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Stephanie Keith
Sen. J.D. Vance appears outside former President Donald Trump's 'hush money' trial in New York City on May 13, 2024.Freshman Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance will be former President Donald Trump's running mate in the November election against President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump announced Monday.
"After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio," Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.
The move, on the opening day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, came despite Vance's past criticism of Trump as an "idiot" and his assertion that he was a "never Trump guy" during Trump's 2016 campaign - statements he disavowed after he launching his Senate campaign in 2021.
"I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016 because I've been very open about the fact that I did say those critical things, and I regret them," he told Fox News at the time. "And I regret being wrong about the guy. I think that he was a good president."
Vance also wore Trump's signature outfit of a blue suit, white shirt, and red tie when he showed up to support Trump at the Stormy Daniels "hush money" trial in New York City in May, and he blamed Biden for the deadly sniper attack at a Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
"The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination," Vance wrote on social media about two hours after the shooting.
Vance, 39, gained fame for his bestselling 2016 memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," which was turned into a 2020 Netflix movie and recounted his family's history of poverty, alcoholism, and abuse, and the decline of his hometown of Middletown, Ohio.
It also revealed how Vance's mother struggled with drug addiction, and how he was primarily raised by his grandparents, joining the Marine Corps after graduating high school and serving as a public affairs officer in Iraq.
He later graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School, where he met his future wife, lawyer Usha Chilikuri, with whom he has three kids.
Vance worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco for Mithril Capital, co-founded by billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel, before returning to Ohio, where he founded his own investment firm and became a conservative political commentator.
In 2022, he beat Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan for an open Senate seat with the help of more than $10 million in donations from Thiel and a Trump endorsement.
