Trump selects Ohio Senator JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate

Ohio Senator JD Vance! Donald Trump He chose U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, further raising the profile of the Ohio Republican, who has embraced the former president’s populist agenda following years of forceful criticism of Trump.

“After much deliberation and reflection, and taking into account the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the most suitable person to assume the office of Vice President of the United States is Ohio Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance

Trump’s election came on the first day of the Republican National Convention and just two days following he survived an assassination attempt at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, this weekend.

Vance, a venture capitalist and author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” was elected to the Senate in 2022 following receiving a boost from Trump in a contentious Republican primary.

It was a reversal from just six years earlier. Vance was a key voice in the “Never Trump” movement during the 2016 election and has a well-documented history of publicly opposing the former president.

Ohio Senator JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate

CNN previously reported that Vance liked posts on X (formerly Twitter) in 2016 and 2017 that were harshly critical of Trump and his policies, including one that speculated that Vance might serve in a Hillary Clinton administration.

But he won Trump’s endorsement in Ohio’s 2022 Republican Senate primary following a sustained yearlong effort in which he adopted a new image as a leading proponent of the MAGA platform, courting the former president at meetings at Mar-a-Lago and through appearances on Fox News.