The FRONTLINE Interviews
Sofia Nelson
Vance Law School Classmate
Sofia Nelson is a Detroit-based public defender. They attended Yale Law School with JD Vance.
The following interview was conducted by Gabrielle Schonder for FRONTLINE on August 7, 2024. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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JD Vance at Yale Law School
Can you describe JD when you guys first met?Who was JD at law school, and what were his political views at the time?
JD and I met in the fall of 2010, and he was an affable guy, friendly, and he felt, like me, out of place in the Yale Law School environment, and I think that was our initial point of connection.He certainly was a conservative, but he was starting to question a lot of the orthodoxies of the mainstream conservative movement, particularly around the culture wars, which obviously is very different from where he stands today.But the JD Vance that I got to know really admired Andrew Sullivan.He believed in LGBTQ rights, marriage equality, and generally saw that sort of stuff as a distraction.He certainly at the time was concerned about working-class Americans and whether or not Republican economic policy was serving them, but he was also very skeptical of welfare programs.
Let me just ask you quickly about the culture wars right here.What was his attitude towards the culture wars, 2010, 2011?
I think it continued from 2010 through at least 2017.I think he was frustrated with both sides of the culture wars.I did not share his perspective, but he didn't like identity politics.He didn't appreciate the left's focus on it.But he also saw being anti-equality as a distraction, something that didn't meaningfully help people's lives, shouldn't be a focus of politics.He certainly supported marriage equality.He supported the repeal of [the federal policy] "Don't ask, don't tell."I remember talking to him specifically about that.And he supported ...just generally, I think, a more colorblind approach to the world that I didn't think was realistic, but he was supportive of that.We had extensive conversations about affirmative action, and there was an acknowledgment on his part that race mattered, that race was a relevant and salient factor in people's lives.But he wanted to see ...a remedy for the disparate financial circumstances of people on the basis of race that was somehow race-neutral. And he was really trying to struggle through, like, how do we achieve that?
And abortion, was that something that came up then?
Yes, we did discuss that.Abortion has always made JD deeply uncomfortable.I think from a young age he felt like it was wrong.But he at least communicated to me that his grandmother, who we all know was a very big influence in his life, had basically told him, "You don't know what someone's going through.You can't put yourself in their shoes, and it's ultimately none of the government's business; that each person needs to be able to make their own health care decisions, and you can't know why they're making that decision, and you really don't—you're not entitled to know."And so I think he was still personally struggling with being raised by, I think he would acknowledge, probably one of the most influential people in his life, getting that message, and his personal discomfort.So I think he tried to balance the two and largely just stayed away from it as a main political topic.
What did he tell you about his background?
He talked to me about where he grew up, his mother's struggle with addiction.And we had very similar backgrounds, so we didn't do a lot of explaining.It was more kind of, what are all these other people's worlds like?A curiosity or kind of a shock as to what we were surrounded by, which I had a little bit more exposure to than him because I had gone to a private university for undergrad.It wasn't quite the level that Yale was.I went to Tufts [University], so the level of wealth and kind of ...elitism was much greater at Yale, but I had had a taste of it.And he was coming from Ohio State [University], so he hadn't been exposed to it in the same way yet.And he came from a working-class community.He was an average person, but not average in ambition.I think that was something that—it was readily obvious from the second I met him.
He had higher aspirations.
Yes.It was very clear that he was ambitious, and politically ambitious.It's not as if he ever told me, like, “I'm going to run for president,” but we had talked about it in 2018, or leading up to the 2018 election, he was exploring a potential run for the Senate against Sherrod Brown.And that was not the least bit surprising to me that that was his trajectory.It was a question of when, not if.
He describes a 2011 speech in which Peter Thiel visits campus as one of the most momentous events of his life.Do you remember when that speech happened?Did you, by chance, attend that speech?
I certainly didn't attend the speech.I do remember that it happened.And I do remember that he was kind of enamored with Peter Thiel.And I didn't really know much about Peter Thiel at the time, didn't pay much attention to it, but later in our relationship I challenged him, because I had read some things that Peter Thiel had written, including a piece that he wrote where he questioned the wisdom of extending the right to vote to women and how both the modern welfare state and extending the franchise to women destroyed our democracy, and I said, “Hey, JD, why do you like this guy so much?” … And JD really brushed me off and said, “He takes me seriously; he likes ideas,” and it was the first hint that JD was willing to look past some really dangerous and bizarre opinions of certain people and embrace them because they were helping him and helping his career.
Vance Publishes Hillbilly Elegy
Were you talking to him around the time of the book coming out?I'm wondering, as a friend, what it was like to see your friend go from nobody to celebrity and what that experience was like for JD.
Yes, we were still friends at the time of his book.I read his book.There's a lot of it I didn't agree with, but I was generally supportive, and I think that's part of the public record at this point.Our email exchanges were around that time where I told him, “Congratulations.I'm proud of you.” We didn't share a politics, we didn't share a common understanding of how to solve these problems, but I think we saw similar problems.And I thought at the time there was a genuine desire to solve problems, not divide people, and he seemed to be trying to be a cultural translator of sorts.I mean, he thought it was funny and I thought it was funny that he was getting rich translating working-class white people's experiences to the people he supposedly hated so much, the liberal elites of the coast.But there's nothing inherently wrong with that.And it was making him pretty rich.
You guys would joke about that in messages?Or how do you know that?
I joked with him about it.And sometimes he would try to explain ...this group of people to me.And I was like, “JD, I don't need you—I grew up in a rural, small town that went overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.I'm very well aware.[There are] Trump voters in my family.” So I would kind of needle him about that,like, “I don't need your help understanding that.” We would disagree about—and this is in the emails that I shared with <i>The New York Times</i> and have been published—but there's a disproportionate—people who support Trump are disproportionately, have very racist views as compared to those who are supporting Hillary Clinton.But he was trying to argue that that coexisted with Trump's appeal and wasn't driving it.And I certainly understood that not everyone that was voting for Donald Trump is an unrepentant racist.That's not how I feel.But there seemed to be, to me, a direct connection between Trump's rhetoric and those supporting him being disproportionately racist because he was advancing this racist rhetoric.And JD would acknowledge that the rhetoric was racist, acknowledge that it was dangerous, reprehensible.He's used all sorts of words to describe Donald Trump at that time, but he kept trying to disentangle the two, right?
I'm going to go back to it, but while we're right here, what is he saying to you privately about Trump?
Morally reprehensible, a disaster.The more white people that vote for Donald Trump, the worse Black people's lives will be.I mean, it seemed very genuine at the time, like a deep, actual concern about the effect that Trump's rhetoric and policies were going to have on the lives of average Americans, and a concern about that, and a concern about where our politics was headed, that it had become so divisive and cruel.He was someone who had a relatively diverse friend group, both from the military and college and law school. … And if you just look at, like, who was invited to his wedding, it was LGBTQ people, people of all different racial backgrounds, a lot of first-generation immigrants, members of our law school class.And, again, at the time, I thought that his friendships with that diverse group of people were genuine and that he showed care and concern about their lives and their experiences, and he certainly demonstrated in our extensive correspondence that concern.
Vance’s Response to Nelson’s Gender-Affirming Surgery
Can you tell me a bit about his response to your own gender-affirming care?
Yeah.So in 2012, I had gender-affirming surgery.I had already identified as transgender for quite some time, presented how I present now, and—but I had what's colloquially called top surgery in 2012, and he was kind and supportive.He didn't ask a lot of questions, but he was very respectful.And he brought me baked goods when I was recovering.And in fact, I just heard recently through a mutual friend that they went to him because they were like, “Is Sofia changing their name?Is Sofia using different pronouns?” And apparently he was really sweet and thoughtful and kind of saying, “OK, well, my understanding is they're still using Sofia, and she or they is fine.” And, you know, just showing the kind of man that he demonstrated when he sent me the apology when his book came out, because he recognized that maybe using the term “lesbian” wasn't how I thought of myself.I don't think he was well versed in the intricacies of LGBTQ but in this mindset of, “I get to know people for who they are.What people want to do with their own bodies is their business, and as long as they're not doing anything to hurt me, I'm going to continue to be respectful and kind.” I mean, it's just basic Midwest.There are values, I think, of most people, but particularly here in the Midwest, kindness is kind of what we're known for, and minding your own business.I think both things are common here.And so he demonstrated that with me, and that's part of why I felt comfortable with him is I didn't feel like I had to explain myself, and he was just going to accept me for who I was.
Vance’s Shift to the Right
Let me jump a bit ahead in our timeline to 2020, because it seems like such a defining period for him.What political issues are upsetting him then, and are you guys in touch during this year?
I think our communication, our level of communication started to fall off the more he started to express fringe ideas.I followed him on Twitter and would see what he was saying and occasionally would see him on—people would send me clips of him on Tucker Carlson, and I would watch them.So I was aware of the slow—it wasn't that slow; it was relatively abrupt, actually.But I was aware of the change.
As a friend, what are you noticing shifting?
I started to pull away.He started to pull away, too.It certainly wasn't one-sided.I think we just drifted apart and weren't communicating as much, and the kind of lengthy back-and-forth on various issues slowly dissipated around probably 2018, 2019.I did visit him in Ohio in 2018.We had some conversations that were still pretty—I mean, we talked about the Muslim ban, and we had this really funny exchange where I was like, “Well, it's unconstitutional.” Now, obviously the U.S.Supreme Court disagreed with me, but JD kind of admitted that he had never really read the 14th Amendment and didn't know exactly what it said, because I said that this is obviously an equal protection problem, right?And he was like, “Well, I'm no constitutional law expert, so I'm not going to get into that.” But then he tried to debate the—I mean, he agreed that it didn't make sense, that there wasn't a problem that was being solved, but he wasn't sure why everyone was making such a big deal out of it at the same time.I was like, “Well, because it makes Muslim Americans feel unwanted in their own country.That's why.It's mean, right?It's mean-spirited.It's divisive.” I saw a creeping tolerance for Trump beginning to set in around that period, and it coincided with the fact that he wanted to run for Senate.
Did he ever talk to you about what's happening on the left around this time?
Yeah, he thought the left was becoming like—I mean, he loved—he kept saying it would just be more like Bernie Sanders, more like Bernie Sanders.And I was like, “Well, I voted for Bernie Sanders.” … He really didn't like Hillary Clinton.We had a lot of back-and-forth.He was really struggling with what to do, and her “deplorables” comment really set him off, which is so interesting.
Given all the things that Trump has said that he's been able to forgive, but he couldn't forgive this one.… The idea that there are people who think the average American is dumb and that they're better than them really pisses him off.It pisses me off, too, but I come to a lot of very different conclusions about how to address that.
The summer of 2020, the George Floyd summer—are you talking then?
Not as much, but yes.His reactions after Michael Brown were very compassionate, very understanding.That's when we had the exchange where he said, “I hate the police.I want to see the police get out of a mindset of control to a mindset of protection.And I support body-worn cameras.I've had a lot of negative experiences with the police.I can't imagine what a Black man goes through.” I'm paraphrasing, but you can turn to <i>The New York Times</i> and get the exact quote.And we had a lot of back-and-forth on that.
And I think he recognized that the disparate treatment of Black Americans by police was a real problem and that it needed to be addressed and that there were potential policy solutions to that and that it wasn't just a problem because individual Black people were being murdered by the police, which is obviously horrific and tragic and should never happen, but for the messaging, the way it makes Black Americans feel.He wasn't like, “Rah-rah, Black Lives Matter,” but he was sympathetic, and he didn't send me anything condemning what was happening in Ferguson or concerns about that.
And then in the wake of George Floyd, there was a shift, which is like this kind of repeating some of the conspiracy theories about who was funding Black Lives Matter, and I was like, “I don't really know about Black Lives Matter, the institution, but I know the protests I'm going to are run by local people in my community.No one's paying them.These are organic.Black Lives Matter isn't an institution so much as a social movement.And if you want to start picking apart some national organization that has a 501c3, I don't know much about that, but I do know that the people on the ground here, at least in Detroit, where I'm going to protest, are people that I know from the community, and this is an organic response to a fear and an anger, and in a real sense, of hope that maybe this is the inflection point, that something could, really change.”
Did he talk to you about what the left looked like?
I think he started saying the stuff about the left just being disproportionate; we should be more concerned about fentanyl.It was just, instead of engaging with the substance of arguments, which he used to always do, which is why we had so many extensive conversations on political issues, because we were both engaging with the actual substance, it was more of these, “The left is hysterical; the left is ignoring the real problems,” that sort of deflection that has now gotten into him writing a foreword for a book that calls the left not human.
What do you make of the reality that somebody you were once close to is now [taking these positions]?
I told him that directly: “The man you're becoming, the voice you're becoming, is so far from the person that I knew, and I'm really [saddened] by that, and I think you're starting to harm real people.” His response was, “I will always love you.I have a 1:30.” That's how it started.“I have a 1:30.This has been fun.” It wasn't fun for me.“I will always love you, but I really think the left's cultural progressivism is making it difficult for normal people to live their lives.” And that division, which I think is ever-present—and he's been using this term a lot on the campaign trail, “normal people”—this division of America between normal people and everyone else is extremely destructive.
It obviously has its roots in homophobia, right?The idea that queer people are abnormal.But he's also just talking about people who, for whatever reason, don't have children; people who care about diversity and inclusion; people who didn't grow up the way that he did.And I think it's a real mistake about where—unlike JD, I've lived in a working-class Midwestern community the vast majority of my life, and I've never lived in San Francisco, I've never lived in D.C., and I don't have any billionaire friends or benefactors.And the average people that I deal with every day here in Michigan don't want to see their neighbor as their enemy, and they want to treat everyone with kindness, because that's a core value, and respect.And they want to mind their business a little bit.And I think that he's about to see how fringe his ideas are.They're dangerous; they're scary; they are weird.But I do think they're out of step with mainstream America.
Is he coming from a position of it's happening too fast, this obsession with these—with gender, the obsession with identity?It's happening too fast, and it's too much: Is that the position?
I don't really understand, intellectually, the position.A change is hard, and we always see a backlash, right?And obviously Donald Trump is in part a backlash to the first Black president of the United States.The gender moral panic that we are living through—which I do think it's a moral panic; I think there's a lot of corollaries between the gender panic and the Satanic panic of the '90s, which is there's no there there, right?There's no actual problem; there's no actual threat.No one's being forced to transition, and no one's being encouraged to do that, in fact.There are some children, after much therapy and consultation with medical professionals and the support of their parents, have hormone replacement therapy, a completely reversible treatment that just delays puberty.
Let me ask you, though. Is there also this feeling that JD and others have that we're talking about these issues and we're not talking about the issues that are affecting the communities that JD comes from or that you come from; that by focusing here, we're ignoring—
I think that's a real scarcity mindset, a zero-sum game thing. And I really push back on that with him, because I represent people every single day who are struggling with addiction.I know up close and personal what's going on.I lost friends in high school; people in my class overdosed.I have had family members [who] struggle with addiction.I understand addiction on a very real level, and I'm fighting every day to get people help, get access to effective treatment.And the idea that the problem is some kid from Guatemala that's fleeing gang violence, no.The problem is, especially in rural communities, we don't have treatment providers.You try to call this line, and you get a busy signal.And there's your wait list. When you need detox, you need it now.
There are real policy solutions that if we cared about people that were struggling with addiction, we could funnel money and resources into keeping them out of jail, getting them into treatment and recognizing that for most people, relapse is part of recovery, right?And these were things I would talk to him about, because it's certainly not just white people that are dying, right?Here in the city of Detroit, the blackest city over 100,000 people in America, there's fentanyl, and I have clients that are overdosing.And it's scary.And I want them to get the resources that they need.I can tell you right now, this tough-on-crime, lock-them-all-up-and-throw-away-the-key isn't working, and it's not working because the most dangerous time, the time that you are most likely to overdose and die, is the first 72 hours after you're released from jail, because your tolerance has gone down; it's nonexistent.And when you go and you take the same doses you were taking before you went into the system, you're going to be dead. And so there's endless studies about that.It's well known.And so what do we do when we catch somebody who's struggling with addiction?You've got to put them into treatment, not jail.But he's just saying—I mean, he's not actually seriously engaging with any of these problems, and he used to.
And so I know he's capable of it.It's not like this man isn't smart.And there are real people on the ground here in Michigan who never went to Yale and who are engaging with these things, who are studying them, who are releasing people from jail with Narcan.There are people who really care and are trying to save lives.And there are evidence-based solutions to these problems, and that's what he's just completely stopped being interested in.
I think about him bringing you baked goods after your own experience, and then I think about the culture wars that he's talking about today.Is it possible that he's evolved on these issues, that what he experiences with a friend at this stage in life versus what he experiences later in life when he has to take a political stance?Is it possible he's changed?
I mean, anything's possible.I've come to my conclusions.The American people are free to come to their own, looking at all the evidence.What I think is important to understand is he's not only changed his position on every conceivable issue that affects everyday Americans, but he's also changed the way he talks about people.I think you can engage with all sorts of concerns about, "Are we not including people because they're not super on top of the right terminology or the terminology that's being mostly used, or are we going to be generous in trying to help people come along?"There's a way that you can engage with maybe aspects of what people colloquially call "cancel culture" that is, I think, focused on actually trying to make a more inclusive society and a more forgiving one.And then there's a way to name-call, be divisive, be angry, right?JD Vance has said that people who are advocating for access to trans health care are groomers.JD Vance has said that the surgery that I had was gruesome.That's not the kind of language you use if you're trying to solve problems.That's the kind of language you use if you are trying to stoke fear and rile people up in anger.
Why Nelson Spoke Out
Why share the correspondence publicly?
There were two main motivations, and it was a really difficult decision.One was I wasn't sure it was going to matter. So I'm just going to blow up my life, lose my anonymity, expose myself to an immense amount of transphobic hate,for what?But ultimately I thought about, "It's never the wrong time to do the right thing." And could I live with myself if I didn't?And the two "whys" there were, one, I do think the American people are smart, and I do think authenticity and integrity are super important to them.So say whatever you want about Donald Trump.He's been relatively authentically himself his entire political career.I don't like it.I think it is, and to borrow a word from JD, noxious, but this is a man who took out a full-page ad in <i>The New York Times</i> asking for the execution of five innocent Black boys who were wrongfully accused of a crime in New York in the ‘90s, right?And he stood by that.…
People like authentic people.And so I thought that the American people had a right to know where this man stood on the issues prior to entering politics, because I think it reflects on that.Is he authentic?Does he have integrity?And my conclusions are my conclusions, right?Everyone has an opinion.No one needs to listen to mine.It's not that important.But they can read the emails and decide for themselves, "Is this man authentic?Does he have integrity?" Right?And I think the American people are entitled to all that information.
And the second reason is because he's coming after trans kids, and I was a trans kid.I know what it's like to think that there's something wrong with you, that you have to fix it, and if you can't fix it, you're never going to be able to lead a full and happy life.And thankfully I was wrong about that.There is nothing wrong with me.I have a full and happy adult life.
Do you understand the perspective that JD and others on the right have about [gender-affirming care for minors] specifically being too far, too much, too fast?
So, from my point of view, this is a medical decision that is best left in the hands of doctors, parents, and children to make for themselves.And it's been well studied.It saves lives.And surgery is just—there's a lot of fear mongering happening and a lot of misinformation.
Surgery is just not medically recommended for minors.It is—what puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy do is it delays puberty so that a child can reach adulthood without severe body dysmorphia that can cause suicidal ideation and other really dangerous things, so that when they are an adult, they can then make any further decisions that they want to make.And so I do understand that change is scary.There's been literally no social movement that we've ever gone through where there hasn't been a backlash, whether it's the Civil Rights Movement and then we see the backlash to busing, whether it's the beginning of the gay rights movement and then you see Anita Bryant and “Don't ask, don't tell,” and there's a lot of stuff that flow from every social movement.We have the women's rights movement, and then we have Rush Limbaugh and “feminazis.” This is not new.This is the same story we're going through over and over again.But again, I know what it's like to be a trans kid; I know what it's like to access gender-affirming care.And I trust parents and doctors to be careful, to be thoughtful.The vast majority of parents love their children, and they're cautious in making any decisions for their kids.I don't think anyone's rushing into these decisions.
Let me ask you about the Arkansas bill and how that conversation happens between you and JD.Who starts it?
Yeah, I saw his tweet, and I can't remember what language he used, but it was something, again, angry and divisive and cruel, which is so anathema to the person that I had developed a friendship with, because again, we disagreed all the time, but there was never name-calling.There was never this mean-spirited cruelty.And so to see that tone happen, which I think it's both the substance and the tone that are important to acknowledge, right?Because yes, we evolve on issues, but do we evolve in the way we talk about people?I've changed my mind on a lot of issues, but I haven't suddenly started being mean.I think that's an important distinction because it's a personality change almost.So he tweets about support of this Arkansas bill, and I reach out: “Do you support this?” Obviously he said publicly he did, but I was hoping to engage in, like, substantive conversation about it like we had historically done.And the conversation was not in the tenor of our prior political disagreements.He told me that I had been brainwashed by Jeff Bezos, and he—it's just—it was dismissive.There used to be this listen-to-understand relationship that we both engaged in, which I think requires a level of generosity of spirit that we've lost, in part because of what Donald Trump has done to our culture.That was reflected in that conversation.There had been a lot of warning signs, but that was the kind of final moment where I was like, this person that I had valued as a friend who would meaningfully engage in respectful conversation was no longer willing to do that.
How does he end the messages to you?
The “normal people” text was the last text.
Can you tell me what it said?
And I'm paraphrasing, but that “the left's cultural progressivism has made it difficult for normal people to live their lives.”
I am a public servant.I don't make a lot of money.I live in a middle-class neighborhood.I've never ridden in a private jet.I don't have any billionaire cell phone numbers.I don't know any billionaires, and I've lived in Middle America almost all my life.I do have this elite education, which I'm very grateful for and was lucky to have, but I don't think [it] defines me, and in fact, was a world that I dipped my toe into and quickly decided wasn't for me and left.So to be told that by existing, I was making it hard—for the people that I grew up with, my clients, all these people that don't seem to have a problem with me, treat me with a great deal of respect—I was making it hard for them to exist, felt cruel.
And it was the realization that there is a divide in his mind and that it's almost a war, right? There are the people who agree with him, and then there's everyone else, and they need to be taken down.And I think that's a really dangerous way of thinking of the world.It's also a sad way of thinking of the world.
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