Who is J.D. Vance Trump's running mate?
Republican candidate Donald Trump has selected Congressman J.D. Vance as his running mate at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Trump has selected Vance to join his campaign for the November presidential election.
About J.D. Vance
Vance, an Ohio senator, was born in 1984 in Middletown, Connecticut. He graduated from Middletown High School in 2003 and earned a bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy from Ohio State University in 2009.
Vance earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 2013. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2003 to 2007, and served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Vance was elected to the Senate in 2022 for a term ending January 3, 2029, and has become a vocal advocate of the former president's "Make America Great Again" agenda, particularly on trade, foreign policy, and immigration.
Relationship with Donald Trump
During the 2016 United States presidential election, Vance was an outspoken critic of Republican nominee Donald Trump. In a February 2016 column in an American newspaper, Vance wrote: The article wrote that "Trump's actual policy proposals, as they stand, range from immoral to ridiculous. In media interviews, Vance has described Trump as "cultural heroin" and "opium for the masses."
In October 2016, Vance called Trump "hateful" in a Twitter post, and described himself as "a perpetually anti-Trump person." In a private Facebook message, he called Trump "America's Hitler."
By February 2018, Vance had begun to change his mind, saying that Trump "is one of the few political leaders in America who understands the frustration that exists in large parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and eastern Kentucky."
Vance thus endorsed Trump in 2020 and in July 2021, apologized for calling Trump "hateful" and deleted posts from 2016 in which he criticized Trump on Twitter.
Vance said he now believes Trump has been a good president and expressed regret for criticizing him during the 2016 election.
In October 2021, Vance reiterated Trump's claims of election fraud, saying that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election due to widespread fraud, and on April 15, Trump endorsed Vance for the U.S. Senate.
In response to historian Robert Kagan, who wrote a November 2023 Washington Post op-ed titled "Trump's Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable. We Must Stop Pretending," Vance wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland suggesting that Kagan be prosecuted for promoting "open rebellion" by Democratic-controlled states.
Kagan said his op-ed was not calling for rebellion and commented, "It's telling that their first instinct when attacked by a journalist is to suggest that they should be locked up."
On June 30, Vance said, “I think the president has broad pardon authority… but more importantly, I think the president has immunity.”
