WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has chosen Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, a vocal critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine, as his running mate, putting the 39-year-old political newcomer on the ticket for the November 5 U.S. election.
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Trump made the announcement on July 15 on his social media platform Truth Social as the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He had previously mentioned Vance, who has opposed aid to Ukraine, as a possible running mate.
“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 said.
Less than an hour after Trump announced his selection of Vance, Trump swept a majority of votes from national convention delegates, formally anointing him the party's nominee for the third consecutive election. He hit the necessary threshold with votes from his home state of Florida, announced by his son Eric.
Vance has been a vocal critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine and in April wrote an op-ed saying that Kyiv's challenge in passing a massive aid bill had more to do with mathematics than Republicans in the House of Representatives, who were resisting pressure from the White House to vote in favor of the aid.
"Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more materiel than the United States can provide," he wrote in The New York Times. "This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president."
He also wrote that the United States lacks the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs from the United States to win the war.
The convention in Milwaukee opened two days after a campaign rally shooting over the weekend that injured Trump and killed a supporter. Vance, a loyal Trump follower, stirred controversy after the shooting by posting a social media message saying that the shooting was not "just some isolated incident."
SEE ALSO: How The Assassination Attempt On Trump Could Upend The U.S. Presidential RaceVance's post on X said the Biden campaign's central premise "is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs" and the "rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."
He was heavily criticized for posting the message at a time when people from both parties were calling for unity and for the temperature of the campaign to come down.
Vance, 39, held no public office prior to being elected to the Senate in 2022. He is the author of the bestselling memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2016 about his upbringing in a southwestern Ohio city whose factories were shuttered in the late 1980s and '90s, putting the region into an economic tailspin. The book, which also covered Vance’s military service and deployment to Iraq, was made into a movie in 2020.
After serving in the Marine Corps, Vance went on to graduate from The Ohio State University and Yale Law School. From there, he worked as a law clerk for a federal judge and then joined a Silicon Valley investment firm before returning to Ohio to enter into politics.
Vance’s story resonates with Republicans who believe the country has done too little to maintain its manufacturing base and perpetuated what Trump has called "endless wars." His background and positions could increase the odds of Trump supporters turning out for the November 5 election, including in the neighboring swing states of Pennsylvania and Michigan.
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Trump's Pick Of Vance For VP 'Worrying' For Ukraine, Scholar Says
The choice of Vance also increases the probability that "Trumpism...is extended into the next generation of the Republican Party," Chris Tuttle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told RFE/RL.
"J.D. Vance is a younger voice channeling increasing dissatisfaction in the United States that Trump has been a beneficiary of," Tuttle said.
Vance as an articulate amplifier of Trump's views and fulfills an "ideological consistency, which you always find in a vice presidential candidate," Tuttle added, saying the Vance's inexperience is an asset.
"In some ways, being in office for too long is a disadvantage. People view them as a creature of Washington, part of a sort of rotten game," he said.
Vance was not always a Trump disciple, however. He previously criticized Trump when the billionaire real estate mogul first ran for president in 2016, writing privately to an associate on Facebook that he alternates between "thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like [former U.S. President Richard] Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler."
When the comment was first reported in 2022, a spokesperson for Vance did not dispute it, but said it no longer represented Vance's views.
Trump likened the selection process to a "highly sophisticated version of The Apprentice," the TV reality show where contestants competed for a job at his company and helped turn Trump into a household name.
Trump suffered an injury to his right ear when a gunman identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired at him and the crowd at a campaign rally from a nearby rooftop before he was killed by Secret Service officers on July 13. The FBI said it was still seeking a motive in the attack.
U.S. President Joe Biden, who is the presumptive candidate for the Democrats in the election, condemned the assassination attempt in a televised address to the nation from the White House late on July 14 and said he had ordered a review of how a man with an AR-15-style rifle got close enough to shoot at Trump despite U.S. Secret Service protection.
The FBI says it is not aware of any threats to the Republican convention and the Secret Service said it does not anticipate any changes to the security plan in Milwaukee.