Former President Donald Trump is apparently smitten with his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, calling him up at all hours of the day to check in on and encourage his MAGA protégé in what Vance likens as “a kind of father figure” relationship, according to a New York Times report.
Trump has a record of publicly lashing out not just against foes, but against current and former allies, sometimes making his displeasure known in impulsive social media posts.
Vance, however, has been embraced by the Republican presidential nominee as a do-no-wrong prodigal son, one the Times reported he “can call multiple times in a day and at any hour,” citing campaign officials.
In one of Trump’s random phone-ups to his new bestie, Vance’s seven-year-old son was playing in the background—Trump asked to speak with him and asked the child for advice on a campaign statement.
“They’re friends, and they have a very strong relationship,” Lee Zeldin, a former GOP congressman who is friends with both members of the party’s ticket, told the newspaper. “They’re more like buddies or confidants who can be frank with each other and enjoy the time they spend together.”
They didn’t exactly bond over traditional buddy-buddy interests like football or craft beers—Zeldin noted the bond was forged, after Vance made amends for previous condemnations of Trump, over their love of “economic populism, staunch anti-immigration policy and a restrained approach to international affairs.”
Vance, 40, has called Trump, 78, “a kind of father figure,” the Times reported.
The biggest testimony to Trump’s trust in Vance is that he’s allowed his vice presidential nominee to freelance on the campaign trail—when Vance began aggressively peddling false conspiracies that Haitian immigrants in Ohio had eaten people’s pets, it was his own doing.
“Trump was never remotely upset,” the Times reported. “Instead, he joined in.” Trump went on to spread the baseless conspiracy theory to a television audience of 67 million when he debated Vice President Harris earlier this month: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in — they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said, in a moment that stunned and baffled many commentators.
As Trump was leaving the debate, he bumped into Vance, the Times reported, and they “briefly huddled, as if they were a pair of everyday buddies” and chatted about their forthcoming media appearances. “Go get ‘em,” Trump told his MAGA acolyte as they parted, patting him on the shoulder.
