Former President Donald Trump has picked Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his vice presidential running mate ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Vance has been one of Trump’s most aggressive defenders in Congress, attending Trump’s hush money trial, vowing to block President Joe Biden’s nominees over the supposed “lawfare” against Trump and delivering a steady stream of obsequious pro-Trump statements.
“I actually think Trump is a much better model of statesman,” Vance told Breitbart News in June, contrasting Trump with more traditional-sounding leaders. “He’s tough. He’s funny. He sometimes says things unfiltered. But when it comes to actual decision-making, he’s much more careful and cautious than any person currently representing the country.”
Before he became a politician, Vance spoke out against Trump.
The former Marine and Yale Law School grad rose to fame as a writer in 2016. His bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” made him a popular commentator that year on the supposed failings of rural American culture and the rise of Trumpism.
Talking to the media about his book, Vance frequently criticized Trump as offering a false solution to America’s problems. He even said he would consider voting for Hillary Clinton because he couldn’t “stomach” Trump.
“I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place,” Vance told NPR in 2016.
It was a prescient remark.
After sowing doubts about the 2020 election for months, Trump summoned his supporters to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, riled them up with an incendiary speech and then sent them to the Capitol, where they ransacked the building in a failed effort to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. Now more than 1,400 Trump supporters have been charged with federal crimes for doing what Trump wanted.
But when he launched his Senate bid in 2021 and faced a crowded Republican primary, Vance changed his tune about Trump.
“I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance told Fox News in July 2021. “I think he was a good president, I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.”
Even though he’d once privately mused that Trump could be “America’s Hitler,” Vance won Trump’s endorsement, won the primary, and then beat former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) in 2022 to become one of the youngest members of the Senate.
Trump’s previous vice president, Mike Pence, refused to go along with Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election, earning the ire of both the former president and his rioting mob, which chanted “hang Mike Pence” as police rushed him to a secure location.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Vance said he didn’t think Jan. 6 was so bad.
“We’re in this moment where people are really pissed off, and I think for legitimate reasons,” Vance said. “And I don’t understand, looking at the country that we have right now, and saying, ‘The riot on January the 6th was the worst expression of this.’”