JD Vance’s trans ex-friend sees right through the act

With the announcement that JD Vance is heading the ticket with Trump, much has been made of the Ohio senator’s complete transformation from Never Trump Republican to the convicted felon’s most loyal sycophant. But former friends, including one who is trans, say this isn’t Vance’s only sudden and cynical about-face for personal gain.

Sofia Nelson met Vance when the two were studying law at Yale in the early 2010s, according to The New York TImes. At the time, Vance didn’t seem to care that they were transgender. They even became close with Vance and his wife, and in one memorable instance, Nelson recalls receiving home-baked goods from the couple as they were recovering from top surgery.

Many of Vance’s acquaintances from those days characterized him as a Romney-esque conservative, one who occasionally fundraised for charity and was described as “warm.”

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His first year roommate, Josh McLaurin (now a Georgia state senator), recalled bonding with Vance over the fact that they both came from state schools. An initial rift formed over Vance’s repeated invective over “Yale elites,” but the two kept in touch after their graduation. In a 2016 Facebook message, Vance confided to McLaurin his own estimation of Trump.

“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Vance wrote about his future boss.

During Vance’s 2021 senate campaign—once it became clear Vance now supported the man he’d once likened to Hitler—McLaurin shared the message with the press. Having finally ended contact with Vance by then, he understood that his former roommate had embraced his own brand of cynicism.

“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 summed up.

Nelson likewise ended their friendship after the classmate who once brought them post-surgery treats championed the gender-affirming care ban in Arkansas. “It hurt my feelings when he started saying hateful things about trans people,” Nelson said.

In the short time since his election as Ohio’s representative to the Senate in 2022, Vance has already accrued an extensive anti-LGBTQ+ record. He has introduced federal legislation to felonize gender affirming care for minors, opposed the Respect for Marriage Act and antidiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community, repeated the “groomer” slur and claimed that Democrats are bringing immigrants into the country to turn them trans.