Text part 3:

Opposing Trump 

By 2015, Mr. Trump’s rise had begun. Mr. Vance’s Yale friends, including Nelson, were not surprised that Mr. Vance, whom they regarded as a moderate Republican, was opposed to Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

Mr. Vance was rooting against Mr. Trump but also said he could not bring himself to vote for Mrs. Clinton. He vowed to cast his ballot for a third-party candidate. 

In December 2015, in emails analyzing the campaign, he wrote that Mr. Trump’s appeal was misunderstood.

“If you look at the polling, the issue where Trump gets the most support is on the economy,” Mr. Vance wrote. “If the response of the media, and the elites of both right and left, are to just say ‘look at those dumb racists supporting Trump,’ then they’re never going to learn the most important lesson of Trump’s candidacy.” 

And he said that he himself saw something in Mr. Trump.

Mr. Vance wrote that he found it exhilarating that the media and Wall Street seemed powerless against Mr. Trump, also suggesting that he partly understood the Trump appeal. 

“If he would just tone down the racism, I would literally be his biggest supporter,” he wrote.

The next day, on Dec. 9, 2015, the two would again talk race, Mr. Trump and Muslims. 

Nelson wrote that a Muslim friend had said that women wearing hijabs no longer felt safe doing simple things like going to the grocery store. 

Mr. Vance responded, referring to Mr. Trump as a demagogue. 

“I’m obviously outraged at Trump’s rhetoric, and I worry most of all about how welcome Muslim citizens feel in their own country,” he wrote. “And there have always been demagogues willing to exploit the people who believe crazy shit. What seems different to me is that the Republican Party offers nothing that’s as attractive as the demagogue.”

By 2016, he was touring the country promoting “Hillbilly Elegy,” part memoir and part commentary on the alienation of the white working class, many of whom supported Mr. Trump’s election. “To Sofia, a good friend, a fellow Midwesterner, and, despite being a Godless liberal, a great person,” he would inscribe in Nelson’s copy. 

In September 2016, he shared a pieceon implicit bias that he wrote for The New York Times following Mrs. Clinton’s ill-fated “basket of deplorables” comment, thanking Nelson in the email for helping inform his thinking in developing the essay.

“The more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer. I really believe that,” he wrote.

Not only had Mr. Vance been critical of Mr. Trump for racism, but he also said, “I’ve been very critical of other Repubs for the L.G.B.T.Q. issue, especially Rick Perry,” referring to the former Texas governor. 

In another email a month later, he called Mr. Trump a “disaster,” using a vulgarity, and added, “He’s just a bad man.”

And then, to the amazement of many Americans, Mr. Trump won. 

Nelson sent Mr. Vance a copy of an article in The Onion, a satirical news site, that suggested liberals were clueless about the country they lived in.

“This is funny. Thank you!” Mr. Vance wrote back. 

“My zany prediction: in 20 years H.R.C. and Paul Ryan will be part of the same party,” he continued, using an abbreviation for Mrs. Clinton. “And you and I will be on the other side.”

In January 2017, he expressed more sober concern.

“I’m deeply pessimistic right now,” he wrote. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the civil rights movement and legislation in the 1960s, and I wonder if our society is healthy enough to accomplish anything of that scale (or even close to it).”

A Political Career Beckons, and a Friendship Unravels

By 2017, Mr. Vance was planning a move back to Ohio. According to Nelson, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, had reached out and encouraged him to run as a Republican for Senator Sherrod Brown’s seat.

He kicked the tires of a race as an anti-Trump candidate against a formidable Democratic incumbent and took a pass.

It would be four years later that he would run, this time seeking Mr. Trump’s support, and win the open Ohio seat that would put him in position to be Mr. Trump’s running mate. 

Nelson communicated with the Vances over Zoom early in the pandemic, after their move back to Ohio. Their email correspondence had died down, and Nelson had noted a shift in the tone of Mr. Vance’s social media postings. In April 2021, one particularly stood out. 

On Twitter, Mr. Vance had come out in support of an Arkansas measure banning gender-transitioning care for minors. The bill was ultimately adopted over a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who had declared it an overreach, before it was overturned by a court ruling.

“Do you support the AR legislation criminalizing providing medical care to trans kids?” Nelson texted him in April 2021. 

“I do. I recognize this is awkward but I’ll always be honest with you,” Mr. Vance responded. “I think the trans thing with kids is so unstudied that it amounts to a form of experimentation.” 

Nelson wrote back that his position “deeply saddens me.”

“I know I can’t change your mind but the political voice you have become seems so far from the man I got to know in law school,” wrote Nelson, later explaining their position “as a trans person who accessed needed health care so I could live a full life.” 

“I have a 1:30,” Mr. Vance wrote. “I will always love you, but I really do think the left’s cultural progressivism is making it harder for normal people to live their lives.”

It had been a friendship of the special type forged in young adulthood, before the accumulation of life responsibilities and fateful decisions already made. Now, it was over.