Trump Picks JD Vance as Vice Presidential Running Mate

Former President Donald Trump selected Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate on Monday.

The announcement was made minutes before Trump was formally nominated to lead the GOP presidential ticket for a third time at the start of the four-day Republican National Convention — and two days after Trump was shot in an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

Vance, 39, is a first-term senator who became famous for Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 memoir about growing up poor in Ohio. The Marine veteran and a graduate of Yale Law School is a former venture capitalist who served as a principal for a company co-founded by Peter Thiel. Vance worked out of the firm’s San Francisco office in 2016 and 2017, according to news reports.

In 2016, Vance referred to himself as a “Never Trump guy” in an interview with Charlie Rose. By the time he decided to run for office, Vance had changed his tune. He received Trump’s endorsement, which helped boost his candidacy in the 2022 primary.

Vance’s memoir tapped into rural, working-class resentment that aided Trump’s first run for the White House. He has become a reliable Trump supporter and surrogate in Congress, on the campaign trail and on TV hits.

Vance is an immigration hard-liner like Trump, and voters could potentially view him as Trump’s appointed successor for the MAGA movement. He was among the GOP leaders who criticized President Joe Biden in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance posted on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Over several months, Vance, who is fiercely anti-abortion, jockeyed to be Trump’s pick with other hopefuls, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, among others.

Rubio, the 53-year-old son of Cuban immigrants, was once a rising star in the party. He never quite capitalized on expectations after his underdog Senate victory in 2010.

Six years later, he was eclipsed by Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primaries, during which Trump referred to Rubio as “Little Marco.” Rubio criticized Trump as a “con man” with “small hands,” then bowed out of the campaign after finishing almost 20 points behind Trump for second in the Florida primary. The three-term senator has since become a steadfast Trump ally in Congress and on national TV.

The independently wealthy Burgum launched a 2024 presidential bid that never gained traction. In the ’80s, he was a tech entrepreneur who developed Great Plains Software, which was sold to Microsoft in 2001 for over $1 billion. He was elected governor in 2016 in his first run for public office.

The Republican convention, meanwhile, began with good news for Trump’s legal issues. On Monday morning, a judge dismissed the federal indictment that charged him with mishandling classified documents. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled that the special counsel leading the prosecution was improperly appointed.

It was Trump’s second huge legal victory this month. On July 1, the Supreme Court issued a wide-ranging ruling that gives former presidents broad immunity for their official acts while in office.