Trump names Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as vice presidential running mate

A bearded man in a suit and red tie — FILE - Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, speaks at a press conference, May 13, 2024, in New York.

Stephen Fowler is a political reporter with NPR's Washington Desk and will be covering the 2024 election based in the South. Before joining NPR, he spent more than seven years at Georgia Public Broadcasting as its political reporter and host of the Battleground: Ballot Box podcast, which covered voting rights and legal fallout from the 2020 presidential election, the evolution of the Republican Party and other changes driving Georgia's growing prominence in American politics. His reporting has appeared everywhere from the Center for Public Integrity and the Columbia Journalism Review to the PBS NewsHour and ProPublica.

July 15, 2024

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Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who once called former Donald Trump “America’s Hitler” but is now one of his most vocal supporters in Congress, has been named Trump’s 2024 vice presidential pick.

Ahead of the official nomination of the vice president in Milwaukee on the first day of the Republican convention, Trump posted on Truth Social that we was choosing Vance.

“As Vice President, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our Troops, and will do everything he can to help me MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump said in a two-part post.

Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio and served in the Marine Corps for four years after graduating high school in 2003. He graduated from The Ohio State University and Yale Law School before becoming an investment banker in California. He rose to national prominence in 2016 with his widely read — and widely criticized — memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which detailed his white working-class upbringing and the hollowed-out Rust Belt beset by addiction, poverty and despair.

In a 2016 interview with NPR, Vance said he was leaving the Bay Area to return to Ohio and do nonprofit work to target opioid addiction that was prevalent in his community growing up. “It’s obviously very personally important to me and it’s something my family has struggled with and dealt with,” he said on NPR’s All Things Considered. “And I felt, you know, frankly a little bit of responsibility now that I’ve been given this platform by the success of the book to go and try to do at least a little something to help out.”

Vance used his platform to start Our Ohio Renewal, a 501(c)(4) advocacy organization that focused on education, addiction and other “social ills” he mentioned in his memoir. The organization shuttered in less than two years with few accomplishments.

But in Trump’s world, past statements are almost never fatal if overwritten by present and future actions. Vance has morphed into a key Trump ally since taking office, and an omnipresent surrogate during his New York hush money trial.

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt against Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, Vance blamed President Joe Biden for the attack. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” Vance wrote on Twitter. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Today is not just some isolated incident.

The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.

That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination.
— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) July 14, 2024

Trump has called him a “genuine convert” to his cause, and if the former president is the founder of the current GOP’s “America First” agenda that attacks Democrats and the federal government, then Vance has positioned himself as the heir apparent for picking up the Make America Great Again mantel for future generations.

Vance’s selection doesn’t explicitly widen Trump’s appeal to a broader range of voters but signals a doubling down on the former president’s dire vision of an America that is under attack and a country that is unlikley to exist if he does not win. In a recent Fox News interview, Vance said he was once critical of Trump, but his time in office proved him wrong. “It’s about the success of Trump’s presidency,” Vance said in a Fox News interview that was part of a series profiling potential VP picks. “But I also think his presidency revealed, at least to me, how corrupt the media was. It taught me a very important lesson about how the media lies.”