JD Vance isn’t worried Trump will try to kill him if he’s tapped for vice president

You might think that anyone looking for a spot on Donald Trump’s ticket might be a little worried about what happened to the last man who had the job. You know, the man who ran for his life on January 6, 2021, as the frothing Trump fans who stormed the U.S. Capitol searched for him and gleefully chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”

But at least one vice presidential candidate isn’t losing sleep over it: Senator JD Vance of Ohio. Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about Trump’s treatment of Pence — and his support for the rioters who wanted to kill Pence – Vance was concerned, he simply denied that Pence ever had anything to worry about in the first place.

“Kaitlyn, I am extremely skeptical that Mike Pence’s life was ever in danger,” Vance said. “I think politics and people like to really exaggerate things from time to time.”

This would certainly come as a relief to Pence, who has apparently been under the mistaken impression that things were actually bad that day, and that it was Trump’s fault.

“(H)is reckless words endangered my family and everyone in the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable,” Pence said last year.

Members of Pence’s Secret Service were even concerned about them own safety, according to testimony during the House of Representatives committee investigation on January 6.

“The members of the VP department at that point began to fear for their own lives,” he said. one witness testified. How they could protect Pence if they feared their own lives were in danger is an interesting question that Vance doesn’t answer. But he has a way of making all that irrelevant.

“A lot of people in the Democratic Party, Kaitlyn, act like January 6 is the scariest moment of their lives,” he said. So there you have it. Pence, apparently a member of the Democratic Party, is probably exaggerating about the dangers of January 6 anyway.

By the way, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, who was that? widely mocked after a video was released of him appearing to run for his life through the Capitol — is probably another one of Democrats’ exaggerations. Sure, he calls himself a Republican, and sure he gave a raised fist of apparent support to the protesters earlier that day, but his colleague Vance says the violent crowd Trump incited wasn’t a problem because Vance is now a big Trump fanboy is.

This is the same Vance in 2016 called Trump “harmful” and “reprehensible” and wondered in a message to a friend whether Trump “could be a cynical bastard like Nixon, who wouldn’t be so bad (and might even be useful) or he might be America’s Hitler.”

But that was then, and this is now, and now Vance is one of the contenders on Trump’s VP list— which means that whatever he once thought of Trump, and whatever cruelty and damage Trump inflicted on his first vice president, simply doesn’t matter anymore.

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