Donald Trump’s long-awaited running mate has finally been announced.
Former President Donald Trump has selected Junior Ohio Senator J.D. Vance to be his running mate for the 2024 presidential election.
The 39-year-old, first elected to the Senate in 2022, has become one of the nation’s leading conservative voices.
Vance has developed a plank built on a more populist conservatism, stressing less American intervention in foreign affairs.
The senator has been critical of aid to Ukraine, believing that the U.S. should act to force a resolution to the conflict that includes Ukraine ceding territory to Russia.
However, Vance has shown steadfast support for Israel, even criticizing President Biden for allegedly hamstringing the country’s war efforts.
Vance has also held an anti-abortion stance while in the Senate. The senator has voted against a plethora of legislation meant to secure abortion rights, access to contraception and in vitro fertilization. He previously compared abortion to slavery, arguing that both have a negative impact on society.
Despite this, he’s said he wouldn’t support a national abortion ban, as it’s “reasonable” for different states to have different abortion policies.
On economics, he’s aligned with his running mate. Vance has shown support for tariffs broadly, but specifically for Trump’s proposed 10% across the board tariff for all foreign goods, saying, “we need to protect American industry from foreign competition,” during an interview with CBS.
The former Marine and Yale Law graduate’s ascension to the VP nomination has been shrouded in controversy, as Vance has a history of opposition to Trump.
In the lead-up to the 2016 election, Vance was very open in his criticisms of Trump. The self-proclaimed “Never Trump guy” wrote an opinion piece in The Atlantic claiming Trump was a false savior and privately stated he could be “America’s Hitler.” He voted for a third-party candidate in 2016.
Vance has given credence to Trump’s election fraud claims, which center around his failed re-election campaign in 2020. He has cited what he sees as irregularities in the election process and has said that “There were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis” in an interview with The Vindicator, an Ohio newspaper.
Vance first began to gain notoriety after the release of his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which was later turned into a movie starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
The book follows Vance’s life and struggles growing up impoverished in Ohio and Kentucky, and helped to explain his commitment to blue-collar families in the Rust Belt and Midwest.
These regions consist of key battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, which will play a large role in who sits in the White House come Inauguration Day.
