What to know about Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate

By Jack Forrest, CNN

(CNN) — With Donald Trump’s choice to make JD Vance his running mate, he adds to the ticket an author and senator once known as a “Trump whisperer” for his understanding of the former president’s voter base.

The onetime “Never Trump” Republican, Vance, 39, shot to fame over his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” and would eventually win over Trump ahead of his run for Senate. The former lawyer and venture capitalist has since become a loyal follower of Trump and heir-apparent to his particular brand of Republican populist politics.

Family and background

Vance was born in Middletown, Ohio, on August 2, 1984, and spent some of his childhood in Kentucky. He served in the Marine Corps from 2003 to 2007 before attending the Ohio State University and Yale Law School. Vance later worked as a venture capitalist before running for office.

Vance’s wife, Usha, is a fellow Yale Law School alum who previously clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was a federal appellate judge. In 2015, she started as an associate at Munger, Tolles & Olson, where she handled “complex civil litigation and appeals” in sectors that included “higher education, local government, entertainment, and technology, including semiconductors,” her employee biography said. The firm announced Monday that she had resigned.

Usha Vance grew up in a suburb of San Diego as the daughter of Indian immigrants. The Vances have three young children: Ewan, Vivek and Mirabel.

‘Hillbilly Elegy’

In 2016, JD Vance released his bestselling book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which chronicled his childhood in a poor Rust Belt town in eastern Ohio and captured the struggles of America’s White working class. His understanding of the population that turned out to support Trump’s first presidential run made him a frequent guest on cable news programs during Trump’s run and presidency. He was a CNN contributor from 2017 to 2018.

The book was turned into a 2020 Netflix movie starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.

Once a Trump critic

CNN’s KFile reported last month that Vance liked tweets in 2016 and 2017 that harshly criticized Trump and his policies — including one post speculating that Vance could serve in 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s administration.

Other tweets liked by Vance said Trump committed “serial sexual assault,” called him “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs,” and, in a since-removed set of tweets, harshly criticized Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia — something Vance now defends Trump over.

KFile also previously reported that Vance deleted past anti-Trump tweets ahead of his announcement in July 2021 that he would run for the open Ohio Senate seat. Vance in February 2016 privately wondered whether Trump was “America’s Hitler,” and a few months later wrote in The Atlantic that Trump was “cultural heroin.”

Vance also said he even contemplated voting for Clinton in 2016, but ultimately said he would vote for independent candidate Evan McMullin.

Senate

The freshman senator from Ohio won his election in 2022 after receiving Trump’s endorsement out of a pack of better-polling rivals. He was also funded heavily by pro-Trump tech mogul Peter Thiel.

Vance has been a vocal opponent of foreign aid in Congress, opposing legislation to send more aid from the US to Ukraine amid Russia’s war.

A day after Ohio voters approved a 2023 ballot measure to protect access to abortion, Vance urged Republicans to embrace a federal ban on the procedure to more effectively make the case to voters about the GOP’s position — breaking from Trump’s stance that the issue should be left up to states.

Recent Trump support

Since receiving Trump’s endorsement for Senate, Vance has become a strong ally of the former president. Ahead of his Senate campaign, Vance apologized for previously calling Trump “reprehensible.”

“Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016,” Vance told CNN in 2021. “I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance said, adding he thought Trump was a good president.

Recently, Vance stood by Trump’s side at a New York courthouse during the former president’s criminal hush money trial. He has also made clear that his view of the constitutional limits on a vice president’s role in certifying election results differs from that of former Vice President Mike Pence, who drew Trump’s ire in January 2021 when he opted not to interfere in the process of approving electoral votes for Joe Biden.

Vance earlier this year told ABC “This Week” that he would not have certified the 2020 election results until states submitted pro-Trump electors.

The Ohio senator committed to accepting the 2024 election results in May during an interview with CNN, provided it’s a “free and fair election” and despite the winner. He emphasized then that Republicans and Democrats should have the opportunity to pursue any issues in the elections, as they have in the past, pointing to 2000 and 2020. No evidence of widespread fraud was found in the 2020 election.

Following Saturday’s attempted assassination of Trump, Vance posted on social media in part blaming Biden’s campaign: “Today is not just some isolated incident. 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.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Arit John, Kit Maher, Em Steck, Andrew Kaczynski, Allison Gordon, Alayna Treene, Rashard Rose, and reporter Dan Merica contributed to this report.

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