JD Vance and the Trump Administration’s first months since taking office in January have been tumultuous. While many are standing by Donald Trump’s plans for the US, others have given hard criticism in the way they have handled illegal immigrants, tariffs, and, perhaps most shockingly, their statements about allies. JD Vance and Trump have been hard on Canada and Denmark, and now, one of the VP’s old pals has had enough, asking him not to visit his country.
Many might have been surprised when Donald Trump chose JD Vance as his VP pick last year. However, despite his short political career, the Ohio-born had the opportunity to refine his political talent for many years, as it became increasingly clear that Vance was built for the political world when serving in the Military.
To Vance’s surprise, after returning from his deployment overseas, he became a media relations officer at Cherry Point, North Carolina. Kurt Keester, a Marine Corps veteran who served with Vance at Cherry Point, recalled when he and JD Vance traveled to New York City for Fleet Week. As they waited for the wreath-laying ceremony, media outlets approached them.
“As we’re standing there waiting, a broadcaster, a radio journalist, came up and started asking us questions, asked, ‘What are your thoughts?’ I gave what I considered to be a terrible answer,” Keester recalled, speaking to CNN. “He asked JD the same question, and right off the top of his head, he gives this eloquent Winston Churchill-like quote, and at that moment it dawned on me how cut out for public affairs he was. He was a natural.”
After graduating from both Ohio State University and Yale Law School, and releasing his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis as well as working as a corporate lawyer, in 2018, Vance was considered a US Senate candidate.
He declined to enter the race due to family reasons, but it was a different story three years later. As Republican Rob Portman, the junior US Senator from Ohio, decided not to seek reelection, Vance entered the discussion—and the race.
Vance placed first in the Republican primary in May 2022. In the November general election, he defeated Tim Ryan and was sworn in as Senator of Ohio on January 3, 2023. Donald Trump endorsed JD Vance then, but their relationship has not always been good.
JD Vance
In 2017, Vance sent messages to a former friend from law school on X, formerly Twitter, which CNN verified. He spoke about how he opposed the American Health Care Act—the Republican plan to replace Obamacare—and called Trump a “moral disaster.” In 2016, in a conversation with Kentucky radio host Matt Jones, Vance also criticized Trump and his politics.
“I cannot stand Trump because I think he’s a fraud. Well, I think he’s a total fraud that is exploiting these people,” Jones said to Vance.
“I do too,” Vance replied. “I agree with you on Trump, because I don’t think that he’s the person. I don’t think he actually cares about folks. I think he just recognizes that there was a hole in the conversation and that hole is that people from these regions of the country, they feel ignored. They feel left out and they feel very frustrated. And I think of course in a lot of ways they feel that way for totally justifiable reasons. So it’s a problem that Trump has been the vessel of a lot of that frustration.”
JD Vance and Trump came together to find common ground later on, and today he is the Vice President of the United States of America. In August last year, shortly after announcing Vance as his VP pick, Trump said: “My interpretation is he’s strongly family-oriented. But that doesn’t mean that if you don’t have a family, there’s something wrong with that.”
Vance has been the Vice President for about half a year. He came under heavy fire from many leaders worldwide after he lashed out against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House earlier this year. His and Donald Trump’s outbursts against Denmark, Greenland, and Canada have left many world leaders nervous about what the US wants to accomplish.
JD Vance was called ‘disrespectful’ after Sistine Chapel photo
Not long ago, JD Vance also managed to upset many Catholics after he met with Pope Francis, just a day after the Argentinian-born pope passed away. Vance was in the Vatican during the Easter weekend, and a MAGA influencer named Charlie Kirk posted a picture of Vance and his son, taken by White House photographer Emily Higgins, as they stood inside the Sistine Chapel.
JD held his son and gazed up at Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, but the reactions to the picture were not what Vance and the Trump Administration would’ve wanted. Instead of good responses, Vance was slaughtered by users on X because they found it very disrespectful of him to take pictures inside the sacred place.
“You do NOT take pictures in the Sistine Chapel,” one X user wrote, with another adding, “No respect. To take photos in the Sistine Chapel is strictly forbidden. Every true Catholic knows this… Rules are only to be followed by others, but not the American government – utterly despicable.”
“There is a strict rule of not taking pictures within the chapel,” another user wrote. “But we all know that some people wipe their feet on rules and even the law.”
“This isn’t about politics,” another user wrote. “It’s about respect. JD Vance knew better.”
Its website states that taking photographs inside the Sistine Chapel is strictly forbidden. Guards can even confiscate cameras and delete images if one breaks the rule. The rules were implemented in the 1980s when a Japanese television channel was granted the exclusive filming rights to document the restoration of the Sistine Chapel’s artwork.
Met Pope Francis the day before he passed away
Although the rights expired years later, the rule that no one can take photos has remained. This rule is widely known because it protects the artwork from potential damage from flashes, preserving the magic of the chapel.
The White House has not commented on why the picture was taken. Sadly, just a day after, on April 21, JD Vance’s meeting with Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, passed away at the age of 88.
In a post on X, Vance offered his condolences, writing, “My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him. I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill.”
It’s not only because of politics that JD Vance has sparked a lot of reactions among social media users. A while ago, the VP sparked rage online after his words in an interview with The New York Times last year.
In a piece published on October 12, Vance was asked whether his wife, Usha, had converted to Catholicism from her Hindu faith. Vance answered that she hadn’t, but that they still attended church together as a family. The internet didn’t notice that itself, but rather how he described his wife.
“She’s got three kids. Obviously I help with the kids, but because I’m kind of the one going to church, she feels more responsibility to keep the kids quiet in the church. And I just felt kind of bad. Like, oh, you didn’t sign up to marry a weekly churchgoer. Are you OK with this? And she was more than OK with it, and that was a big part of the confirmation that this was the right thing for me,” Vance told the New York Times.
JD Vance was criticized over comment about ‘his wife’s children
Many voiced their opinion online after JD Vance’s comment, which wasn’t all positive. Some even thought it was creepy.
“Throughout this campaign, JD Vance has repeatedly referred to his children as belonging to his wife and implies it’s her responsibility to care for them. This patriarchal and anachronistic parenting model is exactly what he will try to force on America if elected,” one person wrote, as per the Huffington Post.
“I’ve never heard a man refer to his kids as my wife’s children. That’s insane,” another wrote, while a third added, “*she* has three kids??? SHE has three kids? DID SHE MIRACLE THEM BY HERSELF, VANCE.”
“He’s done this repeatedly – referred to his kids as “her kids,” and it is so deeply fucking weird and such a red flag,” a fourth stated.
Donald Trump and JD Vance still have a lot of support from their voters six months into the presidential term. However, that doesn’t include everyone, and in this case, not even a former friend of JD Vance.
Canadian Conservative MP Jamil Jivani, who became a close friend of JD Vance at Yale Law School 15 years ago, has taken a firm stance against the VP, saying he should not be visiting Canada anytime soon.
For example, JD Vance wrote a comment on X in February about the northern neighbor, stating, “Spare me the sob story about how Canada is our ‘best friend.'” I love Canada and have many Canadian friends. But is the government meeting its NATO target for military spending? Are they stopping the flow of drugs into our country? I’m sick of being taken advantage of.
Longtime friend of JD Vance says, ‘please don’t visit Canada’
Jivani told Politico that it wouldn’t be “constructive” for JD Vance to visit his district in Canada anytime soon, as the Trump administration has provoked Canada.
“Right now we have strong political disagreements, and that’s kind of how it is,” Jamil Jivani, who ate dinner with Vance in Arlington, Virginia, in December and even attended the inauguration, said.
“They need to probably reconsider some of their rhetoric and their policy before coming to Canada,” the Republican MP continued. “Our country should deserve more respect before being able to welcome them.”
About the friendship with JD Vance, Jivani said, “We haven’t talked in a while. He’s busy, I’m busy. It’s just the nature of the work that we do. Certainly, the way they’ve talked about Canada has been a problem for me personally. I’m a proud Canadian. I’m focused on my community, and we’ll see what happens next.”
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