Sources say Vice President JD Vance sought to advise Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump, while his spokesman rejects that account’s central characterization.
The Independent reports that Vance asked an intermediary to connect him with Jake Sullivan, then a senior policy adviser to Clinton’s presidential campaign. The two later discussed campaign strategy, unnamed sources claimed.
Vance allegedly urged Clinton’s team to focus on Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Clinton eventually lost all four states, while Trump won the presidency.
Vance spokeswoman Taylor Van Kirk rejected the claim that he was working toward a Clinton victory. “We 100 percent reject the characterization that he was trying to help Hillary win,” she said.
That denial challenges the alleged purpose of the outreach. In the quoted response, however, Van Kirk did not address each reported detail about the contact with Sullivan or their discussion.
An unnamed intermediary claimed Vance personally requested the introduction to Sullivan. The alleged conversation came while Vance was known for Hillbilly Elegy and years before his rise to the vice presidency.
The account now carries added weight because Vance’s past statements receive close attention as Republicans debate his political future. His position in the Trump administration makes the disputed 2016 contact more than a forgotten campaign footnote.
As The Independent reported, the intermediary described Vance’s request this way:
“JD called me and said, ‘Can you put me in touch with Jake Sullivan?’”
The same source claimed Vance believed Clinton was neglecting the voters and states most likely to decide the election. His reported advice focused on working-class communities and the political cost of Clinton’s foreign-policy record.
“He listed Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and what we now call the Blue Wall states. And he’s, like, ‘She needs to come here instead of being down with Beyoncé in Miami. She needs to come here and apologize for the Iraq War. Apologize for sending so many people, my community, all the people in all these states whose sons and fathers died and everybody just forgot about them.’”
The source also attributed a blunt assessment to Vance: “I hate Hillary. But I hate Trump more. Trump can’t win. He can’t win. Hillary’s going to lose, but she doesn’t have to.”
The known record leaves a central distinction unresolved. Van Kirk denied that Vance sought to help Clinton win, while unnamed sources described advice aimed at improving her campaign against Trump.
No exact date or meeting location was provided. The intermediary was not named, and no evidence showed whether the conversation produced any change in Clinton’s campaign strategy.
Those gaps matter. An introduction and strategy discussion would establish contact, but they would not settle Vance’s motive without stronger documentation or named testimony.
That is especially relevant as Vance builds a public record beyond campaign politics, including a debated stay-at-home parent plan. Political opponents have every incentive to frame his earlier views as evidence against his current standing.
Still, Vance’s own 2016 text messages show deep concern about the Republican Party’s relationship with working-class voters. Josh McLaurin, his former Yale Law School roommate, released a message attributed to Vance.
“We are, whether we like it or not, the party of lower-income, lower-education white people.”
In another passage from the message, Vance argued that Republicans had to offer those voters something concrete. He warned that otherwise a political figure would exploit their concerns.
“I have been saying for a long time that we need to offer these people SOMETHING (and h***, maybe even expand our appeal to working class black people in the process) or a demagogue would.”
McLaurin also wrote on X that Vance had described Trump as having the potential to be “America’s Hitler.” The exact date and full wording of McLaurin’s post were not provided.
Vance later addressed his past opposition to Trump during a Newsweek interview conducted in June, though the year was not identified. He said his earlier assumptions about Trump and major American institutions had proved wrong.
“[It was] a crazy journey, man. But, but again, I mean, it's you have to ask yourself, first of all, I thought Donald Trump would be a failed president if he got elected. He was not. I thought that America's institutions were fundamentally functioning. They were not. I thought that the military leaders who told us this about a war were the scientific experts who told us this other thing about a pandemic were fundamentally maybe not always right but fundamentally wise people who were mostly right. I was wrong.”
That explanation is direct: Vance says later events changed his judgment. His current profile includes campaign work for Republicans and administration actions such as the COVID-loan fraud policy.
The 2016 account should therefore be judged with care. The reported meeting and warnings deserve scrutiny, but the claim that Vance tried to elect Clinton remains disputed by his office.
Political growth is legitimate. So is demanding a full and honest account when yesterday’s private advice collides with today’s public leadership.