After Donald Trump Jr. tried to blame the media for exacerbating threats against his father, former President Donald Trump, by calling him "literally Hitler," CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins gave him a brutal reminder about something Trump's own running mate J.D. Vance himself had said.
Speaking to Collins in the spin room after Vance's debate with Vice President Kamala Harris's running mate Tim Walz, Trump Jr. said that the media is responsible for the heightened political tensions nationwide, implying that news reporters have stoked an environment that resulted in two failed attempts on his father's life.
He suggested these hostilities have been inflamed because the media has platformed critics who have compared his father to Adolf Hitler, the genocidal German Nazi Party leader responsible for the Holocaust and the deaths of more than 6 million Jews and other dissidents.
He said:
"This environment wasn't just created by Donald Trump."
To that, Collins responded:
"Everyone wants your dad to be safe. Nobody wants the threats against his life but you can't blame the media for those threats. There's no evidence that [the media] drove those."
Trump Jr. countered:
"[The media] allows people to have a platform to call someone literally Hitler every day for nine years, it creates it. Whether you want to believe it or not, that's a fact."
Then Collins gave him a crucial reminder:
"Did you know that J.D. Vance once likened your father to Hitler as well. He once questioned if he is 'America's Hitler.'"
You can watch the exchange in the video below.
Collins was drawing attention to Vance's previous identity as a "Never Trumper" who once described Trump as "America's Hitler" and "cultural heroin" unable to regard the needs of the working class.
In 2016, Vance frequently criticized Trump in interviews tied to his bestselling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which had positioned him as a notable voice on rural America and Trump’s ascent in politics. He argued that the then-Republican presidential nominee offered empty promises that wouldn’t address the problems plaguing communities like his hometown in Ohio.
Additionally, he referred to Trump as an “idiot” in tweets that have since been deleted. During an August 2016 NPR interview, he mentioned that he might consider voting for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton if he believed Trump had a chance of winning.
Prior to his Senate campaign, Vance apologized for previously calling Trump “reprehensible," telling CNN in 2021 that "I regret being wrong about the guy" while declaring that Trump was a good president.
Trump himself is a sucker for flattery and Vance's prior remarks appeared not to bother him when he and Vance appeared on Fox News for a joint interview during which he shared the real reason he picked Vance as his running mate:
“We’ve always had a good chemistry. And originally, JD was probably not for me but he didn’t know me. And then, when we got to know each other, he liked me, maybe more than anybody liked me. And he would stick up for me and he’d fight for the worker as much as I fight for the worker.”
“We just had an automatic chemistry."
People appreciated the fact-check and were also quick to mock Trump Jr.'s hypocrisy given his support for Vance.
CBS vice presidential debate moderator Margaret Brennan did question Vance about his prior remarks comparing Trump to Hitler, to which Vance claimed he has "always been open and sometimes, of course, I’ve disagreed with the president, but I’ve also been extremely open about the fact that I was wrong about Donald Trump.”
Nor did he mention that he once told a radio host that he doesn't believe Trump "actually cares about folks" or that he once said in a separate interview with the University of Chicago Institute of Politics that "some people who voted for Trump were racist and they voted for him for racist reasons."
And Vance certainly did not mention that he once liked tweets accusing Trump of committing "serial sexual assault," called him "one of the USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs," and harshly criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
It's clear Trump and his son have a lot of explaining to do.
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