Staff Reports
Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. may have been a fierce foe of former President Donald Trump in recent years, but it turns out he wasn’t always on the warpath against the man from Mar-a-Lago. In fact, he was a bit of a fanboy.
Yes, apparently, there were letters — gushing missives dripping with praise for the president’s “extraordinary victory” in 2016. This is the same battle-hardened prosecutor who tried to make Trump his white whale, and now, a letter sent to Trump and Melania says there are “common sense ideas that can serve us all well, no matter what the country’s political differences may be.”
Find the Democrats’ jaws, release them from the ground, and remind them to return the kool-aid flavored gravy ladle to the kitchen. No, it’s not an urban legend; Trump indeed posted the letters on Truth Social, his new social media platform. It’s the political equivalent of finding a love note to your significant other from a previous relationship, posting it on Facebook and then tagging them in it to let everyone know what a jerk they are.
Trump Posts Letter from Former Manhattan DA – He's Singing a Much Different Tune Now via @WestJournalism https://t.co/Otnytqt82e
— Steve Wilson (@Wilsonstevenlee) December 20, 2023
But wait, there’s more. In the wake of GOP Rep. Steve Scalise’s shooting in June of 2017, the district attorney was there with a birthday greeting and wishes for Trump to “lead the country in these difficult times.” Oh, and Vance even shares a birthday with the former president.
But, “What kind of games is Vance playing?” one might ask. “Was he just being polite?” Well, one could give this the sort of critical eye given to a man who says “My eyes are up here” while wearing a Borat-style mankini, but the fact remains that Vance’s own father was a former secretary of state, so he wasn’t exactly sending congratulatory notes on official letterhead to everyone who happened to occupy the White House at a particular time.
But Vance Jr. wasn’t just a casual admirer; he could be called a bit of an apologist as well. In a 2021 interview after leaving the district attorney’s office, he admitted to The New York Times that he’d “been criticized a lot” for not charging Trump, adding that “people have only gotten more divided and more angry in the last five or six years than they ever were before.”
Nowadays, however, he’s leading the left’s legal battle against the former president, although it wasn’t all smooth sailing. His indictment on supposed “hush money” payments to former adult film actress Stormy Daniels and two other women was passed on to his successor, Alvin Bragg, who promptly spiked it in favor of going after Trump on the Stormy Daniels front instead. It was a bit of Captain Ahab luck there.
But the real question: Was the fanboy a mask, a veneer covering a deeper animus? And, more importantly, what does this say about Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg? Maybe it’s worth remembering there’s a difference between the opinions you air publicly and the things you do in the dark.
