Eight years ago, on the eve of the 2016 presidential election, JD Vance was a bitter critic of Donald Trump. He publicly called the Republican presidential candidate an "idiot" and said he was "reprehensible." He privately compared him to Adolf Hitler. But from then until the moment former President Trump chose Vance as his running mate today, the Ohio-born Vance has become one of Trump's staunchest defenders, standing by his side even when other high-profile Republicans refused to do so. .
Today, Trump chose US Senator JD Vance as his vice presidential candidate, and the Republican Party officially nominated Trump, the former president of the United States of America (USA), as its presidential candidate in the 2024 election at the national convention in Milwaukee.
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James David Vance's transformation — from self-described "never Trumper" to staunch loyalist — makes him a relatively unusual figure in Trump's inner circle.
Democrats and even some Republicans question whether Vance, who wrote the best-selling memoir "A Peasant's Elegy" and is now a U.S. senator from Ohio, is driven more by opportunism than ideology.
But Trump, who survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, and many of his advisers see his transformation as genuine.
They point out that Vance's political beliefs — which mix isolationism with economic populism — match Trump's, and put both at odds with the old guard of the Republican Party, where foreign policy hawks and free-market evangelists still rule.
Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, whom Vance described as a mentor, told Reuters that Vance had changed his views on Trump because he had "seen the successes that President Trump has brought to the country as president."
In particular, Vance's vocal opposition to US aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia delighted Trump's most conservative allies, even as it unnerved some Senate colleagues.
"He understands what Trump is doing and, unlike the rest of the Republican Party in Washington, he goes along with it," conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, a vocal supporter of Vance, told Reuters.
A staunch Republican
The election of James David Vance could increase the chances of Trump supporters going to the polls on November 5, as the senator from Ohio is very popular among Republican candidates, according to Reuters.
The agency also writes that Vance, a staunch conservative from a Republican state, is unlikely to bring many new voters to Trump and may even turn away some moderates.
Reuters reports that some supporters have been pushing for Trump to choose a woman or person of color as his number two to expand the white-leaning coalition.
The former president, 78, survived an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday by a gunman whose motive remains unknown.
Reuters reports that Vance has delighted Trump supporters with his confrontational presence on social media, a relative rarity in the Senate, where many still try to maintain a sense of decorum and civility.
At the age of 39, Vance will represent the younger generation in the elections where the candidates will be Trump and current US President Joseph Biden (81), which is a counterweight to the Democratic list that also includes Vice President Kamala Harris (59).
Tried to explain Trump's popularity among impoverished white Americans
Vance, 39, was born into a poor family in southern Ohio.
After serving in the Marine Corps, he attended law school at Yale University.
He became famous for his 2016 book "A Peasant Elegy." In that memoir, he explored the socioeconomic problems facing his hometown and tried to explain to readers Trump's popularity among impoverished white Americans.
He was sharply critical of Trump, publicly and privately, in 2016 and during the opening stages of his 2017-2021 term.
"I go back and forth between thinking that Trump is a cynical s*** like Nixon who wouldn't be so bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," he wrote privately to a Facebook associate in 2016.
When his comment about Hitler was first reported in 2022, a spokesman did not dispute it, but said it no longer represented Vance's position.
By the time Vance ran for the Senate in 2022, his displays of loyalty — which included downplaying the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters — were enough to win the former president's coveted endorsement.
Trump's support helped him to come out on top in the primaries.
In media interviews, Vance said there was no "Eureka" moment that changed his views on Trump. Instead, he gradually realized that his opposition to the former president was rooted in style rather than substance.
For example, he agreed with Trump's claims that free trade destroyed middle America by destroying domestic manufacturing and that the country's leaders were too quick to get involved in foreign wars.
"I've allowed myself to focus so much on Trump's stylistic element that I've completely ignored the way he fundamentally offers something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration," Vance told The New York Times in June.
In the same interview, Vance said he met Trump in 2021 and that the two became close during his Senate campaign.
Vance declined to be interviewed by Reuters for this article, and his spokesman declined to comment.
"What you're seeing is some really deep opportunism," said David Niven, a politics professor at the University of Cincinnati.
Trump connection
Before Vance developed a relationship with the former president, he became close to Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., according to several people familiar with the matter.
Vance first caught Trump Jr.'s eye when he opposed aid to Ukraine during the 2022 Ohio Senate primary, putting him at odds with other Republicans in the race.
Vance's personal relationship with Trump developed largely during the Republican presidential primary earlier this year, one of the people familiar with the matter said.
Vance's decision to endorse Trump in January 2023, well ahead of some other vice presidential candidates, served as an important show of loyalty, the person added.
In February 2023, Trump and Vance visited East Palestine, Ohio, the site of a train carrying toxic waste that derailed, and the trip raised Vance's national profile.
They portrayed the then US President Joseph Biden's decision not to visit the working class as a betrayal of middle America.
The White House noted at the time that federal agents were on the scene almost immediately after the derailment and that visiting the disaster site could distract from local recovery efforts.
Biden eventually visited East Palestine about a year later, in February 2024.
Behind the scenes, Vance helped persuade wealthy donors to open their wallets for Trump, according to two people with knowledge of Trump's fundraising operations.
Some of Trump's highest-profile allies — including Donald Trump Jr., Carlson and Steve Bannon — were enthusiastic about Vance's short tenure on Capitol Hill.
All of these individuals have legions of conservative followers, and their endorsements can help push Republicans to the polls.
Vance's skepticism of corporate America, support for tariffs, weariness with foreign entanglements and his youth make him the leading voice of a new Republican Party that, in the eyes of supporters, is more focused on the working class than big business.
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