What made Trump choose JD Vance, a man who previously found him ‘reprehensible’, to be his running mate

Last week, before the Republican National Convention got underway in Milwaukee, Donald Trump was mulling how he would reveal the name of his running mate — his choice of vice president if he won the elections in November. He had then said that it would be akin to his previous hit reality show, The Apprentice. This would mean calling the would-be contenders on stage on the first night of the convention and then making his choice by uttering his famous catchphrase — “you’re hired”.

However, on Monday night (July 15), Trump in the most non-dramatic fashion made the announcement on his social media website, Truth Social, that Senator JD Vance of Ohio will be his running mate. “After lengthy deliberation and thought,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, he chose Vance because he was “the best person suited to assume the position of vice president of the United States.”

In picking Vance, Trump sidestepped other contenders , including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.

But what made the now Republican nominee, Trump, choose Vance, a man who once had said: “I’m a ‘never Trump’ guy. I never liked him. My god what an idiot. I find him reprehensible.”

The life of JD Vance

To understand why Trump picked Vance as his running mate, let’s understand who is the Ohio senator.

Born in Ohio on August 2, 1984, Vance served in the Marine Corps from 2003 to 2007 before attending the Ohio State University and Yale Law School. Vance later worked as a venture capitalist before running for office.

Incidentally, Vance has an Indian connection. His wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, is the daughter of Indian immigrants. She holds a bachelor’s degree in History from Yale University and a Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge, according to the New York Times. She also clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was a federal appellate judge.

In 2016, Vance shot to fame, when he released his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which chronicled his childhood in a poor Rust Belt town in eastern Ohio and captured the struggles of America’s White working class. The book was also turned into a 2020 Netflix movie starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.

When Trump started becoming a more dominant force in politics, Vance was a vocal opponent and privately wrote to a former law school roommate that he might be “America’s Hitler.” In February 2016, he wrote in USA Today op-ed that “Trump’s actual policy proposals, such as they are, range from immoral to absurd.”

However, as years rolled on, he changed his tone, saying Trump’s performance in office had proved him wrong and then the 39-year-old grew into one of the former president’s fiercest defenders.

In 2022, he was rewarded for his loyalty to Trump when he was endorsed by the 78-year-old for the Senate elections. He was then elected to the Senate in 2022 from Ohio and has since become one of the staunchest champions of the former president’s “Make America Great Again” agenda.

Vance also apologised for calling Trump “reprehensible” ahead of his Senate campaign. “Like a lot of people, I criticised Trump back in 2016,” Vance told CNN in 2021. “I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance said, adding he thought Trump was a good president.

Interestingly, if people choose Trump in the November 5 election, Vance would become the third-youngest vice president at the time of inauguration, as well as one with very little political experience.

Insider sources say that Trump’s selection of Vance came after two of Trump’s closest advisors — his sons, Eric and Don Jr — batted for the Ohio senator.

Aligned with Trump

So, why is it that Trump chose such a young man with little experience to be his running mate? There are multiple reasons for this, say political commentators.

Firstly, Vance seems most ideologically aligned with Trump. Like Trump, he has been a vocal critic of US aid to Ukraine and other foreign entanglements. He was also among the first to blame the Biden administration for allegedly empowering Hamas to commit the October 7 attack. Hours after the attack, he said the “Americans must face a stark truth: our tax dollars funded this”, according to media reports.

Vance, like Trump, has supported “broad-based tariffs”. Trump, if voted to power, has promised a 10 per cent across-the-board tariff on all foreign imports, despite warnings from economists that it will fuel inflation.

He is also a proponent of Trump’s immigration policy. He advocates for the completion of the construction of the border wall along Mexico and opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants.

However, Vance holds a stronger opinion on abortion than Trump does. While Trump states that abortion should be decided by states, Vance opposes the practice even in case of rape or incest, although he has stopped short of saying there should be a national ban and has said exceptions should be allowed when the mother’s life is at risk. When he ran for Senate in 2022, his website carried a headline on the subject that read: Ban Abortion.

Loyal and vocal for Trump

One of the most important factors that tilted in Vance’s favour is his fierce defence of Trump. Moreover, his defence of Trump in recent times has been favourable. Hours after Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Vance wrote on X that the moral responsibility lay with Joe Biden. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” he posted. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

In the past, he has also backed Trump’s false claims of voter fraud costing him re-election in the 2020 presidential election and slammed the criminal charges that have been filed against the former president as a sham.

A Washington Post report, citing an insider, said that Trump thinks Vance is articulate in defending him on TV. “What Trump cares most about is someone who can go on TV and be a fierce surrogate,” said Marc Short, the long-time chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence.

He also thinks Vance will not publicly break with him as Pence did after four years of loyal service, when he refused to cooperate with Trump’s efforts to keep himself in office despite losing the 2020 election.

A young MAGA warrior

At 39, Vance also brings youth to the ticket in age. Trump is the oldest Republican nominee in history. Vance would be just 40 years old on Inauguration Day, and he would be the third-youngest vice president ever, if elected.

His state of Ohio will also play a key role in November. Additionally, Vance’s appeals to the white working-class voters across a wider geographical area – particularly in genuine battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, makes him a smart choice as Trump’s running mate.

As The Guardian reports, his ability to identify with and articulate working-class frustrations are evidenced in his personal memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which chronicles his upbringing in the post-industrial Ohio rust-belt and in the Appalachians.

His connections with Silicon Valley make him a central voice on Big Tech policy and other business world issues in a potential second Trump administration. Vance has often — like Trump — focused on what he calls Big Tech censorship of conservative voices and made that a theme of his time in Washington.

And as TIME wrote, should Trump win, Vance will become a front runner for the 2028 Republican nomination. It goes on to write that in JD Vance, Trump might have just chosen his potential political heir.

With inputs from agencies