politics
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Donald Trump called Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate on Monday, selecting a former critic turned loyal ally who’s now the primary millennial to affix a significant party's ticket at a time when there’s widespread concern concerning the advancing age of America's political leaders.
“After much thought and consideration, and taking into account the tremendous talents of many others, I have concluded that the person best qualified to serve as Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the great State of Ohio,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social network.
Vance, 39, rose to national fame in 2016 with the publication of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” Elected to the Senate in 2022, he has develop into one among the staunchest advocates of the previous president's “Make America Great Again” agenda, particularly on trade, foreign policy and immigration.
But he is essentially untested in national politics and joins Trump's list at a unprecedented moment. attempted murder Trump's performance at a rally on Saturday has shaken up the campaign trail, drawn latest attention to the country's crude political rhetoric and reinforced the importance of those only a stone's throw from the presidency.
Vance himself faced criticism within the wake of the shooting for a post on X by which he suggested that President Joe Biden was liable for the violence.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote. “This rhetoric led directly to the assassination of President Trump.”
Law enforcement has not yet provided a motive for the shooting. Still, the election is sure to mobilize Trump's loyal base. Vance has become a fixture on the conservative media scene, frequently engaging in argumentative conversations with reporters on Capitol Hill, helping to establish him as the kind of leader who could carry Trump's legacy into the future, starting with the next presidential election in 2028.
However, this election also means that two white people will now lead the Republican ticket at a time when Trump is trying to gain a foothold among black and Latino voters.
In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance describes life in Appalachian communities that had turned away from the Democratic Party as many residents felt disconnected from their daily concerns. Although the book was a bestseller, it was also criticized for sometimes oversimplifying rural life and ignoring the role of racism in modern politics.
Vance's fame grew in parallel with Trump's unlikely rise from reality TV star to Republican presidential candidate and ultimately to president. In the early stages of Trump's political career, Vance called him a “total fraud,” a “moral disaster,” and “America's Hitler.”
But like many Republicans seeking relevance in the Trump era, Vance eventually changed his tune, saying Trump's performance in office had proved him wrong and emerging as one of his staunchest defenders.
“I didn't think he would be a good president,” Vance recently told Fox News Channel. “He was a great president. And that's one of the reasons I'm working so hard to get him a second term.”
Vance was rewarded for his change of course in his bid for a Senate seat in 2022. He secured Trump's coveted endorsement, winning a tightly contested Republican primary and a closely contested Democratic general election. He is very close to Trump's son, Donald Jr.
Vance is now a loyal Trump supporter who questions the legality of the criminal prosecutions and civil judgments against him and challenges the outcome of the 2020 election.
In February, he told ABC News that if he had been vice president on January 6, 2021, he would have told the states where Trump challenged Biden's victories “that we need multiple electoral colleges, and I think the U.S. Congress should have discussed it from then on.”
“This is the legitimate way to deal with an election that many people, myself included, felt had a lot of problems in 2020,” he said.
Many states took emergency measures four years ago to allow people to vote safely during the COVID-19 pandemic, but judges, election officials from both parties and Trump's own attorney general concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The relationship between Vance and Trump was symbiotic.
Vance’s book – subtitled “The Memory of a Family and Culture in Crisis” – was praised for its Insights into Trump's appeal among America's middle classwhere manufacturing job losses and the opioid crisis had pushed many families like his into poverty, abuse and addiction.
The story of Vance's deprived childhood in Middletown, Ohio, where he was born, and his family's region in the hills of eastern Kentucky also fascinated Hollywood. Ron Howard made a film in 2020 with Amy Adams as Vance's mother and Glenn Close as his beloved “Mamaw.”
With his grandmother's encouragement, Vance served in the Marine Corps, including a tour of Iraq, and graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He then worked at an investment firm in Silicon Valley before returning to Ohio to start a nonprofit that he said aims to develop treatments for opioid addiction that “might be scaled up nationally.”
Ultimately, our Ohio renewal failed in this mission and was shut down. During the 2022 campaign, then-US Rep. Tim Ryan, his Democratic rival, accused the charity of being little more than a front for Vance's political ambitions. Ryan pointed to reports that the organization made payments to a political adviser to Vance and conducted opinion polls, even as its actual efforts to combat addiction largely failed. Vance disputed that characterization.
As a senator, Vance has shown a willingness to work across party lines. He and Ohio's oldest senator, Democrat Sherrod Brown, have joined forces on a number of issues important to the state, including the fight to fund a Intel is constructing a chip factory for $20 billion in Central Ohio and introduction Railway safety laws in response to the fiery derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
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