JD Vance, Trump’s vice presidential nominee who has harshly criticized him in the past, calling him “America’s Hitler.”

Caption: Two years ago, Vance decided to reach out to Trump following criticizing him. Article information

• Author, Editorial
• Role, BBC News World
• 15 julio 2024

  Updated 16 July 2024

Donald Trump has chosen Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate on the Republican Party ticket for the November 5 presidential election.

“After much deliberation and consideration, 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 Senator J.D. Vance from the great state of Ohio,” Trump said in making the announcement on Monday.

Shortly followingward, the senator appeared at the Republican National Convention that began on Monday in the city of Milwaukee. He was greeted with a standing ovation by the thousands of delegates who officially nominated Trump as their candidate for the White House.

“JD, JD, JD!” chanted delegates when they were told that Trump had been chosen. He was seen smiling as he made his entrance alongside his wife Usha Vance.

Vance, 39, is a member of the pro-Trump wing of the Senate. He gained a lot of popularity following the publication of his book Hillbilly Elegy, a bestseller that combines his memoirs with an essay on poverty in white American society.

So the chosen one might be the best option to connect with the type of white working-class voters.

Caption: Senator Vance and his wife received a standing ovation upon arriving at the Republican National Convention.

Vance, who was part of the Never Trump movement during the 2016 election, changed his position in 2022 as he began his political career.

Trump hopes that Vance, as a young candidate, will refresh the Republican campaign and lead a new generation of loyal Republicans within the party.

Books, venture capital and politics

Born James David Bowman in Middletown, Ohio, in 1984, Vance was raised by his maternal grandparents in a white, working-class family due to his mother’s addiction problems and his father’s absence.

The now vice presidential candidate was in the Marines and served in Iraq before going to Ohio State University, where he earned degrees in political science and philosophy, before moving on to Yale Law School and eventually becoming a venture capitalist.

Baptized as a Catholic in 2019, the US vice-presidential candidate is once morest abortion rights, although he supports Trump’s view that the issue should be left to each state.

In 2016, he wrote a bestselling book of memoirs and essays, Hillbilly Elegy, which chronicles his own life and upbringing in a working-class family in the Rust Belt.

Caption: The Ohio senator is the author of the best-selling Hillbilly Elegy.

In that book, Vance took a decidedly conservative view: He described his friends and family as chronic spenders, dependent on welfare and, for the most part, unable to get by on their own.

The success of the book led to the story being adapted into a Netflix film of the same name starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.

Hillbilly Elegy made him not only a best-selling author but also a well-known television commentator who discussed Donald Trump’s relationship with white working-class voters in the US.

However, at that time, I did not hesitate to criticize him.

“What he is doing [Trump] “It’s giving people an excuse to point the finger at someone else, at Mexican immigrants, at trade with China, at Democratic elites or at anything else,” Vance said in 2016.

That same year, he wrote privately to a Facebook contact: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical jerk… or that he is America’s Hitler.”

Caption: Vance went so far as to compare Trump to Hitler in 2016.

Once Vance joined the 2022 Senate race, he apologized to Trump and reversed his position, securing the former president’s endorsement for Congress.

In the Senate, he has been a reliable conservative vote for the former president. He backed populist economic policies and gained traction as one of Congress’s biggest skeptics of aid to Ukraine.

Vance has become an increasingly important player in the world of Make America Great Again politics (Trump’s campaign slogan and the movement that follows him) and has almost completely embraced the former president’s agenda.

Caption: Vance became Trump’s ally, despite initially rejecting him.

Given her short tenure in the Democratic-led chamber, the bills she has pushed have rarely advanced and tend to send more messages than change policies.

In recent months, Vance has introduced bills to withhold federal funding for colleges that host encampments or protests over the war in Gaza, as well as colleges that employ undocumented immigrants.

Showing off both his hawkish foreign policy and his financial expertise, Vance introduced legislation in March that would bar the Chinese government from accessing U.S. capital markets if it fails to comply with international trade laws.

With this agenda, Vance has quickly become an increasingly important player among Republicans, becoming an influential voice of Trumpism in Washington.

Caption: JD and Usha Vance married in 2014. They have three children.

Who is his wife, Usha Vance?

The senator is married to Usha Vance. The two met as students at Yale Law School in the 2010s and married in 2014.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, she was born in California and raised in the suburbs of San Diego.

She is currently a trial attorney at a San Francisco law firm and has clerked for conservative Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

Vance frequently praises his wife for her support of his career and considered her his “Yale spiritual guide” when the two were classmates.

In an interview on Fox News last month, Usha said: “I believe in JD and I really love him, so we’ll see what happens in our life.”

The couple have three children: two boys, Ewan and Vivek, and a girl named Mirabel.

Why Trump chose JD Vance

In 2016, when Donald Trump chose Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate, it was widely seen as an effort to court evangelical Christian voters who might have been wary of supporting Trump, a thrice-married former Democrat.

This time, he opted for JD Vance. The choice of the Ohio senator offers insight into the former president’s campaign strategy and, possibly, how he would govern if he returns to the White House.

Trump knows that this election will be won or lost in a handful of swing industrial states in the Midwest.

Originally from Ohio, Vance was elected to the Senate following publishing his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, in which he discusses his working-class upbringing and how it affected his politics and worldview.

With his background, Vance might be well positioned to connect with the kind of white, working-class voters who narrowly delivered those states to Trump in the 2016 election.

The former president said as much in the social media post announcing his decision to share a ticket with Vance, writing that he “will focus strongly on the people he fought so brilliantly for, American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and far beyond.”

Trump praised Vance’s military service and his pedigree as a law school student at a prestigious university.

At just 39, Vance will offer a youthful counterpoint to the candidates at the top of both presidential tickets. Trump’s election puts him at the forefront of a new generation of Republicans.

And if the former president returns to the Oval Office next year, Vance will instantly figure into the conversation regarding the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.

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