Former President Donald Trump has made his decision on a running mate: J.D. Vance.
“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,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday.
The announcement received an enthusiastic reception on the Republican National Convention floor, where the Ohio delegation gave a standing ovation and chanted “J.D.” after Sen. Mike Lee mentioned Vance.
Vance, the junior senator from Ohio and a national conservative darling, received the nod eight years after his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was deemed essential reading to explain Trump’s rise in 2016, and just a year and a half after he joined the Senate.
Trump shouted out the book in his announcement and said Vance’s focus in the campaign would be “the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.”
Nominating speeches for Vance also focused on his upbringing. Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted called Vance “the living embodiment of the American dream.” Ohio GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno said that for Vance, “America First is not just a slogan — it’s his North Star.”
Appearing on the floor before the speeches, Vance walked down the aisle with his wife, Usha, as the song “America First” played on repeat. He shook hands, smiled for selfies and autographed Trump posters as he walked toward the Ohio delegation.
Even after Vance had been formally announced as the nominee for vice president by House Speaker Mike Johnson and National Committeewoman Leora Levy led the hall in a benediction, there were still thunderous chants of “J.D., J.D., J.D.”
“Let us pray. That means be quiet,” Levy told the delegates.
Vance was one of three finalists for the position, alongside Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Vance had significant support from Donald Trump Jr. and others in Trump’s orbit pushing for a newer face. Trump’s choice is also a win for a national conservative movement that has championed Vance as the next iteration of the MAGA movement.
Within Trumpworld, Vance was likewise viewed as the veep finalist who most embraced Trump’s politics and who could carry the torch for Trumpism into the future. With Trump only having one remaining term to serve as president, Vance is a likely successor — and an instant favorite — to get the GOP nomination in 2028.
Other than his politics, Vance is a capable defender of Trump and his policies. Before he joined the Senate, Vance was a paid CNN contributor. And once he joined the Senate, he became a mainstay on cable TV defending the decisions of Senate Republicans, and Trump and his orbit grew to love Vance’s ability to defend the former president in the wake of his indictments and eventual conviction in New York.
The nomination comes in a new political moment, following the assassination attempt on the former president at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump has publicly called for unity following the assassination attempt and said he’s significantly retooling his speech at the Republican National Convention to focus on that message.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, however, Vance blamed rhetoric from the Biden campaign for inciting the assassination attempt, a claim that has no evidence as law enforcement continues to search for the shooter’s motive.
Vance, who turns 40 in August, would be one of the youngest vice presidents in U.S. history, with an atypically limited government résumé.
Vance first got national political attention from his 2016 memoir, which detailed his personal story, from growing up in Appalachia to attending Yale Law. At the time, he was publicly disdainful of Trump: He called Trump “cultural heroin” in an essay he wrote for The Atlantic in July 2016.
“He makes some feel better for a bit,” he wrote. “But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.” Earlier that year, he reportedly messaged a friend on Facebook about the possibility Trump would be “America’s Hitler.”
But Vance’s public position on Trump changed as he began to seek elected office. Vance successfully ran for Senate in Ohio in 2022, part of a younger, new wave on the right united by nationalism and economic populism. Vance said he regretted what he’d said about Trump in 2016 and ultimately won Trump’s endorsement in a crowded primary, with Trump explicitly brushing aside “some not-so-great things” Vance had said about him in the past.
“Like a lot of other elite conservatives and elite liberals, I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration,” Vance recently said of Trump.
On domestic policy, Vance is a populist, a staunch proponent of tariffs and a skeptic of immigration reform. On foreign policy, Vance believes we’re in a multipolar world, and that the U.S. alone shouldn’t be in charge of defending democracy. Like other conservatives in the Senate and House, he strongly opposed funding for Ukraine’s war against Russia.
Yet, while a leader among younger conservatives in Congress, Vance has also teamed up with progressive Democrats. He worked with fellow Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown in introducing the Railway Safety Act following the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a colleague on the Banking Committee, to restrict compensation for executives at failed banks after the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank.
In a press call following the announcement, the Biden campaign said Trump’s choice makes this the “most extreme and out of touch [Republican] presidential ticket in American history.”
“Trump and Vance support cuts to social security, medicare, health insurance and money that goes into roads and bridges,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is on the campaign’s National Advisory Board, said on the call. “This is all to pay for a 3 and a half million dollar annual tax cut for billionaires. They can have the billionaire vote. Joe Biden is fighting for everyone else.”
Vance’s Senate candidacy was funded in large part by Peter Thiel, his one-time boss and billionaire tech investor, who has sporadically boosted far-right causes and candidates since speaking at Trump’s first nominating convention in 2016.
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Reese Gorman, a reporter at NOTUS, reported from Milwaukee. Calen Razor contributed additional reporting.