MILWAUKEE (AP) — Former President Donald Trump selected Senator JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate Monday, choosing a former critic who became a staunch ally and is now the first millennial to join a major party ticket at a time of deep concern about the advancing age of America’s political leaders.
“After much deliberation and consideration, and considering the immense talents of many others, I have determined that the person best suited to serve as Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the great State of Ohio,” Trump said in a message on his Truth Social social network as the Republican National Convention began in Milwaukee.
Vance, 39, rose to national prominence with the 2016 publication of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” He was elected to the Senate in 2022 and has become one of the most vocal advocates of the former president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, particularly on trade, foreign policy and immigration.
But he has yet to prove himself in national politics and joins the Trump ticket at an extraordinary time. assassination attempt Trump’s speech at a rally Saturday shook up the campaign, drawing new attention to the country’s crude political rhetoric and reinforcing the importance of those who are a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Vance himself was criticized in the wake of the shooting for a post on X suggesting President Joe Biden was responsible for the violence.
What you need to know about the 2024 elections
“The central tenet of the Biden campaign is that the president Donald Trump “He is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “This rhetoric led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.”
Law enforcement has not yet specified the motive for the shooting.
Why Vance was chosen over other finalists
Trump said Vance will “focus heavily on the people he fought so hard for, the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and beyond.” Several of those Midwestern states are expected to play a crucial role in the November election.
Trump and Vance spoke about 20 minutes before Truth Social was published, 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.
Biden’s re-election campaign released a statement accusing Vance of saying that if he were vice president, he would have allowed “multiple slates of electors” to challenge Biden’s victory over Trump four years ago. Trump has repeatedly spread lies about election fraud before and after Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters loyal to the former president stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of his defeat.
“Donald Trump chose JD Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence would not do on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and regardless of the harm it causes 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 candidates on Trump’s short list, had been informed earlier Monday afternoon that they were not his choices, according to people familiar with their conversations.
Conversations over the past 10 days between Rubio and the Trump campaign have focused on concerns about the residency issue and how they would adjust to both men residing in the same state, according to a person familiar with the private discussions who insisted on anonymity to discuss them.
The Trump campaign wanted to be 100% sure there would be no protracted legal battle over the issue, and Rubio was not willing to uproot his family, the person said.
Trump has spent months testing the waters, assessing his opponents’ performances on television, at fundraisers and on rally stages. Several of them, including Burgum and Vance, joined him at his fraud trial in New York. Others were at last month’s debate, where Biden’s disastrous performance upended his campaign, leading to widespread calls to remove him in favor of a younger candidate.
The choice is sure to energize Trump’s loyal base. Vance has become a fixture on the conservative media circuit and speaks frequently with reporters on Capitol Hill, helping to make him the kind of leader who can carry Trump’s torch into the future, starting with the next presidential election in 2028.
But the choice also means that two white men will now lead the Republican ticket at a time when Trump is seeking to gain ground with black and Latino voters.
In “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance details life in Appalachian communities that have drifted away from the Democratic Party and that many residents find disconnected from their daily struggles. 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 was once a harsh critic of Trump
The relationship between Vance and Trump has been symbiotic.
Vance’s fame has grown alongside Trump’s unlikely rise from reality TV star to Republican presidential candidate to president. Early in Trump’s political career, Vance cast him as “a total fraud,” “a moral disaster” and “America’s Hitler.”
But like many Republicans seeking to be heard in the Trump era, Vance eventually changed his tune. He said Trump’s performance in office had proven him wrong and became one of his most vocal defenders.
“I didn’t think he would be a good president,” Vance recently told Fox News Channel. “He was a great president. And that’s one of the reasons I’m working so hard to make sure he gets a second term.”
Vance has been rewarded for his turnaround in his bid for an open Senate seat in 2022, in which he won Trump’s coveted endorsement and led him to victory in a crowded Republican primary and a hard-fought general election for Democrats. He is close to Trump’s son, Donald Jr.
“Look, I’ve seen him on television,” Donald Trump Jr. said of Vance, speaking to CNN from the convention floor. “I’ve seen him go after Democrats. Nobody speaks more articulately than he does. And I think his history, his background, really helps us in a lot of areas where we’re going to need the perspective of the Electoral College.”
Vance is now a Trump loyalist who has challenged the legitimacy of the 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 was contesting Biden’s victory “that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the United States Congress should have fought from there.”
“This is the legitimate way to run an election that many people, including myself, believe had many problems in 2020,” he said.
Four years ago, many states enacted emergency measures to allow citizens to vote safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. But judges, election officials from both parties and Trump’s attorney general himself have concluded that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Vance’s book brought him national fame
Vance’s book — subtitled “A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis” — has been praised for its A Look at Trump’s Appeal in Middle Americawhere manufacturing job losses and the opioid crisis have pushed many families like hers into poverty, abuse and addiction.
The story of Vance’s difficult childhood in Middletown, Ohio, where he was born, and his family’s home in the hills of eastern Kentucky has also captivated Hollywood. Ron Howard made it into a 2020 film starring Amy Adams as Vance’s mother and Glenn Close as his beloved “Mamaw.”
Encouraged by his grandmother, Vance went on to serve in the Marine Corps, including in 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 start a nonprofit that he said would aim to develop treatments for opioid addiction that could be “implemented nationally.”
Ultimately, our revival in Ohio failed in this mission and was shut down. During the 2022 campaign, then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, his Democratic rival, accused the charity of being a front for Vance’s political ambitions. Ryan pointed to reports that the organization made payments to a Vance political adviser and conducted opinion polls, even as its actual efforts to combat drug addiction were largely failing. Vance has denied that characterization.
As a senator, Vance has shown some willingness to work across party lines. He and Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown have teamed up on a number of issues important to the state, including the fight over funding for a Intel building $20 billion chip factory in central Ohio and introducing railway safety legislation in response to the Violent derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
___
Smyth reported from Butler, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Michelle L. Price and Will Weissert contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of the 2024 election on https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
