The News
After months of speculation, Donald Trump has chosen J.D. Vance, the rookie senator from Ohio, as his vice president to join his reelection bid.
Trump made the announcement on Monday as the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee. The news comes just two days after Trump survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday that left one rally-goer dead and two injured.
Vance was a political newcomer when he ran for Senate in 2021, and has been in office less than two years. But he had a national profile before entering politics as the author of the 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which discussed his family’s struggles growing up in Middletown, Ohio.
Donald Trump, Jr., a major proponent of Vance during his recent political rise, told reporters that his experience dealing with more mainstream and liberal media outlets — “enemy territory,“ he called it — was a major asset as the campaign looks to reach new audiences.
“He does that better than almost any of our people can do on more conservative television,“ he said. “And you see that you see the intelligence and you hear his life story. That’s gonna resonate.“
Of the finalists, he was seen as most closely aligned with Trump’s MAGA ideology and brand of politics. He has been a fierce opponent of continued aid to Ukraine and has said he would have broken with Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6 and attempted to overturn the election by refusing to certify the official results from states.
His choice may say more about the future of the party than the current election. With Trump constitutionally bound to one term if he wins, Vance will immediately become his most prominent potential heir apparent and a 2028 frontrunner.
“This pick is about one thing and one thing only: Solidifying Trump’s political legacy,“ Dennis Lennox, a Republican consultant, told Semafor. “This is a passing of the torch.“
Vance’s proponents argue his investment in a highly specific Trump-infused brand of politics will help prevent more traditional Republicans from regaining control of the party in the future. As like-minded conservative commentator Tucker Carlson put it at a Heritage Foundation summit near the RNC: “Every bad person I’ve ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against J.D. Vance.”
Trump had held off on announcing his VP pick for as long as possible, with most pundits betting on one of three finalists — who also included North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — and a few shortlisted candidates, including South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
Trump said last week that he wanted to reveal the pick at the convention to make it more “interesting” and “exciting.”
“It’s like a highly sophisticated version of The Apprentice,” he said in a radio interview.
Spencer Gross, a GOP delegate from Ohio, described Vance’s selection as an “excellent pick strategically,” because of his youth and personal connection to key Rust Belt swing states.
“Appeal in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Win one of those and this is a wrap,” Gross said. “Also, pretty incredible to see someone in their thirties on the ticket. He can speak to issues younger families are experiencing in a way you only can when you are of similar age.”
Oren Cass, chief economist at the populist conservative think tank American Compass, said that the pick signaled the American right was moving towards a new “working class conservativism.”
“The contrast between Mike Pence’s outdated market fundamentalism and J.D.‘s conservative economics and dedication to American workers captures perfectly the Republican Party’s transformation over the past eight years,” Cass said.
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The View From The Biden campaign
“Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda,” Biden campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said on a Monday call with reporters. “Even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people.”
Notable
- At The Atlantic, David Graham traces Vance’s transformation from a Trump critic and darling of the liberal establishment to one of the former president’s most important boosters: “There’s a good chance that the future of the Republican Party will look like Vance: populist but illiberal, semi-isolationist, and able to connect with both the working class and elite circles.”
- Politico Magazine has 55 facts about Vance for you to browse. Among his intellectual influences, “Vance has cited the conservative localist Rod Dreher, the reactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin and the ‘postliberal’ Catholic philosopher Patrick Deneen.”