In a controversial interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, vice presidential candidate JD Vance downplayed former Trump officials’ warnings about fascism as mere policy differences.
“It’s about policy, it’s not about personality,” Vance said on ‘State of the Union’ in response to Donald Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly, who warned that the former president had fascist tendencies.
“I know John Kelly’s worldview and I know the people who have most vociferously attacked Donald Trump on foreign policy. They’ll say, ‘He’s a dictator,’ when what they really mean is they don’t want to listen,” Vance said. “Donald Trump wouldn’t listen to the military’s leadership when they wanted him to start ridiculous conflicts, which is a consistent theme.”
But Tapper noted that Kelly has said he actually agrees with Donald Trump on most issues — and asked Vance where he got the idea that John Kelly is “for war” when he has given no public indication that he wanted to go there. war in Iran or Afghanistan.
Former officials who served under the Trump administration have spoken out against the former president, describing him as a threat to democracy and a threat to national security as president. Recently, former Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired four-man general, described Trump’s authoritarian tendencies in an interview with the New York Times and The Atlantic, saying that Trump at one point praised Hitler. Vance has said he does not believe these stories are true. Other notable figures who have spoken along these lines include Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump; Jim Mattis, former Secretary of Defense under Trump; former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.
“I don’t believe in that because if you really look at John Kelly, people like Liz Cheney, even though they say they’re conservative, the fundamental disagreement they have is with Donald Trump,” Vance said. “They are conservative in the sense that they want America to get involved in a lot of ridiculous military conflicts.”
It’s a similar argument Vance has made regarding former Vice President Mike Pence, who Vance claims no longer supports Trump over foreign policy disagreements, not the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol where rioters “Hang Mike Pence” chanted.
Vance also said he was “very skeptical” that Kelly’s interviews were not in coordination with the Harris campaign — something he suggested at a meeting earlier this week. When asked what evidence he had of this, Vance told Tapper: “You know the way these attacks work. You know how these people often get vetted.”
“So you made it up?” Tapper asked Vance. The Ohio senator responded: “No, I said the American media and the American Democratic Party apparatus work in a certain way.”
Vance also repeated his claims that these people are “disgruntled former employees,” something he has described to Kelly and other former Trump officials who have spoken out against Trump.
“They didn’t think he was unfit for office until they got into a fight with him for firing them,” Vance said in response. Tapper noted that many of these people — like Pence and Milley — were not fired.
Kelly’s interviews this week came after recent comments from Trump in which he said the military should be used against “the enemy from within.” The former president has repeatedly said that “the enemies within” pose a greater threat than foreign adversaries and used Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi as examples of the “enemy within.”
Vance walked back those comments — sparring with Tapper over what Trump actually said — and said Tapper took Trump’s words out of context.
Later on “State of the Union,” Liz Cheney joined Tapper in calling Vance’s interview a “mix of desperation and naivete.”
“I think what we’ve just looked at is what it looks like when someone has to go through incredible contortions to try to find a way to defend the person that J.D. Vance himself called America’s Hitler,” Cheney said. so many just really stunning attacks.”
She added: “The Trump campaign, Donald Trump and JD Vance, they absolutely understand how damaging it is to the American people to see all these unprecedented levels of senior Trump administration officials telling the American people that Donald Trump is unfit. And so they invent these things, completely disconnected from any connection with the truth, to lash out and attack.”
