Former President Donald Trump has chosen Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio to be his vice presidential running mate this November.
Trump announced his VP pick on social media just before he was to accept the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday.
Trump wrote, “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.”
He said of Vance that he had “honourably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association.”
The former president noted that Vance’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was a bestseller that “championed the hardworking men and women of our Country.” And he pointed to Vance’s previous career as a venture capitalist.
Sources confirmed before Vance’s selection was announced that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who were also considered to be top contenders for the No. 2 job, were informed that they had not been chosen.
Although Vance wasn’t at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally where a shooter attempted the former president’s life, the senator expressed his concern and support for the president from Ohio. He also shared fundraising information for the families of those who were killed or injured at the rally.
“Courageous, United, and Defiant. This is leadership,” Vance wrote on X over the weekend after Trump asked Americans to remain “resilient” in their faith and “defiant in the face of wickedness.”
Vance has frequently joined Trump on the campaign trail and was long considered to be on the shortlist of VP contenders. Vance and his wife, Usha, were spotted leaving their Ohio home Monday morning, a sign that Vance might be the pick.
Ohio has been a reliably Republican-dominated state in recent elections, although the senior senator from the state, Sherrod Brown, is a Democrat and is also up for reelection this year. But Trump has focused less on choosing a running mate from a key battleground state and more on the qualities in a candidate that matter most to him.
Trump has prioritized picking a running mate who would be loyal to him and support him publicly, as Vance has increasingly done through the years.
Initially, though, Vance harshly criticized Trump and was an avowed “Never-Trump guy.” Earlier this year, Fox News’ Bett Baier confronted Vance with some of his previous statements, including comments that Trump could be “America’s Hitler” and “cultural heroin.” Vance told Baier he was “wrong” about Trump.
“I think you should, when you are wrong about something, you should change your mind and be honest with people about that fact,” Vance said in the interview.
Vance grew up in challenging circumstances, largely raised by his grandparents before going on to college and law school at Yale.
Now one of Trump’s most vocal allies, Vance defended the former president during his criminal trial in Manhattan, including after his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for “hush money” payments.
“The entire purpose of this trial was to allow the media and the Democrats to say exactly that,” Vance told CNN after the New York verdict. “This was never about justice, this is about plastering ‘convicted felon’ all over the airwaves when in reality the only thing that Donald Trump is guilty of is being in the courtroom of a political sham trial.”
Asked in a June interview on “Face the Nation” about his interest in the vice presidency and his relatively brief experience in the Senate, Vance said, “In 18 months … we’ve done a lot of good work for our constituents.”
“We’ve got hundreds of millions of dollars to the Great Lakes,” he continued. “We’ve done a lot to help the people of East Palestine deal with the terrible train disaster. And, of course, we’ve done a lot of work on making sure that Ohio has gotten defense resources that make not just Ohio, but our country stronger. So there’s a lot we can hang our hat on.”
