When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016, one of his steadfast critics within the Republican Party was J.D. Vance — then a young military veteran, Yale Law School graduate and Silicon Valley venture capitalist who in June of that year published “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” about his upbringing in Appalachia and the Rust Belt.
By Amy B Wang
and “I can’t stomach Trump,” Vance told NPR that August. “I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy. I never liked him,” Vance told Charlie Rose in October 2016, weeks before Trump was elected president.
In eight years, everything would change. The best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy” — which depicted Vance’s childhood in a steel mill community in Ohio in a family beset by drug addiction and poverty — became compulsory reading for many seeking to understand Trump’s appeal to the White working-class voters who had helped install him in the Oval Office.
Vance himself would eventually turn to politics, successfully running for Senate in 2022, a remarkable ascendancy for a political newcomer. By then, Vance had already walked back much of his criticism of Trump, defending him as a “great” president and echoing Trump’s false claims about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
And on Monday, the 39-year-old Vance was announced as Trump’s 2024 running mate, capping a meteoric rise for the GOP star and a complete transformation of the Ohio Republican from one of Trump’s fiercest critics to one of his most loyal allies. Vance strode onto the floor at the Republican National Convention to Merle Haggard’s “America First,” taking so long to shake hands with attendees that the song had to be played twice.
Introducing Vance at the convention, Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted (R) described the vice-presidential pick as a man who would represent Americans with “moral courage, strength and honor.”
“J.D. is a living embodiment of the American Dream. He came from humble beginnings, and even as his life took him to places he might have never imagined, he never forgot where he came from. Ohio values are in his blood,” Huston said.
After breaking with his previous vice president, Mike Pence, over Pence’s refusal to reject the 2020 election results, Trump’s selection of Vance brings the former president a No. 2 who has in recent years demonstrated unflinching loyalty to him. Vance also could hold electoral strength for Trump, shoring up Republicans’ White working-class base in the Upper Midwest, while Vance’s youth is a sharp contrast to the 78-year-old Trump in an election year where voters have voiced concerns about the ages of both President Biden and Trump.
