WNAM REPORT: Former US President Donald Trump selected Republican Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate on Monday, elevating a politician who once criticized the former president in strong terms but has since become one of his most ardent defenders.
The news, carried on Trump’s Truth Social media website, emerged at the start of the four-day Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to nominate the party’s presidential ticket.
“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,†wrote Trump on Truth Social.
Trump emphasized that Vance, on the campaign trail “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….”
Vance, a former venture capitalist andd the author of the bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” before running for elective office, was one of a handful of Republicans considered top running mate contenders. That group included North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina.
While Vance hails from Ohio, a one-time battleground state the former president comfortably carried in the 2016 and 2020 elections, the senator’s selection is expected to boost Trump among working-class Democrats, especially across the Rust Belt, who otherwise might have been supporters of President Joe Biden, according to multiple experts who spoke with Fox News Digital as Trump was weighing his options.
Vance grew up in a working-class family in a small city in southwestern Ohio. His parents divorced when he was young, and as his mother struggled for years with drug and alcohol abuse, Vance was raised in part by his maternal grandparents.
After high school graduation, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the Iraq War. He later graduated from Ohio State University and then earned a law degree at Yale University.
Vance, who lives in Cincinnati, moved to San Francisco after law school and worked as a principal in a venture capital firm owned by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who later became a major financial supporter of Vance’s successful 2020 campaign for the Senate.
Vance was a vocal critic of Trump when the former president first ran for the White House in the 2016 cycle.
However, Vance eventually supported Trump, praising the former president’s tenure in the White House, and in a Fox News interview in 2021, he apologized for his earlier criticism of Trump.
Trump’s endorsement of Vance days before the 2022 Republican Senate primary boosted him to victory in a crowded, competitive and combustible nomination race.
“Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump. I didn’t think he was going to be a good president,” Vance told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview last month. “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.”
In the Senate, Vance has been one of the most vocal supporters of Trump’s America First agenda and has been a vocal opponent of U.S. aid to Ukraine.
