'I am almost embarrassed': JD Vance reveals what changed after once calling Trump 'America's Hitler'

Before being Vice President to Donald Trump, J.D. Vance had been critical of the President. During his run for Senate in 2016, Vance had called Trump "a cultural heroin" in an article published in The Atlantic. "What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission...He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn't matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can't. Trump's promises are the needle in America’s collective vein," Vance had written. 

In fact, as per numerous reports, a decade ago, Vice President Vance had described President Trump as "a cynical a*****e or America's Hitler." The strong pivot in Vance's political career from describing Trump using expletives to becoming his vice president has made many question what led to a change in his heart, and as he sat for an interview in 'The Diary of a CEO' podcast, host Steven Bartlett baited a direct answer. "You said he (Trump) was a either cynical a*****e or America's Hitler. How do you go from that position to vice president of the same person?" Barrtlett asked Vance.

"It's a crazy journey, man...I thought Donald Trump would be a failed President if he got elected. He was not. I thought that America's institutions were fundamentally functioning. They were not. I thought that the military leaders who told us this about a war, or the scientific experts who told us this other thing about a pandemic, were fundamentally wise people who were mostly right. I was wrong," Vance replied, explaining that he had had a major change in perspective over the last decade. 

Vance had a similar defence about his article in The Atlantic. The Vice President admitted that he was wrong about Trump at the time and that it was a good thing that he was not aligned with the country's military leaders in 2016. "I believed it when I wrote it, and reading it now, I am almost embarrassed that I wrote it," he said. Vance pointed out that America had not won a war in 30 years at that point and that all Trump wanted was a recognition of America's failing institutions.

Moving miles away from his past criticisms of Trump, Vance asserted that the President is not anything like what the media portrays him to be on several occasions. "Donald Trump is a much different human being than the media makes him out to be," he said. "He's very warm. He's a very loving person to his kids and grandkids. He's incredibly generous."

Vance said that earlier, he would only see clips of him arguing with journalists, which only painted a one-dimensional picture of the man. He also hailed Trump's intelligence, calling him one of the smartest Presidents in American history. "He's super smart," the Vice President said. "He reads a lot. He understands people at an instinctual level better than anybody that I have ever known. From a pure IQ perspective, he is a very smart person."