BY: Jacqueline DESROSIERS
Milwaukee, Wisconsin—Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he has chosen Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate, selecting a rising star in the party and previously outspoken Trump critic who has closely aligned himself with the former president in recent years.
If elected in November, Vance, 39, would be one of the youngest vice presidents in history. He is a relative political newcomer, winning his Senate seat in 2022 after rising to prominence as an author who wrote a best-selling memoir. His selection adds a staunch defender of Trump’s movement to the ticket, and some Republican observers said it could help Trump solidify his base of White working-class voters, particularly in the Upper Midwest.
Trump’s choice for a running mate was among the most closely watched decisions of his campaign and has taken on new significance in the wake of what law enforcement has called an attempted assassination against Trump at a campaign rally on Saturday in Butler, Pa. Even before the shooting, the decision was expected to arrive at a moment of upheaval in the presidential race.
Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts in a New York hush money case in May, becoming the first former president ever to be convicted of a crime. On the Democratic side, President Biden’s future has been thrown into uncertainty after a disastrous debate performance where he appeared to repeatedly lose his train of thought, leading to calls from some in his party for him to step aside and let another Democrat challenge Trump. A Washington Post polling average shows that Trump is leading in six of the seven battleground states that are most likely to determine the outcome of the election.
Trump broke with his first-term vice president, Mike Pence, over Pence’s unwillingness to try to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. The ex-president, who would be limited to one term if he wins in November, weighed a variety of candidates for his running mate this cycle, requesting documents from at least eight hopefuls and holding unofficial auditions for many of them at campaign events.
The 39-year-old Vance rose to national fame with the 2016 publication of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” He was elected to the Senate in 2022 and has become one of the staunchest champions of the former president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, particularly on trade, foreign policy, and immigration.
But he is largely untested in national politics and is joining the Trump ticket at an extraordinary moment in American history. An attempted assassination of Trump at a rally Saturday has shaken the campaign, bringing new attention to the nation’s coarse political rhetoric and reinforcing the importance of those who are one heartbeat away from the presidency.
Vance himself faced criticism in the wake of the shooting for a post on X that suggested President Joe Biden was to blame for the violence.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” Law enforcement has not yet specified a motivation for the shooting.
Why was Vance chosen over the other finalists? The pick is sure to energize Trump’s loyal base. Vance has become a fixture on the conservative media circuit. He frequently spars with reporters on Capitol Hill, helping establish him as the kind of leader who could carry Trump’s mantle into the future, beginning with the next presidential election in 2028.
But the pick also means that two white men will now lead the Republican ticket at a time when Trump has sought to make inroads with Black and Latino voters.
In his post announcing his pick, Trump said Vance “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.” Several of those Midwestern states are expected to play a critical role in November’s election.
But Vance also had another advantage: his chemistry with Trump. Personal relationships are extremely important to the former president and he and Vance have developed a strong rapport, speaking on the phone regularly. Trump has also complimented Vance’s looks, saying he reminded him of “a young Abraham Lincoln.”
Trump and Vance spoke about 20 minutes before the Truth Social post and Trump formally offered him the job, according to a person familiar with the call who, like others, requested anonymity to share the private conversation.
Trump had long said he wanted to dramatically reveal his pick onstage at the convention, which he said would make it more “interesting” and “exciting.” The timing is later than in recent cycles but hardly unprecedented. In 1980, Ronald Reagan made his decision less than 24 hours before he formally accepted the GOP nomination, and George H.W. Bush waited until his convention in 1988.
Biden’s reelection campaign issued a statement calling out Vance for saying that had he been vice president, he would have allowed “multiple slates of electors” to challenge Biden’s victory over Trump four years ago. Trump repeatedly promoted falsehoods about election fraud before and after January 6, 2021, when rioters loyal to the former president stormed the Capitol to try to stop the certification of his loss.
“Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backward 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 chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in the statement.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, the other contenders on Trump’s shortlist, were informed earlier Monday afternoon that they were not his picks, according to people familiar with their conversations.
Conversations in the last ten days between Rubio and Trump’s campaign had focused on concerns about the fact that both men reside in Florida, according to a person familiar with the private talks who insisted on anonymity to discuss them. The Trump campaign wanted to be 100% sure that there would not be a protracted legal battle over the issue, and Rubio was unwilling to uproot his family, the person said.
Trump had spent months testing the field and assessing how his contenders performed on television, at fundraisers, and on rally stages. Several, including Burgum and Vance, joined him at his criminal hush money trial in New York. Others were there at the debate last month, where Biden’s disastrous performance upended his campaign, leading to widespread calls for him to step aside in favor or a younger candidate.
In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance detailed life in Appalachian communities that drifted from a Democratic Party many residents found disconnected from their daily travails. While the book was a bestseller, it was also criticized for sometimes oversimplifying rural life and ignoring the role of racism in modern politics.
Vance once was a harsh Trump critic but relationship between Vance and Trump has been symbiotic.
Vance’s fame grew in tandem with Trump’s unlikely rise from a reality television star to Republican presidential nominee and eventually president. During the early stages of Trump’s political career, Vance cast him as “a total fraud,” “a moral disaster,” and “America’s Hitler.”
But like many Republicans who sought relevance in the Trump era, Vance eventually shifted his tone. He said he was proved wrong by Trump’s performance in office and evolved into one of his most steadfast defenders.
“I didn’t think he was going to be a good president,” Vance recently told Fox News Channel. “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.”
Vance was rewarded for his turnaround during his bid for an open Senate seat in 2022, during which he landed Trump’s coveted endorsement and rode it to victory in a crowded Republican primary and a general election hard fought by Democrats. He is close to Trump’s son Donald Jr.
“Listen, I’ve seen him on TV,” Donald Trump Jr. said of Vance, speaking to CNN from the convention floor. “I’ve seen him prosecute the case against the Democrats. No one’s more articulate than that. And I think his story, his background, really helps us in a lot of the places that you’re going to need from the Electoral College standpoint.”
Vance is now a Trump loyalist who has challenged the legitimacy of criminal prosecutions and civil verdicts against him and questions the results of the 2020 election.
He told ABC News in February that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have told states where Trump disputed Biden’s wins “that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.”
“That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020,” he said.
Many states adopted emergency measures four years ago to allow people to vote safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. But judges, election officials in both parties and Trump’s own attorney general have concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Vance’s book vaulted him to national prominence Vance’s book — subtitled “A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” — was embraced for its insights into Trump’s appeal in middle America, where manufacturing job losses and the opioid crisis had driven many families like his into poverty, abuse and addiction.
The tale of Vance’s hardscrabble childhood in Middletown, Ohio, where he was born, and his familial eastern Kentucky hills region also captivated Hollywood. Ron Howard made it into a 2020 movie starring Amy Adams as Vance’s mother and Glenn Close as his beloved “Mamaw.”
With his grandmother’s encouragement, Vance went on to serve in the Marine Corps, including Iraq, and graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. From there, he joined a Silicon Valley investment firm before returning to Ohio to launch a nonprofit that he said would aim to develop opioid addiction treatments that might be “scaled nationally.”
Ultimately, Our Ohio Renewal failed at that mission and was shuttered. During the 2022 campaign, then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, his Democratic rival, charged that the charity was little more than a front for Vance’s political ambitions. Ryan pointed to reports that the organization made payments to a Vance political adviser and conducted public opinion polling, even as its actual efforts to address addiction largely floundered. Vance denied the characterization.
As a senator, Vance has shown some willingness to work across the aisle. He and Ohio’s senior senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown, have teamed up on a number of issues important to the state, including fighting for funding for a $20 billion chip facility Intel is building in central Ohio and introducing rail safety legislation in response to the fiery derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
