MILWAUKEE – JD Vance introduced himself to a national audience Wednesday after being chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate, sharing the story of his hardscrabble upbringing and making the case that his party best understands the challenges facing struggling Americans.
Speaking to a packed arena at the Republican National Convention, the Ohio senator cast himself as fighter for a forgotten working class, making a direct appeal to the Rust Belt voters who helped drive Trump’s surprise 2016 victory and voicing their anger and frustration.
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“In small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war,” he said.
“To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and every corner of our nation, I promise you this," he said. "I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”
The 39-year-old Ohio senator is a relative political unknown, having served in the Senate for less than two years. He rapidly morphed in recent years from a bitter critic of the former president to an aggressive defender and is now positioned to become the future leader of the party and the torch-bearer of Trump's “Make America Great Again" political movement.
The first millennial to join the top of a major party ticket, Vance enters the race as questions about the age of the men at the top — 78-year-old Trump and 81-year-old President Joe Biden — have been high on the list of voters’ concerns. He also joins Trump after an assassination attempt against the former president — in which Trump came perhaps millimeters from death or serious injury — underscoring the importance of a potential successor.
But Trump’s decision to choose Vance wasn’t about picking a running mate or the next vice president, said Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, who introduced the senator at a fundraiser earlier Wednesday.
“Donald Trump picked a man in JD Vance that is the future of the country, the future of the Republican Party, the future of the America First movement," he said.
Vance shared his story and introduced his family
In his speech, Vance shared his story of growing up poor in Kentucky and Ohio, his mother addicted to drugs and his father absent. He later joined the Marines, graduated from Yale Law School, and went on to the highest levels of U.S. politics — an embodiment of an American dream he said is in now in short supply.
“Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I’d be standing here tonight,” he said.
Vance gained prominence following the publication of his bestselling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which tells the story of his blue-collar roots. The book became a must-read for those seeking to understand the cultural forces that propelled Trump to the White House that year. Vance spent years as a Trump critic, assailing the former president with insults, before he changed his mind.
Vance, who had never attended, let alone spoken at a previous Republican convention, spent much of his speech talking up Trump and going after Biden, using his relative youth to draw a contrast with the 81-year-old president.
Vance says he was in fourth grade when “a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good American manufacturing jobs to Mexico.”
“Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington as long as I’ve been alive,” he added. “For half a century, he’s been a champion of every single policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer.”
The crowd inside the convention hall welcomed Vance warmly. They erupted into chants of “Mamaw!” in honor of his grandmother, and chanted “JD’s Mom!” after he introduced his mother, a former addict who has been sober for 10 years.
Vance was introduced Wednesday night by his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, who talked of the stark difference between how she and her husband grew up — she a middle-class immigrant from San Diego, and he from a low-income Appalachian family. She called him “a meat and potatoes kind of guy” who respected her vegetarian diet and learned to cook Indian food for her mother.
Trump, again wearing a bandage over his injured ear, watched Vance speak from his family box and was often seen smiling.
Most Americans — and Republicans — didn't know much about Vance before Wednesday night. According to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted before Trump selected the freshman senator as his choice, 6 in 10 Americans don’t know enough about him to have formed an opinion. That includes 61% of Republicans.
Democrats have attacked Vance for his past support for a national abortion ban, his criticism of U.S. involvement in Ukraine, and his eagerness to blame Democrats for Trump’s assassination attempt. But the young senator steered clear of such controversies in his remarks, which were light on the red-meat conservative attacks that convention audience typically expect.
Biden’s campaign responded with a blistering statement calling Vance “unprepared, unqualified, and willing to do anything Donald Trump demands.”
“Tonight, J.D. Vance, the poster boy for Project 2025, took center stage. But it’s working families and the middle class who will suffer if he’s allowed to stay there,” said Michael Tyler, Biden campaign communication director.
A Trump aide just released from prison electrified the crowd
Convention organizers had stressed a theme of unity, even before Trump survived an attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania Saturday. Trump's refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and the subsequent attack on the U.S. Capitol, officials said, would be absent from the stage.
But that changed with former White House official Peter Navarro, who was greeted with a standing ovation hours after being released from a Miami prison where he served four months for defying a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of the former president's supporter.
“If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful. They will come for you,” he said in a fiery speech, comparing his legal troubles to those faced by Trump, who earlier this year was convicted on 34 felony charges in his criminal hush money trial.
Also spotted on the floor of the convention: Paul Manafort, Trump's 2016 campaign chair, and Roger Stone, who were both convicted as part of the investigation into Russia’s meddling in that election. Trump pardoned both Manafort and Stone.
Families blamed Biden for the losses of their loved ones
Beyond Vance’s primetime speech, the Republican Party focused Wednesday on a theme of American global strength.
In a particularly powerful moment, the relatives of service members killed during Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan took the stage, holding photographs of their loved ones.
Christy Shamblin, whose daughter-in-law Marine Sgt. Nicole Gee died in the attack, spoke of the six hours she said Trump spent with her family in Bedminster, New Jersey and “spoke to us in a way that made us feel understood."
“Donald Trump carried the weight for a few hours with me. And for the first time since Nicole’s death I felt I wasn’t alone in my grief," she said.
Herman Lopez, whose son, Marine Cpl. Hunter Lopez, was among those killed, read aloud the names of all 13 U.S. service members who died in the Aug. 26, 2021, attack.
Also featured were the parents of Omer Neutra, one of eight Americans still being held hostage in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.
His parents, Ronen and Orna, said Trump called them after their son, a soldier in the Israeli army, was captured, and offered support. As they spoke, the crowd chanted “Bring them home!"
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Cooper reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Christine Fernando in Chicago, Ali Swenson in Minneapolis, Farnoush Amiri, Michelle L. Price and Bill Barrow in Milwaukee, and Will Weissert and Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.