By Amanda Brucculeri
Boston University News Service
Former President Donald Trump has selected Senator JD Vance of Ohio to be his running mate in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. Trump announced his decision on Monday via social media as the Republican National Convention began in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“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 J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump wrote in a statement posted on his Truth Social platform.
The announcement comes after months of speculating who would join the former president’s ticket, and only days after his assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Delegates at the convention celebrated the announcement moments after it was posted, some even writing “Vance” on Trump signs using markers and lipstick. Vance formally received his party’s nomination hours later at the convention, where he was greeted with applause and standing ovations.
Vance rose to fame after the publication of his 2016 memoir titled “Hillbilly Elegy,” which details the social and socioeconomic problems he faced growing up in Middletown, Ohio. Trump stated that the memoir “championed the hardworking men and women of our Country” in his announcement. Vance is also a Marine veteran and venture capitalist. In 2022, he was elected to the Senate and soon became a leading MAGA proponent.
However, just six years earlier, Vance was a strong supporter and leading voice of the “Never Trump” movement, calling himself “a Never Trump guy” in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose. He called Trump “unfit for our nation’s highest office” in a New York Times op-ed, and even went as far as to tell an associate on Facebook that Trump is “America’s Hitler.”
Despite his history of disagreeing with Trump and his policies, Vance was able to earn Trump’s endorsement in the 2022 Ohio Republican Senate primary. Since then, Vance has become a rising prominent figure in the right wing of the Republican Party, and has long been considered to be on Trump’s list of possible contenders for the No. 2 position. Vance was one of many Republican lawmakers that defended Trump during his criminal trial, and has frequently joined the former president on his campaign trail.
Moments after the pick was announced, Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon described Vance as “one of the most far-right extremists in Washington.”
“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,” she said in a statement.
The Biden campaign plans to cast Vance as no different from Trump in terms of his “extreme” views, highlighting Vance’s opposition to abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act, as well as his pledge to help Trump establish Project 2025 once elected.
