Who is JD Vance and why was he chosen by Trump? Portrait.
JD Vance, a rookie senator from Ohio, was chosen by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as his vice-presidential candidate, and in his speech on Thursday evening, the 45th president of the United States nominated him as the leader of the MAGA movement. Those who only know Vance's career as a senator could not have been surprised by his choice, since he is extremely similar to Trump in both his worldview and rhetoric, even though he was one of his harshest critics, who once called him America's Hitler and even a cultural heroin.
The Republican Party's nomination meeting, which was organized this year in Milwaukee, the most populous city in the state of Wisconsin, began on July 15 and ended with Trump's speech on Thursday.
The delegates, party members, opinion leaders close to the party and journalists gathered in order for the delegates to officially choose the former president, Donald Trump, who confidently dominated the primaries throughout the primaries, and who appeared in public for the first time since his assassination before the nomination meeting, with his one and a half hour speech.
His election took place on Monday, before he named his vice-presidential candidate, Ohio senator James David Vance - otherwise known as James Donald Bowman - who became an active politician only a year and a half ago, and before that he had a rather varied career: for example, he published a memoir about his life so far in 2016 , which, according to critics, helps to understand why Trump won in 2016, but the former war correspondent, who also visited Iraq for half a year, was also a political commentator at CNN for years, where he expressed critical views of Trump. Vance has previously compared Trump to Adolf Hitler in a private conversation, but he has already called him the cultural hero of the Midwest in an article, and even stated in an interview that he himself is a "Never Trumper guy" - a term used for Republicans who oppose Trump and they would never vote for him - while he won a seat in the Senate in 2022 with messages that resemble Trump and glorify him.
But who is JD Vance and why was he chosen by Donald Trump?
In order to answer the latter, we must first review the former.
Advocate of a forgotten land
JD Vance was born in 1984 in Middletown, Ohio, where he attended the local high school. After his high school studies, he was a war correspondent in the US Army between 2003 and 2007 and, among other things, he visited Iraq for six months. After his demobilization, he first studied law at the Ohio State University in the state, and after completing it, he attended Yale Law School, where he also edited the university paper.
In 2016, he wrote a book about his life, partly at the encouragement of one of his professors, Hillbilly Elegy , which described the poverty, unemployment and resulting hopelessness and opioid crisis in his state. The book became a bestseller, and Ron Howard later made a film based on it for Netflix (Country Ballad of the American Dream) .
His book captured well the problems of the average person in the Midwestern states, presented the anger against national politics and the separation from it.
Even after the success of his book, according to press reports, Vance wanted to be involved in politics - he himself said in an interview that he wanted to be an elected representative in the long term.
After his book, Vance, who worked for Peter Thiel's investment company in San Francisco, moved back to Ohio in 2017 to found a non-profit organization to deal with the social problems in his state, which later became part of his major political role - according to press reports, the other option would have been to run for local or state elections. so that it would later be included in the federal legislature.
During this period, he was a recurring guest on CNN, where he could present the views of Republicans critical of Trump, opinion articles written in several newspapers, including The Atlantic or The New York Times, as well as lectures at universities - after a while, his appearances multiplied so much, that he had to hire a personal assistant.
His public involvement mostly consisted of criticizing Trump, as he believed that the president at the time won the presidential election by appealing to the increasingly impoverished working class of the Midwest, but in fact did not deal with them and did not offer a real solution to improve their lives.
At that time, for example, he wrote the opinion piece published in the Atlantic, where he showed through the experiences of his own small town and family that Trump promises a false, simple answer to the economic, social and cultural problems existing in rural America, which made Trump's promises equivalent to the euphoria caused by heroin.
The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and many of the wounds he exploits require serious consideration and measured action. (…) Yet as long as people rely on quick relief, as long as the wolves point at everyone but themselves, the nation delays the inevitable confrontation with itself. There is no self-reflection amidst the false euphoria. Trump is a cultural heroin. It makes some people feel better for a while, but they can't fix what's hurting them, and one day they'll figure it out
he said. In part because of his similar insights, Vance was liked as a political commentator in the first years of the Trump administration, as he pointed out problems that many politicians swept under the carpet from the beginning, while the coastal elite did not even necessarily know about their existence - that is why he was considered the Central To the voice of the West and Trump whispers.
Moreover, he correctly assessed that Trump's promises to boost this region were not developed enough, and that he often tried to use the serious economic and social problems for political gain with a culture war approach, rather than finding a real solution.
He went from being an opponent of Donald Trump to one of Donald Trump's biggest supporters
Many people already thought that due to the success of his book and the resulting local and national recognition, he would try to get one of Ohio's senatorial seats in 2018, but he did not do so, he had to wait until 2022, when, surprisingly compared to his previous statements, Trump positioned himself as a party candidate and announced his departure in the Republican primaries.
His campaign was already supported by the aforementioned Pieter Thiel with a $10 million donation - Thiel also supports Trump - but Robert Mercer, who was one of the most decisive donors on the Republican side in the 2010s, was also among the donors.
In the very dense primary field, he received the most votes among the candidates, and Donald Trump personally supported his candidacy. In the 2022 mid-term elections, he also won the senatorial seat, so on January 6, 2023, he could take up his mandate as one of the youngest senators.
In the meantime, Vance, who previously criticized Trump, completely agreed with Trump's views: the focus of his campaign was on migration, border protection and action against big tech companies.
But in addition to these, he also promised a cure for the problems of rural America, or at least dealt with them.
For example, in a populist way, he blamed the administration of Joe Biden for the opioid crisis, saying that they make poor white Americans addicted to drugs because they vote for Trump, and that their deaths due to addiction pave the way for the victory of the Democrats, while, according to him, the border is not closed to punish them in this way those who voted against him - in fact, both problems are much more multifaceted than that, and they did not start during the Biden presidency. In addition, the opioid crisis is mostly to be blamed on the deregulation policies of the past decades, the lack of proper supervision by the authorities, and the few pharmaceutical companies that are getting rich from it.
Before Vance ran in the primary, he announced that Donald Trump was a great president who did great things. Compared to his previous statements, he explained this one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn by saying that he had been hasty in judging him, for which he later apologized.
Over the years, his judgment against the Republican president has softened a lot: while he published articles criticizing him in 2016 and 2017, by then in an interview in 2018 he had already talked about Trump's break with the Republican Party's previous message of Reagan, which promised tax cuts for the richest, and instead deals with real problems, compared to the other presidential candidates at the time - in fact, he told the Financial Times at the time that Trump was the "least worrying" of the 2016 presidential candidates.
In the 2020 presidential election, he himself already supported Trump's revival, while according to his words, he voted for the independent Evan McMullin four years ago in the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Why did Donald Trump choose JD Vance?
Vance expressed similar views not only in his senatorial campaign, but later as a senator as well - be it in the media or even in the Senate.
Like the former president, he takes one of the most isolationist positions among Republicans on foreign policy issues, so for example he would not provide any support to Ukraine - he also wrote an opinion article about this for the New York Times, he also spoke about them at the nomination meeting, and for a long time he partially prevented the Senate from voting about a package intended for Ukraine - but also, like Trump, he criticizes China very harshly, as well as America's allies, such as Germany, because, according to him, America's allies are overly dependent on America and take advantage of the country.
He is completely on the same platform as Trump when it comes to migration and the border fence, but even with regard to the 2020 presidential elections, he supports the former president in his false narrative that it was stolen from him.
moreover, Vance said in an interview that if he had been the vice president in 2020, he would not have sanctioned the election of Joe Biden as president at the joint, ceremonial meeting of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
which was finally disturbed by Trump's protesters during the siege of the Capitol that caused the death of five – according to some readings, seven – people.
In addition, Vance believes that sometimes the president can do more than what customary law would allow him to do, i.e. he would not try to restrain Trump at all if he wanted to rule the country in an authoritarian way - in addition, Vance himself is tied to Project 2025 by several strings. which would also help a Republican president.
However, Vance was chosen by Trump not only because of their similar ideological convictions and his admiration for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, but also because of his loyalty - unlike other senators, he answers all questions from journalists and instead of deflecting, he defended Trump even in sensitive matters - and on the other hand because of his resume. Indeed, Vance can more easily address the voters of the Midwestern battleground states, who are key in this year's presidential election.
Not only because he himself comes from this area and grew up here, but also because his rhetoric resonates with the problems of the workers living here, and he is also a war veteran and a believer, which means a lot in more rural areas.
In addition, his choice also shows the balance of power within the Republican Party. In contrast to 2016, Trump did not choose a vice-president who is far from him in terms of worldview, in order to broaden his platform as much as possible, but a new senator who completely agrees with him in his views, i.e. now the former president has completely shaped the Republican Party in his own image - because he does not agree with him , it either remains silent or simply retreats.
In addition, JD Vance is still young, he will only be 39 years old at the time of the election, which means that in the long run he can even take over his voter base, which is only called the MAGA camp after Trump's slogan, Make America Great Again, maintaining that Trump's legacy will thus be after his retirement it doesn't smell like dust - this is partly what Trump also hinted at when he said in his speech at the nomination meeting that Vance will stay in politics for a long time.
Featured image: Vice presidential candidate JD Vance of Ohio concludes his remarks during the third day of the Republican National Convention for the Nominating Party at the Fiserv Forum on July 17, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. MTI/EPA/Shawn Thew
