Press
Once a “Never Trumper,” JD Vance is now running alongside Trump in the race for the White House. The vice president is expected to score points especially with industrial workers in the “swing states.”
Milwaukee – In 2024, Donald Trump will announce his running mate a little like he did with his reality show “The Apprentice”: First, people will be thrown out. While the delegates at the party convention in Milwaukee are in the process of officially choosing the Republican as their presidential candidate, the first news is trickling in. Senator Marco Rubio: out. Governor Doug Burgum: out. Their names have been circulating for weeks, as has that of the final chosen candidate. The 78-year-old then delivers it on his mouthpiece Truth Social, where else: JD Vance.
The outsider
Unlike Trump’s vice president during his first term, Mike Pence, Vance does not have a long political career behind him. He is a newcomer to the capital, Washington. He has only been a senator in Congress representing his home state of Ohio since 2023, but has made a lot of noise there over the past year and a half as a supporter of the right wing of the Republican faction. Trump, who himself went from being a political outsider to becoming President of the United States, has chosen Vance as his vice president, at least in this role.
Vance also shows similarities to Trump in his sharp rhetoric. This was evident when the 39-year-old blamed US President Joe Biden just hours after the assassination attempt on Trump at the weekend. It was to be expected that the attack, in which one Trump supporter was killed, two others wounded and Trump injured in the ear, would be politicized. But Vance’s post on the X platform came noticeably quickly.
The author
Unlike Trump, however, Vance comes from a working-class family. He grew up in Ohio in unstable circumstances and spent much of his childhood with his grandparents. After graduating from school, he joined the military, including serving in Iraq. Vance, who repeatedly stresses the importance of education, then began his academic career – he graduated as a lawyer with a degree from the elite Yale University. There he met his current wife Usha Chilukuri Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants, with whom he has three children. He later worked as a venture capitalist, including in California’s Silicon Valley.
During his time in the financial sector, Vance increasingly began to reflect on his own roots and the challenges of the white working class from which he comes. These impressions flowed into his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”, with which he celebrated success in 2016. The bestseller, which was also made into a film, tells the story of a class that helped make Trump’s election victory possible. The book not only gave Vance recognition, but also an opportunity to bring his political concerns into the public discourse.
The Changeable
A few years ago, Vance had few kind words for Trump. He spoke of himself as a “Never Trumper” and called the Republican an “idiot.” He is also said to have once compared Trump to Adolf Hitler in a private message. And Vance wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times: “Mr. Trump is unfit for the highest office in our country.” But Vance did not really enter politics until 2021 and ran for the US Senate a year later.
In the primary campaign within the party, Vance threw his old concerns overboard and secured Trump’s support – and thus ultimately victory over the party’s internal competition. However, Vance owes his success in the election for the Senate seat not only to his political message, but also to extremely generous donors whom he knows from his time on the West Coast. Among them is PayPal founder Peter Thiel – he donated millions to the election campaign. Either way: For a political newcomer, a Senate seat is a remarkable career start.
The hardliner
In Germany and Europe, too, people will be looking with interest at Trump’s running mate. He is an example of the conservative isolationism that has prevailed among the Republicans. This has become popular under Trump and his America First policy and is the antithesis of the interventionist foreign policy of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush.
Vance is particularly vocal in his opposition to the billions of dollars the US is providing to Ukraine, which has been attacked by Russia. A few days before the war broke out, Vance told right-wing agitator Steve Bannon: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine, one way or another.” A good two years later, he wrote: “Biden’s administration has no viable plan for how the Ukrainians can win this war. The sooner Americans face this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and mediate for peace.” Vance expects the Europeans to do more for Ukraine. At the same time, Vance supports Israel in the fight against the Islamist Hamas.
In domestic politics, he is anti-abortion and has opposed the legalization of the right to abortion or nationwide access to contraceptives. He also largely aligns himself with the right wing of the party on other social issues. Vance calls for immigration based on merit and the completion of Trump’s border wall. He also once said: “I am skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused solely by humans.”
The vice-candidate
When he announced that Vance would be his vice president, Trump made it clear what he saw the young senator’s tasks as. Vance’s campaign will focus on workers and farmers in contested states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Minnesota, he wrote. These so-called swing states are neither firmly in the hands of the Democrats nor the Republicans – and are therefore decisive in the election. Trump can therefore expect Vance to attract voters from America’s white working class.
In recent months, there has been much speculation about Trump’s possible running mate. Observers had expected that Trump – himself an old white man – would choose a woman or a black man because of his access to certain groups of voters. But in recent weeks it had already become clear that this would not be the case.
Vance was the center of attention at the party convention in Milwaukee – at least until Trump showed up with a bandage on his ear. But he has not yet revealed what he wants to stand for in the election campaign and possibly as vice president. His speech at the party convention is traditionally expected in Germany on Thursday night. dpa
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