Former President Donald Trump has selected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) to be his running mate, he announced Monday afternoon as the Republican National Convention began in Milwaukee.
Vance, 39, is a freshman senator from Ohio who has pivoted from anti-Trump conservatism to become Trump’s chief acolyte and a prime advocate of America First.
Vance became a household name in 2016 with the publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which detailed his experience growing up among the white working class in middle America in Jackson, Kentucky and Middletown, Ohio. Many urban elites took it as a textbook explainer of Trump’s shocking rise. (J.D. stands for James David.)
ADVERTISEMENT
But Vance, who served as an enlisted man in the Marine Corps and graduated from Yale Law School, was no fan of his party’s leader. He told Charlie Rose in a 2016 interview, “I think Donald Trump is not the right candidate for this group of voters,” calling himself a “Never Trump guy.”
Turns out, he should have never said never. Recently, Vance has repeatedly disavowed his previous position and hugged Trump.
“I was wrong about him,” Vance said on CNN in May. “I didn’t think he was going to be a good president, Dana, and I was very, very proud to be proven wrong. It’s one of the reasons why I’m working so hard to get him elected.”
After Trump survived an assassination attempt Saturday, Vance immediately took to X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” he wrote. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.”
Vance, 39, has proven a political shapeshifter, delighting liberals initially with his book "Hillbilly Elegy" and his anti-Trump rhetoric, but is now firmly MAGA.
Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesWhen Trump called for unity, the senator toned down his language, writing, “Courageous, United, and Defiant. This is leadership.”
Vance has been a vocal proponent of right-wing policy priorities like securing the border, protecting gun rights, and stopping abortions. He is also a particular advocate of America First foreign policy, praising Trump for imposing tariffs on companies that ship jobs overseas.
He has also been a staunch opponent of U.S. aid to Ukraine. The prospect of a Vance vice presidency has terrified elite Republican donors, The Daily Beast reported last week.
But Vance also has ties to some billionaire megadonors who approve of his isolationist views. In 2022, Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel gave Vance the largest amount ever donated to a Senate candidate, about $15 million, according to Politico. Thiel also connected Vance to other wealthy donors, including venture capitalist David Sacks, who is scheduled to speak at the RNC.
The Ohio senator, who is married to Usha Chilukuri Vance, an attorney who he met at Yale, has three children. With facial hair Trump has said makes him look like “a young Abraham Lincoln” and with blue eyes so striking they’ve led some to speculate he wears eyeliner, he would be the third-youngest vice president in U.S. history, and the youngest since Richard Nixon got the job in 1953.
