
On Monday, Donald Trump finally announced his running mate in the 2024 Presidential election, selecting Rep. J.D. Vance.
Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said: “After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,”
At only 39 years old, Vance has been serving as a junior Senator from Ohio since 2013. But where did Vance come from?
J.D. Vance was born on August 2nd, 1984, in Middletown, Ohio. With his parents divorcing while he was a toddler, he was soon adopted by his mother’s third husband, and then raised by his grandparents, along with his sister.
In his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, Vance writes about the history of poverty in his family hometown, and the societal issues he faced growing up.
Upon graduating high school, Vance enlisted in the US Marine Corps, and served as a combat corespondent in the Iraq War. In his 6 month deployment to Iraq, he wrote about the work of fellow service members, like crews for aging Huey helicopters, under the name James D. Hamel, taking the surname of his stepfather at the time. Vance left the Marine Corps as a corporal in Sept. 2007. His awards, including an Iraq campaign medal, achievement good conduct medals, are typical of enlisted service members at the time.
Vance went on to study political science and philosophy at Ohio State University and attended Yale Law School. Afterward, he worked at a large corporate law firm and then as a principal at billionaire Peter Thiel’s investment firm in San Francisco.
He rose to fame in 2016 after the publication of his book, which was later turned into a 2020 Netflix movie directed by Ron Howard.
At this point in his career, Vance was a vocal critic of Trump, telling NPR only weeks before the 2016 election:“I can’t stomach Trump,” and “I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy. I never liked him,”
However, in 2019, after the success of his book, Vance returned to Ohio and founded a venture firm. Vance hosted or helped organize high-dollar fundraisers for Trump, including one in June hosted by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Sacks.
In 2022, Vance ran for Senate in Ohio and changed his tune on then President Trump, saying he was “wrong” for criticizing him, and describing Trump as a “great” President. This paid off with Trump endorsing Vance – a first-time candidate running in a crowded 2022 Republican primary. Trump dismissed Vance’s past criticisms of him, saying in statement at the time that the venture capitalist “gets it now, and I have seen that in spades.”
Vance went on to win the primary and the general election, defeating former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan by more than six percentage points. During his term, the Ohio Republican has embraced a more populist direction for the GOP under Trump, vehemently criticizing U.S. aid to Ukraine and becoming one of the most ubiquitous defenders of the former president.
Vance showed his support outside the New York courthouse during Trump’s criminal trial earlier this year, and boosted the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in frequent appearances defending him on cable TV. Vance also has grown close with Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., despite a striking contrast in his hardscrabble upbringing to that of the wealthy New York real estate family.
Soon after the July 13 shooting at a Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pa., Vance promptly blamed President Biden’s campaign “rhetoric” for the incident, drawing criticism for escalating the situation before full details had emerged.
Vance has also previously echoed Trump’s false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and he has indicated that he would have taken a different path on Jan. 6, 2021, than Pence. Vance told ABC News in February that if he had been vice president, he would have allowed Congress to consider fraudulent slates of pro-Trump electors.
Biden’s campaign immediately seized on Vance’s previous remarks to attack Trump’s running mate pick on Monday.
“Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” Biden campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.
Vance would not commit unequivocally to accepting the results of the 2024 election, telling NBC’s “Meet the Press” earlier this month that he would do so “so long as it’s a free and fair election.” In the same interview, he vowed to work with Trump, even if he was not selected as his running mate.
“We’re just trying to work to elect Donald Trump. Whoever his vice president is, he’s got a lot of good people he could choose from,” Vance said. “It’s the policies that worked and the leadership style that worked for the American people. I think we have to bring that back to the White House, and I’m fighting to try to do that.”
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Alex Horton contributed to this report.
(c) Washington Post
“At only 39 years old, Vance has been serving as a junior Senator from Ohio since 2013.”
He only started there in 2023.
I remember Pence whom the CIA forced Trump to take as VP. He looked like a nice man but turned out to be a traitorous criminal who was dealt with in his very first year.
Hope Vance was Trump’s pick, not coerced into by the CIA again. He looks like a nice fine young man.