By Gram Slattery, Alexandra Ulmer and Nathan Layne
Photo: Andrew Harnik / Getty Images via AFP
Donald Trump selected JD Vance, a Republican US senator from Ohio, as his running mate on Monday, elevating a politician who once criticised the former president in acid terms but has since become one of his most stalwart defenders.
The news, first announced on Trump's Truth Social media website, emerged at the start of the four-day Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to nominate the party's presidential ticket.
"After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator JD Vance of the Great State of Ohio," Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The selection of James David Vance, author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy, could help boost turnout for Trump in the 5 November election. The Ohio native is deeply popular with the Republican candidate's base.
A staunch conservative from a Republican state, Vance is unlikely to bring many new voters into Trump's corner, however, and may even alienate some moderates. Some Trump supporters had pushed him to select a woman or person of color as his No. 2 to expand a coalition that skews toward white men.
Several advisers to Trump said the former president, who survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday, had focused on choosing a running mate he trusted and got along with.
Among those who had privately advocated for Vance, according to several sources familiar with the matter, were Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
Oil businessman Dan Eberhart, a Trump donor, saw the Vance pick as a sign of Trump's confidence in his campaign against President Joe Biden. Polls show the men locked in a tight race nationally, but Trump has a measurable lead in most of the battleground states that will decide the election.
"It demonstrates that Trump doesn't feel he needs his VP to deliver any specific demographic or state," Eberhart said. "He's confident that he has this race wrapped up."
Photo: AFP / REBECCA DROKE
In selecting Vance, Trump passed over other possible contenders, including US Senators Marco Rubio and Tim Scott and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
At 39, Vance will represent a younger generation in an election that features Trump, 78, and Biden, 81, bringing a counterweight to the Democratic ticket that also includes Vice President Kamala Harris, 59.
Vance's rapid ascent has been unusual for American politics. After a troubled and impoverished childhood in southern Ohio, he served in the Marine Corps, won a scholarship to Yale Law School and later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.
He rose to prominence after 2016 when he wrote Hillbilly Elegy, in which he explored the socioeconomic problems confronting his hometown and the cycle of poverty that had entrapped Americans in the Appalachian Mountains, where his mother and her family had their origins.
The book criticised what Vance saw as a self-destructive culture in rural America and sought to explain Trump's popularity among impoverished white Americans.
Vance himself was harshly critical of Trump before and after Trump's 2016 election win against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, calling him an "idiot" and "America's Hitler", among other epithets.
But as Vance geared up to run for the US Senate in Ohio in 2022, he transformed into one of the former president's most consistent defenders, supporting Trump even when some Senate colleagues declined to do so.
Vance has played down the 6 January, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. He said he "doubted" Mike Pence's life was in danger, despite violent protesters getting within yards of the former vice president as Secret Service agents rushed him out of the Capitol building. Vance has also echoed Trump's criticisms of the way the Justice Department has prosecuted 6 January rioters, accusing the department of disregarding due process protections.
Republican vice-president candidate J. D. Vance attends the first day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
In February, he declined to criticise Trump for encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack America's NATO allies if they failed to increase their defense spending.
While the Republican Party historically stood for free markets and embraced foreign intervention as an important national security tool, Trump's 2016 election opened up significant rifts within the party. Vance has been one of the most vocal opponents of continued aid to Ukraine in the Senate, a stance at odds with many Republican legislative leaders.
On the campaign trail, the former venture capitalist has also served as a bridge between Trump associates and wealthy Silicon Valley donors, many of whom have opened their wallets to Trump this election.
Fraught selection process
Vance's anti-corporate rhetoric and his opposition to Ukraine aid gave some donors pause, and four donors told Reuters in the moments after the selection that they felt let down. Many contributors to the campaign were hoping for a moderate or business-friendly nominee, who would embrace free-market economics and expand the electoral map.
"Of all the choices he had, I think he chose the worst one," said donor and metals businessman Andy Sabin, who had been waiting for Trump's pick for running mate to see whether he would donate to the campaign.
"Vance is going to hurt Trump more than help him," Sabin said, citing Vance's Ukraine stance. "Now I definitely won't donate."
At least some senior campaign advisers were partial to Rubio, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter. Rubio has significant political experience and might have helped boost the former president's support among Latinos.
Trump's vice presidential selection process was drawn out and calibrated for maximum suspense.
While the former president started with an informal long list of at least a dozen people, he had whittled down his options over the course of 2024, with Vance, Burgum and Rubio emerging as the most serious contenders.
Many of Trump's closest advisers did not know until Monday who the former president would pick.
Burgum and Rubio received phone calls informing them they would not be selected only hours before Trump officially tapped Vance, according to four sources with knowledge of those interactions.
In a statement, the Biden campaign said Trump chose Vance because the Ohio senator would not stand up to him if the former president committed an authoritarian act while in office.
"Trump picked JD Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn't on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people," Biden-Harris 2024 chair Jen O'Malley Dillon said in a statement.
Pence, who twice served as Trump's running mate, declined to endorse his former boss in this year's election.
- Reuters