Donald Trump announced Monday afternoon that he had picked U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate, capping a week of speculation since the former president also mentioned U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum as possible choices. Trump and Vance will become the official Republican ticket this week during the GOP Convention in Milwaukee.
Vance, 39, was first elected to the Senate in 2022 when he defeated former Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan for an open seat in Ohio. Before he entered politics, Vance was best known as the author of the bestselling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which followed Vance’s story of a young boy who grew up in a broken home in Appalachia but overcame adversity to attend college and then law school. It was made into a Netflix film.
If Trump wins in November, Vance would tie Richard Nixon as the second-youngest vice president in history. (Vance turns 40 in August.)
“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 of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.’s book, Hillbilly Elegy, became a Major Best Seller and Movie as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country.
“J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond,” Trump added.
“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. Congratulations to Senator J.D. Vance, his wife, Usha, who also graduated from Yale Law School, and their three beautiful children. MAGA2024!”
Vance formerly was an outspoken critic of Trump but said he changed his mind once he saw the former president in action.
His biography as a youngster who grew up in poverty in Appalachia will likely be a major part of his campaign speeches.
In 2020, he told Crosswalk he wrote Hillbilly Elegy to help society better understand individuals who grow up in impoverished homes.
“I really wanted to give people sort of an insider’s tale,” he said. “… I thought if people sort of understood these problems, not as academic abstractions, but as real problems faced by real people, that they’d gain some empathy and some understanding and think about them in a slightly different way.”
His story, he said in 2020, has a good ending.
“Mom is sober. She’s got a great relationship with my kids — her grandkids. People are just doing well,” he said. “I think that, to me, is the most important thing. It’s not just tragedy upon tragedy. …At least for us [it is a] tragedy that has led somewhere much more hopeful and much more positive.”
The novel and the movie also promote forgiveness, he said.
“You have to try to forgive the people who you feel may have wronged you; you have to try to understand them and have some empathy towards them,” Vance said. “And if you’re not, you’re just going to be an angry kid. Maybe you achieve some measure of success, but you’re never actually going to be a whole and complete and happy person unless you sort of appreciate your family.”
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Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
