J.D. Vance’s former trans friend speaks out about how he turned hateful

President Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), was a different person before he got into far-right politics, the New York Times reports. This includes delivering baked goods to a transgender person who got top surgery.

“It hurt my feelings when he started saying hateful things about trans people,” said Sofia Nelson, a former classmate of Vance at Yale Law School.

Related:

JD Vance: An overview of his life and stance on LGBTQ+ rights

He opposes same-sex marriage, any legal recognition of trans people, and considers LGBTQ+ people and allies as “groomers.”

They had said that Vance, while at Yale, delivered them baked goods while they were recovering from top surgery. They were reportedly close friends, with their friendship continuing after Vance graduated in 2013, but this ended when Vance supported an Arkansas bill that restricted transgender care for minors in 2021

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He had another classmate at Yale who has since cut ties with him – Josh McLaurin, a Democratic state senator from Georgia. The two stayed in touch up until when Trump first ran for president. Vance reportedly told McLaurin on Facebook, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

McLaurin had brought up this post to him during Vance’s Senate run in 2022. 

“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 said to the Times.

The Times also recounts how Vance’s ties to gay billionaire and right-wing megadonor Peter Thiel began during his time at Yale. He spent hours trying to track down contact information for Thiel after a talk Thiel had given at Yale. This led to the two getting in touch, eventually paving the way for Vance’s career to be funded.

The specific relationship of the two ties into Vance’s political ambitions. “Peter’s talk remains the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School,” Vance wrote. “He articulated a feeling that had until then remained unformed: that I was obsessed with achievement in se — not as an end to something meaningful, but to win a social competition.”

Vance has many notable anti-LGBTQ+ policies that contrast with his previous sympathy towards transgender friends. These include his opposition to the  Respect for Marriage Act, one that supports same-sex and interracial marriage, his usage of terms like “crazy gender theory” and “far-left gender ideology” to describe the modern trans rights movement, his rejection of nonbinary individuals, opposition to trans kids in sports, opposition to trans people in preferred gender bathrooms, and opposition to gender-affirming care for trans youth.

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