When James David Vance first became known in 2016 following the publication of his book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, he defined himself as “anti-Trump” and said in an interview with the American journalist Charlie Rose that the tycoon seemed to him a “terrible candidate” for the Republican Party: “I have never liked him”. Eight years later, Donald Trump has chosen him as his vice-presidential candidate after he became one of the most influential figures within the MAGA movement, the acronym for ‘Make America Great Again’, under which Trump’s most staunch supporters are gathered.
Vance, 39, was born in Middleton, Ohio, and is a political newcomer who entered the Senate last year but has been growing under the Trumpist wing for years. During his 2022 Senate race, he managed to win Trump’s support by fully embracing his political vision. He thus shares his leader’s populist vision on immigration and his “America First” foreign policy, which has resonated especially in Congress with the blocking of aid to Ukraine. Regarding the right to abortion, as a senator from Ohio, he has opposed the legalization of the termination of pregnancy in cases of rape or incest. He has also shown his rejection of policies on the gender care of minors.
Trump’s new deputy claims to be a working-class advocate who stands up to liberals who “populate the highest echelons of government” and proudly embraces the label of redneck. Precisely in his book Hillbilly Elegy He appealed to that popular past by explaining what it was like to grow up in the poverty of the Rust Belt (the manufacturing belt of the Midwest American) surrounded by violence and addiction. Later, their story was adapted into a film by Hollywood director Ron Howard. The Trump duo’s vision of elites resonates strongly with the tycoon’s inauguration speech in 2017, in which he claimed that he had become president of the country to put an end to a political elite that, according to him, had forgotten about the working classes.
In the hours after the attack, Vance said the attack was not an “isolated case” and blamed the Democrats and Joe Biden for what happened. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that former President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. This rhetoric has directly led to the attempted assassination of President Trump,” he wrote on the social network X.
The choice of Vance sends a double message. On the one hand, Trump is trying to bring young blood to the Republican ticket in the face of a weakened Joe Biden, who, at 81, has age as his greatest weakness. On the other hand, the choice of such a radical figure in Trump’s postulates reveals what second term Trump plans to carry out once he becomes president.
In an interview with the magazine Time Trump has already announced that he would launch his plan to wage his battle against what he calls the “Deep State” of Washington. He already tried it in his first term, but he did not have a structure around him that was convinced enough to execute it effectively. And many of Trump’s plans ended up frustrated during his first term for this reason. Now, the former president seems to have learned from his “mistakes” and has chosen people of the same mind who are willing to go all the way with him.
Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Vance has been an active surrogate for the former president, participating in campaign events and helping him raise funds for his reelection campaign, most recently participating in fundraisers in Ohio and California. Additionally, he has also been seen outside the Manhattan courthouse to show his support for the former president during the Stormy Daniels trial.
During the Iraq war, Vance served as a Marine from 2003 to 2007. Upon his return, he studied political science and philosophy at Ohio State and Yale. He then went to work at a large law firm and rose through the ranks to become the head of tycoon Peter Thiel’s investment fund in San Francisco. Vance certainly has a biography that contains everything that Trump supporters admire: a self-made man, proud of his working-class origins and a former Marine.
Source: www.eldiario.es
