Trump chooses his running mate From hillbilly to candidate: Who is J.D. Vance?
From critic to candidate: J.D. Vance is Trump's running mate. He is entering the most important political race in the United States with a lot of rhetorical skill - and allies with deep pockets.
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- Donald Trump will go into the US election with J.D. Vance as his running mate.
- The pair of candidates were officially nominated at the Republican party convention.
- Vance was once considered a critic of Trump - before he switched camps.
Venture capitalist, celebrated author, senator - and soon to be Vice President of the United States? J.D. Vance is running as Donald Trump's running mate in the race for the White House. This is unusual not only because of his short and stellar political career, but also because he once left no good word for his new boss.
Vance was born James Donald Bowman in the US state of Ohio in 1984. He studied law at the elite American university Yale. He then first worked for Republican Senator John Cornyn, before spending a year as a legal assistant to a judge at a US federal court in Kentucky.
In 2016, he moved to San Francisco and struck it rich as a venture capitalist at Mithril Capital. Mithril is one of the venture capital firms of German-born investor, startup founder and billionaire Peter Thiel. Thiel has also made a name for himself as a libertarian maverick who financially supported Trump's candidacy in 2016. However, according to insiders, the long-time Republican sponsor wants to stay out of the 2024 US presidential election campaign. It remains to be seen whether he will change his mind after his former protégé was chosen as Trump's running mate.
Critic, described Trump as "dangerous"
Vance celebrated success in 2016 with his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy". The bestseller, which was also made into a film, provides an insight into a class that helped make Trump's election victory possible. "Hillbilly" is a derogatory term for the simple, mostly white inhabitants of remote regions in the Appalachians.
At the beginning of his presidency, Vance was an outspoken critic, describing Trump as "dangerous". However, this opinion changed six years later when he stepped into the political spotlight himself - and also courted Trump as a supporter.
Since his victory in the 2022 congressional elections, he has represented his home state of Ohio in the Senate, where he pursues a populist-nationalist agenda as a supporter of the Republican right. Vance probably also owes his election success to extremely generous donors he knows from his time on the West Coast.
Blames Biden for attack on Trump
If he wins in November, Vance would be one of the youngest vice presidents in US history at the age of 40. Thanks to his good connections in the financial world on the one hand and his rhetorical strengths on the other, he is seen as a promising partner in the election campaign.
Vance already made it clear what tone he could take after the Trump assassination last weekend: instead of calling for unity in the country like other politicians, he blamed US President Biden personally for the attack. On the X platform, Vance wrote that the Democrat's election campaign was completely geared towards portraying Trump as an authoritarian fascist who had to be stopped at all costs. US media are therefore already referring to Vance as a "bulldog", i.e. a vice president who will jump into the breach for Trump - come what may.
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