Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R) lauded former President Trump’s decision to pick Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), noting that his inexperience in elected office is “good.”
“When people say JD Vance hasn’t been in office that long … good,” Huckabee said Saturday in an interview with NewsNation’s Hena Doba.
“The longer people stay in a political office, particularly if it’s in Washington, more so than anywhere else, they get infected by this horrible Potomac River disease,” he added.
Vance was first elected to the Senate during the 2022 midterm elections after securing Trump’s endorsement — meaning he’s served less than a term in Congress.
The Ohio Republican hasn’t always been such a staunch support of the former president, however. During Trump’s 2016 presidential run, Vance strongly opposed having Trump at the top of the ticket, calling the bid “cultural heroin” in an op-ed in The Atlantic.
The tides eventually turned, and Vance has steadily become one of the GOP presidential nominee’s most vocal supporters. During the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, where Trump became the official GOP nominee, the former president ended the high stakes veepstakes, naming the Ohio senator to his ticket.
Vance built much of his political career around his difficult upbringing in a low-income community of southwestern Ohio. His best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” detailed the challenges he overcame in the Buckeye State, such as his mother’s struggle with addiction.
Huckabee commended Vance for opening up about his background, saying that his addition to the GOP ticket was a good sign for the party.
“The Republican Party in the past has been the silk-stocking, country club, elitist party of the east and west coast. It isn’t anymore,” Huckabee said. ”It’s a working class party. I love this change.”
“JD Vance is the perfect embodiment of that,” he added.
The former governor also noted that former President Obama had a similar rise through politics, spending little time in the Senate before his successful bid for president in 2008.
“Barack Obama was heralded as the greatest thing that ever happened to politics,’ Huckabee said.
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