Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) praised former President Trump’s decision to pick Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), noting that his inexperience in elected office is “good.”
“When people say J.D. Vance hasn’t been in office very long…well,” Huckabee said Saturday in an interview with NewsNation’s Hena Doba.
“The longer people stay in political office, especially in Washington, the more they become infected with this terrible disease of the Potomac River than anywhere else,” he added.
Vance was first elected to the Senate during the 2022 midterm elections after securing Trump’s endorsement — meaning he served less than one term in Congress.
However, the Ohio Republican wasn’t always so staunchly supportive of the former president. During Trump’s 2016 presidential run, Vance strongly opposed having Trump at the top of the ticket, calling the bid a “cultural hero” in an op-ed in The Atlantic.
The tide eventually turned, and Vance increasingly became one of the Republican Party’s presidential nominee’s most vocal supporters. During the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week, where Trump became the official GOP nominee, the former president ended the high stakes by naming the Ohio senator to his ticket.
Vance built much of his political career around his difficult upbringing in a low-income community in southwest Ohio. His best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” detailed the challenges he overcame in the Buckeye State, such as his mother’s struggle with addiction.
Huckabee praised Vance for opening up about his background, saying his addition to the Republican ticket was a good sign for the party.
“The Republican Party in the past was the country club and elitist party of the East and West Coasts. Not anymore,” Huckabee said. “It’s a working class party. I love this change.”
“JD Vance is the perfect embodiment of that,” he added.
The former governor also noted that former President Obama had a similar rise in politics, spending little time in the Senate before his successful run for president in 2008.
“Barack Obama was heralded as the best thing that ever happened to politics,” Huckabee said.
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