Trump Picks JD Vance for Vice President

Donald Trump has chosen JD Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, to be his vice president on the Republican ticket.

The former president made the announcement on Truth Social on Monday afternoon, just as the Republican National Convention was set to kick off in Milwaukee.

"J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond...." the post reads.

Vance, 39, was once a fierce Trump critic who rose to prominence after writing the 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, in which he recounted his family's struggles as working-class white Americans in rural Ohio and Kentucky.

The book became a literary phenomenon after Trump was elected that November. Vance said publicly he did not vote for Trump in that election, and went on to disparage the president before reinventing himself as a Trump ally and steward of the MAGA cause.

"I'm a Never Trump guy," Vance told Charlie Rose in 2016. "I never liked him."

That same year, he told NPR: "I can't stomach Trump. I think that he's noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place." He also wrote an op-ed for The New York Times titled: "Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nation's Highest Office."

When he ran for senate in Ohio in 2021 — his first political contest — Vance had changed his posture, saying he regretted his criticisms of the former president. He was able to gain Trump's endorsement, which was widely seen as critical in him winning the Republican primary in that contest.

In an interview with Fox News last month, Vance explained why he had changed his mind about Trump.

"I didn't think he was going to be a good president," he said. "He was a great president. And it's one of the reasons why I'm working so hard to make sure he gets a second term."

Since his pivot, Vance has become one of Trump's most outspoken supporters, claiming the populism mantle that helped vault Trump to victory in 2016. He has expressed skepticism about the 2020 election results and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, as well as U.S. support of Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Strategically, Vance's selection — unlike Trump's choice of Mike Pence eight years ago — is seen as a direct appeal to the MAGA base rather than an attempt to try to expand that base.

Pence, a more classical conservative Republican with extensive ties to evangelicals and deep-pocketed GOP donors, was widely interpreted to be a way for Trump to moderate himself in the eyes of Republican and independent voters.

Vance, by contrast, is still a relative political novice without the decades of experience in Congress and state-level politics that Pence, a former Indiana governor and ex-House leader, offered.

With roots in Ohio and Kentucky and an appeal to working-class voters, Vance could help Trump in the Midwest battleground states that may determine the election. The former president is currently leading by a small margin in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, according to the RealClearPolling average. The Biden campaign is said to be focused on those states — all of which Biden won in 2020 — as their so-called "blue wall" in November.

If elected, Vance, who turns 40 next month, will also be among the youngest vice presidents in history. John C. Breckenridge, who served as James Buchanan's vice president in the lead up to the Civil War, took office at age 36. Richard Nixon was 40 when he assumed the VP role under Dwight Eisenhower in 1953.