Donald Trump has chosen J.D. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio and author of the best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” as his presidential running mate.
The announcement, made on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Monday, marks the culmination of Vance’s stunning political evolution over the past few years.
Vance has been an outspoken critic of Trump, deriding him as “America’s Hitler” and a “complete liar.” But Vance began to embrace Trump as he sought a Senate seat in 2022, ultimately winning over the former president in a crowded Republican primary.
“He’s the one who said bad things about me,” Trump said at a rally in 2022. “By that standard, I don’t think I would support anybody in this country.”
Vance echoed that assessment, telling the rally audience, “The president was right. I wasn’t always nice, but the simple fact is, he was the best president in my lifetime, and he exposed it like no one else Corruption in this country.
Vance first rose to fame with the publication of “Hillbilly Elegy” in 2016, which detailed his experiences growing up in southwestern Ohio and later attending Yale Law School. The book was later adapted into a 2020 film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
In the months after Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Vance’s descriptions of his family’s experiences with poverty and drug addiction were seen by some critics as revealing of the lives of Americans who helped decide the election outcome.
Writing for the Guardian, author Hari Kunzru said: “This is mired in a national row pitting an ill-defined entity known as the ‘white working class’ against the Sunni and partisan factions of US politics. Paired with Shia’s equally nebulous ‘coastal elites’, Hillbilly Elegy is uneven and frustratingly silent on the author’s true commitment.
After Trump took office, Vance became an oft-quoted conservative voice, often asked to explain the president’s brand of politics to confused cable news viewers. Vance was initially viewed as an anti-Trump Republican after a CNN analysis found that he liked many tweets in 2016 and 2017 that were harshly critical of the then-President.
But that tone has shifted sharply as Vance enters the 2022 Senate race, building his campaign around far-right proposals such as completing a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. During the election, Democrats accused Vance of supporting a racist conspiracy theory known as the “Great Replacement” after he suggested the opposition was trying to “convert the electorate” amid an immigration “invasion.”
“You’re talking about a shift in the makeup of democracy in this country that means we will never win, that means Republicans will never win a national election in this country again,” Vance told voters in 2022.
Vance’s far-right tactics ultimately succeeded, and he defeated Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan in the election by six points. In the year and a half since he joined Congress, Vance has been one of Trump’s most outspoken and active supporters on Capitol Hill. Following Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump, Vance blamed Joe Biden for inciting the attack.
“Today is not just an isolated incident,” Vance posted on X. “The core premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist and must be stopped at all costs. This The remarks directly led to the assassination attempt on President Trump.
As Trump’s running mate, Vance will now have a larger platform to spread that message.
