J.D. Vance’s long friendship with a transgender friend who attended his wedding has been revealed—including how he spoke about hating cops and disparaged Donald Trump and conservative icon Antonin Scalia.
Sofia Nelson, a Yale Law School contemporary of Trump’s running mate, revealed how they corresponded by text and email for years until falling out over his support for a ban on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors.
The dossier of his emails and texts was revealed by the New York Times Saturday, with Nelson telling the paper the release was to highlight Vance’s shapeshifting from anti-Trump moderate Republican to MAGA culture warrior, accusing him of using his old position to amass money and his new one to amass power.
It is the latest example of a former friend of Vance releasing their correspondence and comes after his Yale roommate revealed the now-running mate once compared Trump to “Hitler.”
Nelson, now a public defender in Detroit, also shed new light on Vance’s wife Usha’s political views with the release, revealing a message from Vance in which he said she had no “ideological chops” and had been offered a Supreme Court clerkship by Democratic appointee Elena Kagan.
Vance’s rapid conversion from anti-Trump to all in-on the former president has been widely reported and the dossier shows him calling then-Republican primary contender Trump “a demagogue” in 2015. But the emails and texts show that he was not just anti-Trump in private: he also voiced views which are almost impossible to reconcile with any Republican orthodoxy.
In October 2014, after the police killing that summer of Michael Ferguson, an 18-year-old Black man in Ferguson, Missouri, caused widespread protests and violence, Vance wrote to Nelson: “I hate the police. Given the number of negative experiences I’ve had in the past few years, I can’t imagine what a Black guy goes through.”
He backed compensation for Black victims of “redlining,” the practice of withholding financial services from minority areas although he said he stopped short of reparations for African Americans for slavery.
He also attacked the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia before his death, in an exchange when he told Nelson that Scalia had offered Usha Vance a clerkship. Nelson wrote to Vance that Scalia was “homophobic” and Vance replied: “He’s become a very shrill old man. I used to really like him, and I used to believe all of his stuff about judicial minimalism was sincere. Now I see it as a political charade.”
The depth of friendship between the law school contemporaries, who had bonded over being from the midwest and not from privileged backgrounds, was clear. According to Nelson, Vance brought round baked goods after transition-related surgery. That day he said words to the effect of, “I don’t understand what you’re doing, but I support you,” Nelson told The Times. “And that meant a lot to me at the time, because I think that was the foundation of our friendship.” Nelson also attended the Vances’ joint Hindu and Christian wedding in Kentucky, where his grandparents were from, along with members of their law school circle.
And in 2016, when Vance published his Hillbilly Elegy, he sent Nelson an extract on email and said: “Hey Sofes, here’s an excerpt from my book. I send this to you not just to brag, but because I’m sure if you read it you’ll notice reference to ‘an extremely progressive lesbian.’ I recognize now that this may not accurately reflect how you think of yourself, and for that I am really sorry,” he wrote. “I hope you’re not offended, but if you are, I’m sorry! Love you, JD.”
Other emails show Vance attending Pride in San Francisco in 2015 and telling Nelson: “It felt more like a frat party than I expected. But still nice to see a lot of happy people.”
The two stayed in touch by Zoom during the early stages of the pandemic but their relationship ruptured when he publicly backed a ban on gender care for minors in Arkansas in 2021.
His campaign told The Times in a statement that it was “unfortunate” that 10-year-old messages “between friends” had been leaked. The statement said, “Senator Vance…has been open about the fact that some of his views from a decade ago began to change after becoming a dad and starting a family, and he has thoroughly explained why he changed his mind on President Trump. Despite their disagreements, Senator Vance cares for Sofia and wishes Sofia the very best.”
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