Former President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, has announced Ohio Senator JD Vance, as his running mate for the 2024 election.
Senator Vance, 39, was once a bitter critic of Trump, calling him an idiot and the American version of Adolf Hitler before later turning around to be one of his best defenders.
Trump named him as his Vice President on Truth Social on Monday evening, July 15.
He wrote: “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 JD Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” Trump wrote.
‘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,’ he said.
The announcement follows an attempt on Trump’s life last Saturday.
JD Vance will go on record as the third-youngest vice president in history, behind John Breckinridge (36 years old upon taking office in 1857) and Richard Nixon (40 years and 11 days in 1953).
He rose to national fame with the 2016 publication of his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy”, which was about his working class upbringing in the Midwest which was turned into a film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
JD Vance was elected to the Senate in 2022 and has become one of the champions of the former president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, particularly on trade, foreign policy, and immigration.
The senator is today a face of Trumpism and staunchly defends Mr Trump during his frequent appearances on TV.
However, when Trump made his first bid for presidency, Vance was bitterly opposed to him.
Vance, who was educated at Yale, proudly called himself a ‘Never Trump guy’.
He called the former President an ‘idiot’ and reprehensible and noted that voters backed him for ‘racist reasons’.
Vance wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016: ‘I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,’
Years later, after Trump’s first term in office, and Vance made a bid for a Senate seat in Ohio, he made a U-turn. He aligned with Trump for success at the polls. After kissing Mr Trump’s ring, he won his support – and won the election.
At the time the former President said that Mr Vance ‘gets it now, and I have seen that in spades’.
He had become one of the former President’s most ardent defenders, standing by his side even when other high-profile Republicans declined to do so.
After Mr Trump was shot at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday, Mr Vance was one of the first to blame the Biden administration for it.
He wrote on social media: ‘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’.
Mr Vance last month admitted that he had been ‘wrong about Donald Trump’. He told Fox News’s Bret Baier: ‘I didn’t think he was going to be a good president.
‘He was a great president, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m working so hard to make sure he gets a second term.
‘When you are wrong about something – you should change your mind and be honest with people about that fact.’
