 Mr. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a bestselling memoir about his troubled upbringing and the struggles and pathologies of the white working class, was running for the open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio as a Republican populist, a never-Trumper-turned-pro-Trumper. Mr. Vance decided to immediately apologize. He told Mr. Trump that he had bought into what he described as media lies and that he was sorry he got it wrong. Of all people, Mr. Vance told Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance himself should have understood.