J.D. Vance came to Trump’s defense when confronted with the fact that the presidential candidate had dinner in 2022 with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who recently attacked Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, a child of Indian immigrants. Fuentes said last month he doesn’t expect Vance — “the guy who has an Indian wife” — to “support White identity.”
“What kind of a man marries somebody named Usha?” Fuentes, who has often praised Hitler, said. “Clearly, he doesn’t value his racial identity, his heritage.”
During an interview that aired Sunday on This Week, ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Vance about Fuentes’ remarks and Trump’s dinner with the white supremacist alongside controversial rapper Kanye West, who has praised Hitler multiple times. Vance responded, “The one thing I like about Donald Trump is he actually will talk to anybody, but just because you talk to somebody doesn’t mean you endorse their views.”
Some of Fuentes’ views include that “perfidious Jews” and anyone who “suppresses Christianity” should be “absolutely annihilated.” “When we take power,” Fuentes said a Dec. 2023 livestream, “they need to be given the death penalty, straight up.” The white supremacist had previously praised Trump but declared “war” against his campaign in an X post on Friday, writing, “Tonight I declared a new Groyper War against the Trump campaign.” Groypers are far-right extremists and internet trolls and are linked to the nationalist America First PAC.
In his ABC interview, Vance continued to defend Trump, saying, “Donald Trump has spent a lot of quality time with my wife. Every time he sees her, he gives her a hug, tells her she’s beautiful, and jokes around with her a little bit.”
This isn’t the first time Vance has justified Trump dining with Fuentes. In May, he was asked about the dinner after Vance tried to claim President Joe Biden is anti-semitic.
Vance also told Karl that “if these guys want to attack me or attack my views, my policy views, my personality, come after me, but don’t attack my wife. She’s out of your league.”
But over on CNN’s State of the Union, Vance complained that his opponents, Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has been labeling him and Trump by calling them “weird.”
“I want to move on to something that Governor Walz has called you and Donald Trump, and that is weird,” anchor Dana Bash said to Vance during a Sunday interview. “The New York Times reports that, when Donald Trump was asked about it, he said: ‘Not me. They’re talking about J.D.'”
“Well, certainly, they have levied that charge against me more than anybody else,” Vance said. “But I think that it drives home how they’re trying to distract from their own policy failures. I mean, look, this is fundamentally schoolyard bully stuff.”
It’s curious that Vance is calling Walz’s “weird” label as “schoolyard bully stuff” when mere days ago, Vance said during a campaign event in Detroit, “President Trump in particular has the best sense of humor of anybody I’ve ever seen in American politics. He loves to joke. He loves to… make fun of anybody that’s out there.”
