As a candidate for the vice president of the United States, Republican Senator JD Vance will run alongside Donald Trump in the November elections.
15.07.2024 21:27 , updated: 22:15
Photo: SITA/AP, Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Sen. JD Vance speaks to reporters after the presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Atlanta, Thursday, June 27, 2024.
Before entering high-level politics, Vance sharply criticized Trump, but later became his loud defender. The ex-president announced his choice on his social network Truth Social, while the Republican Party was finalizing the nomination of Trump for the presidency at the pre-election convention.
“After much thought and thought … I have decided that the best person to succeed as Vice President of the United States is Senator JD Vance from the great state of Ohio,” Trump said.
The former head of the White House thus chose a relatively young electoral partner: Vance is 39 years old, which is exactly half of Trump’s age. He is relatively inexperienced in top politics, as he was first elected to the Senate in 2022 and had not previously held any elected office. But after entering Congress, he quickly became one of the faces of the new wing of the Republican Party, which follows Trump’s model.
His choice as a vice presidential running mate has been speculated for months, with media reports in recent weeks saying Trump was choosing between Senators Vance and Mark Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. According to the AP agency, Vance is probably the most “ideologically aligned” with the presidential candidate. At his age, he also brings “the contrast of a millennial to the two older male front-runners” of the two main political parties in the US – that is, Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden.
The senator goes by the name JD Vance, his full name is James David Vance. He comes from modest means, growing up in the city of Middletown in southwestern Ohio. He described his difficult childhood, when he was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents, in the 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy, which made him famous in the US and abroad. At the same time, it was referred to as one of the books that explained the success of Trump in the then presidential elections.
But Vance himself was not a Trump fan eight years ago. In interviews at the time, he referred to himself as someone who would “never” support Trump and described him as an “idiot” or unfit for the presidency. But after entering politics, he said that he was mistaken about Trump.
“I didn’t think he would be a good president,” he said recently in an interview with Fox News. “He was a great president. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m working so hard for him to get a second mandate,” he added.
As expected, the Republican Party officially nominated Donald Trump as its candidate for the presidential elections in November this year at the convention in Milwaukee, USA. This was reported by the Reuters and AP agencies, according to which Trump won the necessary majority of delegates.
Trump, who was the target of an assassination attempt at a rally with voters in Pennsylvania on Saturday, is scheduled to make a speech at the end of the convention on Thursday. On this occasion, he is to formally accept the nomination.
Trump’s nomination was expected. The 2017 and 2021 president clearly won the Republican primaries.
Trump is likely to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election, whose nomination Democrats are expected to announce at their convention starting Aug. 19. But party delegates could vote on the matter already at the end of July.
Source: spravy.pravda.sk
