Donald Trump ended the suspense by announcing Monday that he had chosen Senator JD Vance to be his vice president, on the first day of a Republican convention disrupted by the attempted assassination of the billionaire over the weekend.
Published on: 07/15/2024 – 21:27
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He was the youngest on Donald Trump’s shortlist. At 39, Senator JD Vance, a former critic turned fervent defender of the Republican billionaire, was chosen as the former president’s running mate, a nomination that confirms the lightning-fast and atypical career of this voice of America’s downgraded status.
A former military man and best-selling author, this Ohio elected official with an eclectic profile has constantly defended in the American Congress the causes dear to Donald Trump, such as the fight once morest immigration and the defense of economic protectionism.
“I have a good memory”
“I have a good memory. If you are politically fighting Trump and the candidates he supports today, don’t come asking me for help in a year to pass your law or the projects that are important to you,” warned the senator with the round face, impeccable locks of hair and well-groomed beard at the beginning of the year.
Comments mocked by his opponents, who did not fail to point out the irony of the situation: before defending Donald Trump tooth and nail, JD Vance was not stingy with his criticism of the billionaire.
Once calling himself a “guy who will never be pro-Trump,” he has also in the past called the tycoon an “idiot” and “harmful,” even worrying that he is “America’s Hitler.”
Senator JD Vance, during a press conference in front of the Manhattan Criminal Court, on May 13, 2024, for the trial of Donald Trump. © Stefan Jeremiah, AFP
After the attempted assassination of the former president on Saturday, the Republican pointed the finger at “the Biden campaign” which portrays Donald Trump as “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.”
“This rhetoric directly led to the attempted assassination of President Trump,” he charged.
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Before joining Washington, JD Vance had a rather atypical career path. He grew up in a modest single-parent family in the “Rust Belt”, a region of the northeastern United States deeply marked by industrial decline, then joined the army. He then studied law at one of the most prestigious universities in the country before making a career in Silicon Valley.
A book makes him known
But it was a book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” published in 2016, that made him famous. In this autobiographical story that became a bestseller adapted for the cinema, JD Vance recounts his chaotic childhood in a white America ravaged by unemployment and addictions, and gives voice to a disillusioned and downgraded working-class population, full of resentment.
It was only later that he became closer to the Trumpist movement. His book attracted the attention of the former president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with whom he became a close friend. The latter is said to have played a major role in his nomination as vice president.
JD Vance embraces Donald Trump’s major themes, as well as his combative tone and populist discourse, and wins the billionaire’s support in his 2022 Senate campaign.
He, who puts forward his Christian faith as his private and political compass, has established himself in Congress as a fierce defender of the Republican tycoon, who has been targeted by several criminal and civil proceedings.
“The Biden administration wants to see Trump die in prison and ruin his family. This is the greatest attack on democracy ever,” he slammed on X in March. “If you’re too cowardly to call him out, you’re not ready for this moment in American politics.”
The father of three has become a popular figure on television shows, where he energetically and loyally defends the Republican candidate in the November presidential election.
While he is perfectly aligned with his boss’s positions on migration and the economy, JD Vance appears more to the right on other issues, such as abortion, where he has spoken out once morest exceptions to the bans, even in cases of rape or incest.
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JD Vance has even become the leading figure of the “New Right” movement, young conservatives who are trying to give a more radical direction to Donald Trump’s isolationist and anti-immigration movement, Politico wrote in March.
“Unlike Trump’s more conventional Republican supporters, Vance’s New Right cohort sees Trump as just the first step in a broader populist-nationalist revolution that is already reshaping the American right,” it read.
“And if they succeed, it will soon reshape America as a whole.”
With AFP
