MILWAUKEE – If Donald Trump was looking for an attack dog to join his presidential ticket, then Senator JD Vance of Ohio has already proved himself more than ready and willing to fit the bill.
As recently as Saturday, in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s attempted assassination in Pennsylvania, Vance shared a post on social media so inflammatory that even some seasoned Republican observers believed that he was too toxic to be selected as Trump’s sidekick.
Denying the attack on Trump was an “isolated incident”, Vance claimed that “the central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”.
On Monday afternoon, just as the Republican convention was getting under way here, Trump unveiled Vance as his running mate, and effectively anointed him as his successor to lead the “Make America Great Again” movement at the end of his second term in the White House. “J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our Troops, and will do everything he can to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump claimed in a social media posting.
Vance’s selection is the culmination of an extraordinary journey for both men that led them to appear together on Monday night for the official launch of the 2024 Republican ticket.
Eight years ago, when Trump first sought the presidency, Vance was one of his most outspoken critics. He called Trump “America’s Hitler” in a private message to a friend. In a New York Times editorial, he insisted that Trump was “unfit for the nation’s highest office”. In an article for The Atlantic, he called Trump’s policy balms the “Opioid of the Masses”.
But following Trump’s 2016 election victory, Vance began the process of recreating himself in the image of America’s new president. In 2022, he won election to the Senate in his home state of Ohio, where his hardscrabble early life – chronicled in his 2016 bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy – struck a chord with working-class voters.
His career – first in the Marines, then studying at Yale Law School before working in Silicon Valley as a venture capitalist – brought him to Trump’s attention via PayPal’s co-founder Peter Thiel, a long-time supporter of the former president.
By the time this year’s election cycle was under way, Vance had adhered himself firmly to Trump, embracing his stances on tariffs (he supports them), Ukraine (he opposes American assistance for Kyiv) and immigration (he’s against it, because he think it floods America with cheap labour that corporate behemoths must learn to live without).
Vance has traditionally been a fierce opponent of abortion rights, describing himself as “solidly pro-life”. He opposes surgical abortions, even in the case of rape or incest except when a mother’s life is in danger.
But, perhaps sensing he may soon have to debate Vice President Kamala Harris on the issue, last week he told NBC that he favors the legality of mifepristone, the abortion pill that is now used for more than half of pregnancy terminations in the United States.
Vance has also been burnishing his foreign policy credentials in recent months.
He attended the Munich Security Conference in February and delivered what he called a “wake-up call to say that Europe has to take a bigger role in its own security”. America under Trump, he warned, would be pivoting away from the continent and focusing instead on Chinese expansionism in the Asia-Pacific region.
Among those officials he met in Europe was then-shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy. The two men reportedly had a productive conversation that led to Lammy later visiting Washington to engage in further outreach with prominent figures in Trumpworld ahead of the UK’s election and his appointment as Foreign Secretary.
On the convention floor, delegates embraced Trump’s selection of Vance enthusiastically. “He’s one of our best senators,” former Republican congressman Madison Cawthorn told i. “I’m so excited to have such a strong conservative as VP.”
Congressman Anthony D’Esposito of New York told i that at the age of 39 – 20 years younger than Kamala Harris – Vance is helping the Republican Party prepare for a transition to a younger generation of leaders. “I think it shows that our party is not only unified, but that the Republican Party is also embracing youth,” he said shortly after Vance was officially nominated.
But some right-leaning voices harbour doubts about Vance, and his newfound willingness to be Trump’s Mini-Me. “He was a hardcore Never Trumper not many years ago, and he reversed himself completely not that long ago,” observed Brit Hume, Fox News analyst and veteran White House correspondent.
“Did he get it because he was really the best qualified to be [vice] president, or did he get it because he sucked up effectively to be the nominee? People will have questions about that,” he told possibly startled Fox News viewers.