Buttigieg compares JD Vance to Mike Pence in rebuke of Trump VP pick

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg weighed in on former President Trump’s decision to elevate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) to his 2024 running mate, comparing him to former Vice President Mike Pence.

“I guess maybe not as a politician but as a human being what I’ll say is that I hope things work out a little bit better for JD Vance than they did for Mike Pence,” he said Friday evening on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

Buttigieg, who served as mayor of South Bend, Ind., while Pence was governor of the state, said he watched the former vice president sacrifice his values to gain his position in the Trump administration, pointing to Pence’s staunch Evangelical values.

Trump formally accepted the GOP nomination for president Thursday evening at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Buttigieg, who briefly ran against President Biden in 2020, cautioned that Vance was repeating history by joining Trump’s ticket as VP, in what he characterized as a power grab.

“I knew a lot of people like him when I got to Harvard,” Buttigieg said, referring to Vance.  “I found a lot of people like him who would say whatever they needed to get ahead, and 5 years ago that seemed like being the anti-Trump Republican.”

Vance was heavily critical of Trump during his first campaign in 2016, calling him “cultural heroin” in a piece for The Atlantic and allegedly likening him to Hitler in a private exchange. 

In the years since, the Ohio Republican — who won his election for Senate in the 2022 midterm elections — has transformed into a Trump loyalist. The victory marks his first seat in public office.

In the job, he has served as an active advocate for the former president’s policy positions, including cutting funding to Ukraine amid its war with Russia, and participating in election denialism.

At 39 years old, Vance looks to be Trump’s political heir in the Republican party — an observation the former president pointed to in his speech concluding the Republican convention.

“JD, you’re going to be doing this for a long time. Enjoy the ride,” Trump said. 

Buttigieg warned that Vance’s alignment with Trump on the issue could also lead to political ruin, pointing to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, as the bookend of Pence’s political career. Trump had repeatedly urged Pence to contest Biden’s electoral win, though the former Indiana governor pushed back, as he had no constitutional authority to make such a call.

“It ended on the west front of the Capitol with Trump supporters proposing that he be hanged for using the one shred of Integrity he still had to stand up to an attempt to overthrow the government,” Buttigieg said Friday.