embraced ever since. When Republicans ousted former Rep. Liz Cheney from the leadership over her criticism of Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, it was Stefanik they picked to take her place.
In her role as chair of the House GOP conference, Stefanik has spoken out against Trump’s criminal conviction in New York, defended his policy proposals and repeated his language about January 6, wrongly labeling those imprisoned over the attack as “hostages ‘ labeled.
Her loyalty to Trump stood out in 2022, when the former president’s approval ratings within the party had fallen after he took blame for weaker-than-expected results in the midterm elections. Stefanik announced days after the election that she was endorsing Trump for president in 2024 — an announcement that came before Trump even said he was running.
When local reporters in her New York district asked her earlier this month about her past criticism of Trump, Stefanik repeatedly expressed her support for the former president.
“I’m proud that I voted for him and supported him on the ballot in 2016,” Stefanik told WAMC radio in Albany. “I’m proud to be his strongest ally in Congress. And I’m proud that I can continue to work, no matter how the vice presidential situation evolves, I will continue to be a fighter for this district and support President Trump, who has a proven track record of delivering results.”
Tim Scott
In 2016, the South Carolina senator initially endorsed Rubio in the presidential race and that same year criticized Trump for his reluctance to condemn the Ku Klux Klan.
“If Donald Trump can’t stand up to the KKK, we can’t trust him to stand up for America against Putin, Iran or ISIS,” said Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate.
He also criticized Trump for his attacks on a judge’s Mexican heritage in 2016, calling it “racially toxic” and saying the “Access Hollywood” comments were “indefensible” and “disgusting.” He still supported Trump in the 2016 election, calling him the “lesser of two evils.”
Scott also criticized Trump after his ambiguous comments about the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying his “moral authority” had been “compromised.”
He then met Trump at the White House. In an interview on Fox News Channel on Thursday, Scott said he shared his perspective with the then-president during that meeting and from then on they worked to “find solutions together.”
“It was the incident in Charlottesville that made our relationship what it is today,” Scott said.
Although he ran against Trump in the 2024 Republican primary, Scott left office and endorsed the former president, becoming one of his most enthusiastic supporters.
