Trump addresses Vance’s past ‘Never Trump’ comments in first joint interview

Former President Donald Trump addressed Sen. J.D. Vance’s (R-OH) anti-Trump statements in the first joint interview between the two running mates.

The interview, which aired on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime, saw Trump and Vance give their thoughts on the assassination attempt against the former president and the conduct of the Secret Service. It also saw Trump address an angle of attack from Democrats against Vance, that he had made several comments disparaging Trump when he first rose to the national stage.

Watters asked why Trump chose Vance, allowing him to address the controversy.

“We’ve always had a good chemistry, and originally, J.D. was probably not for me, but he didn’t know me,” Trump said. “And then when we got to know each other, he liked me maybe more than anyone liked me, and he would stick up for me and he would fight for the worker as much as I would fight for the worker.”

“We had an automatic chemistry,” he continued. “And I endorsed him for the Senate, and he won against a tough field.”

Back when Trump first ran for office in 2016, Vance made several disparaging comments about him, including a private Facebook message where he suggested that he could be “America’s Hitler,” and openly identified as a “Never Trump guy.”

Since then, particularly as Vance ran for Senate and his views evolved, the Ohio Republican came to support Trump fully, winning his endorsement in 2021.

Elsewhere in the interview with Watters, Trump gave more details about his assassination attempt, particularly that the original plan was to take him away on a stretcher, something the former president refused.

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He also praised the Secret Service sniper who killed shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, calling it an “unbelievable shot.”

“And they did get him. I believe they got him with one shot,” Trump said. “One shot from a — an unbelievable shot. If they would have done it earlier, maybe doing it earlier is hard. It is hard to shoot somebody when you are not 100% sure. But they got him, and if they didn’t get him, it would have been a worse situation.”