In the space of just eight years, Ohio Senator JD Vance has gone from one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics, going as far as to call him ‘America’s Hitler,’ in the world of conservative politics to darling of the MAGA movement.
This culminated Monday as he was nominated to be Trump’s running mate at the Republican National Convention, just 48 hours after the ex-president survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
‘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 of the Great State of Ohio,’ Trump wrote on TruthSocial.
It marks an almost 180 degree turn for Vance, who used the promotional tour for his memoir in 2016 to lambast Trump for tapping into the disillusion many of his supporter felt by feeding them what he compared to ‘heroin.’
However, his own disillusionment with Trump didn’t last. In 2018, he began to speak favorably about Trump after siding with the president’s pick for the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh, amid accusations the justice committed sexual assault years prior.
A native of Ohio, Vance, 39, grew up in Jackson, Kentucky, where he was raised by his grandmother as his mother battled drug addition. He attended his high school back in the Buckeye State.
After graduation, Vance joined the Marines and served in Iraq in a public affairs role. When he returned, Vance attended Ohio State University and Yale Law School before going work for right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel.
In 2016, Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy was published which thrust him into the public eye. In 2020, it was turned into an Oscar-nominated movie starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
During the promotion of his book, which coincided with Trump’s first run for the presidency, Vance told Charlie Rose in an interview: ‘I’m a never-Trump guy, I never liked him.’ He went on to call the GOP nominee a ‘terrible candidate.’
In other comments, Vance used a few choice terms to refer to the former host of The Apprentice, calling him ‘cultural heroin’ and ‘reprehensible’ because he ‘makes people I care about afraid.’
In leaked text messages, Vance pondered if Trump was ‘a cynical a****e like Nixon’ or rather ‘America’s Hitler.’
Vance also accused Trump of ‘leading the white working class to a very dark place.’
He called Trump a ‘moral disaster’ in 2017, according to Twitter direct messages unearthed by CNN. He said Trump had ‘no domestic policy agenda besides tax cuts.’
He also ‘liked’ tweets saying Trump committed ‘serial sexual assault’ and one calling him ”one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,’ CNN reported.
Those weren’t the only things the populist author said about Trump. And it was more than a critique of his budget plans.
He also agreed with a host who called Trump a ‘total fraud,’ saying: ‘I don’t think he actually cares about folks. I think he just recognizes that there was a hole in the conversation and that hole is that people from these regions of the country, they feel ignored.’
However, needing the support of MAGA voters in Ohio when he decided to run for Senate in 2022, Vance became one of Trump’s most vocal supporters.
He apologized for his previous remarks about the ex-president. During one campaign appearance, Trump joked that Vance would not even be a contender for Senate with his endorsement.
It was 2019 when Vance first spoke of his admiration for Trump during the controversial confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The conservative judge had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in his youth. Vance’s wife, Usha, clerked for Kavanaugh between 2014-15 in the District of Columbia.
In 2021, Kavanaugh said in a podcast interview that he felt as though Trump should remove all civil servants from the federal government if he was reelected.
Perhaps key to his becoming Trump’s choice is his election skepticism.
Vance told CNN this past May: ‘If we have a free and fair election, I will accept the results.’
In February, he told ABC News that unlike then-Vice President Mike Pence did in January 2021, he would not have certified President Joe Biden’s election.
Vance said that he would have ‘told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there.’
‘If you go back and listen to the things that JD Vance said about Trump … he said some things about me, but see what he said about Trump,’ Biden told NBC’s Lester Holt in an interview Monday.
During a June interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Vance walked back many of his past comments about Trump.
‘Yeah, well, I think the simple answer is you’ve gotta respect the American people enough to just level with them,’ he told the conservative network.
‘Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump. I didn’t think he was gonna be a good president, Bret. 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.’
Then he sought to turn his own criticism about Trump into a parable about change, rather than what critics branded expediency.
‘I think you should – when you’re wrong about something – you should change your mind and be honest with people about that fact,’ he said.
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra offered a blunt response when asked about Trump’s pick minutes after it was announced: ‘We don’t know him.’
‘If he’s from Ohio, he understands our state and the other northern battlegrounds,’ Hoekstra said, standing on the floor of the Republican National Convention. ‘But we haven’t had a chance to take his measure yet.’
Trump’s team now has less than four months to strengthen Vance’s profile in the states that matter most this fall in his 2020 rematch against Democratic President Joe Biden.
Already, a collection of political foes — Democrats and Republicans — is working to fill the void by seizing on Vance’s inexperience in government and his nationalist views.
‘I’m not sure he helps him in the campaign,’ said veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, suggesting Vance may be better positioned to help Trump enact his agenda on Capitol Hill if given the chance.
‘He’s not that well-known even in Ohio. … This isn’t a campaign pick. It’s a policy pick, a governing pick.’
Kellyanne Conway, who served as Trump’s chief counselor while in the White House, had encouraged Trump to pick a different running mate in the weeks leading up to his announcement.
Privately, she believed that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin would do more to help Trump win.
Vance, who quickly developed a reputation as a MAGA firebrand in his short time on Capitol Hill, earned modest applause when he entered the packed convention hall for the first time Monday as Trump’s running mate.
The Republican senator posed for selfies, shook hands and signed posters. Later in the night, the crowd was more excited as he greeted Trump — who entered the room with a bandage covering his right ear, injured in Saturday’s assassination attempt — for the ticket’s first public appearance.
Recent polling confirms the notion that most voters don’t know Vance.
Just 13 percent of registered voters said they had a favorable opinion of Vance with 20% an unfavorable one, according to a CNN poll conducted in late June. The majority said they had never heard of him or had no opinion.
Trump’s vice-presidential pick is arguably the most important decision of his 2024 campaign. Vance, who is literally half the 78-year-old Trump’s age, and has the least political experience on a short list that included Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
Sensing an opportunity, Trump’s critics in both parties quickly went after him.
‘Almost any other choice might have expanded the map for them, but Trump needed a candidate who looked like him, talked like him, and thought like him.
He needed a candidate who would grovel,’ former New Hampshire Republican Party chair Jennifer Horn wrote on X. ‘JD Vance was the least experienced, least qualified, most obsequious, psychopathic, servile candidate on the list.’
But Trump made up his own mind based on a different set of criteria.
Trump especially liked Vance’s performance on television, where he has become a fixture on conservative media. The former president also likes Vance’s looks, saying he reminded him of ‘a young Abraham Lincoln.’
Trump is also hopeful Vance can draw from his life story growing up in Appalachia to help appeal to Midwestern voters. Vance has experienced poverty and addiction up close in a way that is uncommon among leading Republican officials.
Vance also had another advantage: his chemistry with Trump. The first-term senator has developed a strong rapport with Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr. and leading MAGA figures during his recent rise in Republican politics.
Vance previously said he would support a national abortion ban at 15 weeks of pregnancy, something the Biden campaign attacked him for.
‘I will certainly take that matchup any day of the week and twice on Sunday,’ said Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign chairwoman.
‘Because while Trump and Vance have an agenda focused on themselves and their wealthy donor friends, President Biden and Vice President Harris are fighting for the American people.’
Vivek Ramaswamy, once considered a potential Trump running mate as well, described Vance as ‘a major asset’ on the ticket whose evolution on Trump would ultimately help him connect with swing voters.
‘He’s also somebody who can say, ‘You know what, in 2016, I may not have voted for Donald Trump either, but here’s why I am with him to the fullest today,’ Ramaswamy said.
But for now, Vance joins the Trump presidential ticket as a mystery to many voters and elected officials alike.