JD Vance once savaged Donald Trump as a “cynical a**hole” and compared him to Adolf Hitler in a furious rant before he became vice-president. The former Ohio senator was publicly vocal in his distrust of the now president, calling himself “a never- Trump guy” who refused to vote for him. He also called Mr Trump an “idiot” and “reprehensible” during his 2017-2021 term in the White House.

He wrote on social media: “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.” And: “My God what an idiot.” Privately, his comments were far stronger. The Republican wrote to an associate on Facebook in 2016: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

The same year, he also liked a tweet of a picture of Mr Trump and OJ Simpson, with a caption reading, “Here is an old picture of one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs. Also in picture: OJ Simpson”.

The now VP also wrote an op-ed for The New York Times in 2016, in which he wrote, “Mr Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office”.

While being interviewed on a Kentucky radio station in 2016, host Matt Jones said to Mr Vance, “I cannot stand Trump because I think he’s a fraud … I think he’s a total fraud that is exploiting these people”.

He responded: “I do too … I don’t think he actually cares about folks.”

He then told NPR’s Terry Gross: “I think that I’m going to vote third party because I can’t stomach Trump. I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”

Mr Vance also voiced his opposition to the American Health Care Act which, with the support of Mr Trump, would have partially repealed the Affordable Care Act had it not failed to pass through the Senate.

He sent a message to a friend in 2017: “Can you imagine running as an anti-AHCA populist who thinks Trump is a moral disaster. Where’s my constituency?”

However, the VP has clearly shifted his loyalties, admitting that he focused too much on Mr trump’s “stylistic element” rather than his policies.

He told The New York Times last June: “I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration.”