Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) tried to distract from his past praise for former President Barack Obama by comparing Obama’s skills as a family man to those of Donald Trump’s.
During an appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, host Kristen Welker pressed the senator to say if he still thinks of Obama as an “admirable man,” quoting from a 2017 opinion piece Vance wrote for The New York Times.
While Vance, who is reportedly one of the main contenders in the race to be Trump’s running mate, admitted to Welker that Obama was a “good husband and father,” he said that the same is true for Trump.
“I grew up in a broken family, Kristen, and I just wanted to be a good husband and dad,” he said. “And certainly Barack Obama, despite my many political disagreements with him, he’s clearly a good husband and a father. By the way, I’d say the same thing about Donald Trump, whose children love him.”
“I think this is one of the things the media often misses about Trump,” Vance continued. “Is how genuinely devoted he is to his family, to his grandchildren, and how part of his pro-life messaging, his fundamental pro-life view, is that we ought to make it easier for more American families to have those thriving children and thriving families.”
Although Trump’s children have spoken favorably of him in the past, with some of them even supporting him during his hush money case, Trump’s marriage history isn’t as complimentary.
He is the only U.S. president to have been married three times and divorced twice.
Vance then returned his focus to Obama, saying to Welker, “Was Barack Obama a good president? No. Was he a good husband and father? Yes.”
In his 2017 piece, Vance called the Republican Party’s failure to “disconnect legitimate political disagreements from the fact that [Obama] himself is an admirable man” one of the “great failures of recent political history.”
“For at a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams,” he wrote. “For that, I’ll miss him, and the example he set.”