Trump Taps J.D. Vance as Running Mate
After months of public auditioning and behind-the-scenes strategizing, Donald Trump has finally chosen a vice president.
On Monday, the president announced that Ohio Senator J.D. Vancewill join him on the 2024 ticket. The decision came just two days after a would-be assassin nearly killed the former president at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“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, going on to list some of Vance’s credentials.
Behind the scenes, Donald Trump Jr. had been a fierce advocate, to his father and to others in the GOP elite, for tapping Vance for Trump’s 2024 VP slot, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter say.
Trump, for his part, regularly praises Vance in private for being a MAGA “warrior” and has repeatedly called Vance one “handsome son of a bitch.” Trump is also fully aware, the sources add, of all of Vance’s past anti-Trump criticisms — including when Vance feared Trump could be an American Adolf Hitler — and has at times teased Vance about his past remarks.
The announcement came after several reports emerged of individual phone calls made to possible VP contenders informing them they would not be getting the job. Vance beat out an extensive list of candidates, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R-N.D.), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).
Vance, now a staunch MAGA loyalist, was one a staunch critic of the former president. In 2016, Vance suggested that Trump might be “America’s Hitler,” in text messages with a former roommate. In a 2016 op-ed written for The New York Times, Vance wrote that then-candidate Trump was “unfit for our nation’s highest office.” That same year, Vance described himself as “a Never Trump guy.”
Clearly his stance has changed.
In 2022, after much groveling and public apologizing from Vance, Trump endorsed the Ohio native’s Senate campaign, which he won by a six-point margin. As a senator, Vance has indicated that he would support federal restrictions on abortion access, and has endorsed hardline restrictions on reproductive freedoms. The senator has also expressed his opposition to same-sex marriage, access to gender-affirming care for LGBTQ+ youth, endorsed discriminatory policies against immigrants, and supported a slew of far-right policy positions.
“The announcement of J.D. Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate today is another disappointing decision by Republican elites that affects all Americans,” Lauren Blauvelt, executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, said in a statement. “Vance has been an absentee senator more interested in his own political ambitions than in supporting the people he was elected to represent. He has dismissed the overwhelming majority of Ohioans who voted to enshrine the right to abortion access in the state constitution and is out of step with the majority of Americans who believe that abortion is health care. We know that if elected, Trump and Vance will push forward a national ban on abortion and attack access to reproductive health care, gender-affirming care and other vital and life-saving care. They will attack and work to eradicate any laws that do not align with their beliefs.”
In the aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt against Trump, Vance was quick to blame Democrats despite the ongoing vacuum of information about the gunman’s motive. “Today is not just some isolated incident,” Vance wrote on X. “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.”
Shortly after the assassination attempt, multiple outlets reported the presence of increased security protections by Ohio law enforcement outside of Vance’s home in Cincinnati, Ohio.
As recently as last week, the former president was still claiming in an interview with Fox News that he hadn’t “made [a] final decision,” regarding his running mate, but had ”some ideas as to where we’re going.”
Where Trump was definitely not going is towards his former Vice President Mike Pence. It is rare for a president seeking a second term to ditch their running mate, but the former president never forgave Pence for refusing to overthrow the government on his behalf during the Jan. 6 Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s election.
Four years down the line, Pence has refused to endorse Trump in his bid to retake the White House.
In Vance, Trump seeks what Pence failed to become, a loyalist willing to shirk their oath of office in favor of the president’s agenda.
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