Trump Chooses Ohio Senator JD Vance as Running Mate

Ohio Republican Senator JD Vance addressed the nation last Wednesday night in his first public speech since being nominated as Donald Trump’s running mate just two days earlier.

Trump announced that Vance had won the “veep-stakes” in a July 15 post on Truth Social.

The former president described the freshman senator as “the person best suited” to be his vice president and said that Vance would focus on winning over working-class Americans and farmers in the Rust Belt.

In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last Wednesday, Vance promised the “forgotten communities” in the Rust Belt and “every corner of our nation” that he would be a vice president who would never forget “where he came from.”

Vance’s address tapped into many of the themes that appeared in his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” recounting his background in Appalachia growing up the son of a troubled woman who struggled with drug addiction when he was a child.

Vance pointed out that his mother Beverly, who was in the audience that night, had been sober for ten years.

While most of the convention speeches focused mainly on illegal immigration and the ongoing crisis at the border, Vance’s speech set a different tone, focusing more on the damage the Biden presidency has done to working-class Americans.

The Republican vice presidential nominee called out Joe Biden’s long history of supporting foreign wars and international trade deals that he said shipped the jobs of working-class Americans overseas while sending their children to war.

Vance also blasted “multinational corporations” and Wall Street elites and described Donald Trump as someone who would “stand up for American companies” and both “union and non-union” workers.

The 39-year-old Republican was elected to the US Senate in November 2022. He is a Marine Corps veteran and holds a law degree from Yale University.