Trump chooses Ohio Senator JD Vance as his vice presidential candidate | USA Elections

After months of playing a game of cat and mouse and letting himself be loved, Donald Trump has finally plucked the daisy. He has waited until the last moment, in the middle of the Republican convention in Milwaukee, to make his announcement. The former president and Republican Party candidate for President of the United States will have Senator JD Vance as his possible running mate to become vice president if he wins the election on November 5. Trump contested his election after an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler (Pennsylvania). Since then, the former president has moderated his speech and called for unity. Around him, yes.

“After long deliberation and reflection, and taking into account the enormous talents of many other people, I have decided that the most suitable person to assume the office of vice president of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the great state of Ohio,” he said. Trump announced this in a message on his social network, Truth, in which he reviewed his biography. With Vance, Trump chooses someone young, whose loyalty he trusts, but who has been rigid in his political positions, sometimes even extremist. The choice does not fit very well into the moderation that has been promised.

The announcement came minutes before his name was presented at the Republican National Convention and while delegates themselves were voting for Trump, who has been officially declared the nominee. The former president has tasked Vance with focusing on the decisive states of the Midwest, in the so-called Rust Belt, which he represents due to his origins. “Now, during the campaign, he will focus special attention on the people he fought so valiantly for, the American workers and farmers of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and beyond,” Trump wrote in his message.

Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are the three decisive states that Trump won in 2016 and Biden won for the Democrats in 2020. Maintaining the so-called “blue wall” has become almost Biden’s only chance to be re-elected. If the president holds them, he can abandon the southern states of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, the other three most controversial states.

This Monday, an hour after Trump announced his nomination, Vance appeared on the stage of the Fiserv Forum, where the convention is being held, and gave hugs and autographs left and right. Moments later, to the acclamation of the delegates, he was formally chosen as the vice presidential candidate.

To know what happens outside is to understand what will happen inside, don’t miss anything.

keep reading

James David Vance, better known as J.D. Vance, became famous for his memoir The Hillbilly. A Rural Elegy, Published in 2016 and later brought to the screen by Netflix. He secured the Republican nomination as a senatorial candidate in 2022 thanks to the decisive support of Trump from a political point of view and the decisive support of billionaire Peter Thiel from a financial point of view. 39 years old, born in Middletown (Ohio), son of divorced parents, raised by his grandparents – from whom he adopted the last name – in a poor white family in the Appalachian region, he was a marine in his youth and was assigned to the Iraq War in 2003. After studying political science and philosophy at Ohio State University, he obtained a doctorate in law at the prestigious Yale University, where he met his wife, lawyer Usha Chilukuri, with whom he has three children.

He started working at a law firm, but then moved to San Francisco and then into the technology sector as a venture capital investor. He was a director of Peter Thiel’s company Mithril Capital. His memoir, which became a bestseller, was considered important for understanding the anger of the white working class, who felt defeated by globalization and saw an opportunity for revenge in Trump. He continued his career as a venture capital investor in various companies, while his interest in politics grew.

Converted critic

Vance was a critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 election, becoming a member of the movement Never Trump and described him as “American Hitler” in a private message that surfaced. Later, he deleted his Twitter messages criticizing the former president, supported him in his 2020 re-election campaign and dedicated himself unconditionally to him, especially after he announced his candidacy for the Senate. He has maintained that loyalty as a senator and is also very close to the former president’s son Donald Trump Jr. Trump never missed an opportunity to publicly humiliate him: “J.D. is kissing my ass because he desperately wants my support,” he said at a rally in Ohio during the 2022 legislative election campaign.

An election denier (he defends the rumor that Trump won the 2020 election but that it was stolen from him) and a climate denier, a critic of US military aid to Ukraine and an inveterate conservative, Vance was an evangelical Christian but converted to Catholicism in 2019.

After the assassination attempt on Trump, he has been one of the harshest voices against Democrats. Vance said the shooting was “not an 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 the attempted assassination of President Trump,” he tweeted.

Twenty names were mentioned in the pool, but in addition to J.D. Vance, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum gained strength. All three were considered unofficial finalists.

Joe Biden’s campaign has greeted Vance’s appointment with a scathing attack: “Vance will do what Mike Pence did not do on January 6: do everything he can to advance Trump and his extremist MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and regardless of the harm it causes to the American people,” they said in a statement. They added, “He has a reputation for being one of the biggest far-right extremists in Washington.”

Joe Biden has put current Vice President Kamala Harris on his ballot, so the lingering mystery of whoever Trump chose is finally cleared up. The former president was forced to show his cards because the voting process had already begun by the delegates present at the Republican National Convention, which is being held in Milwaukee (Wisconsin) from this Monday to Thursday, July 19. There the two nominees will be officially announced. In 2016, Trump chose Mike Pence a week before the convention. In 2020, Joe Biden did the same with Kamala Harris.

In 2016, amid controversies over his sexist statements and doubts about his integrity, Trump chose Mike Pence, who defined himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order” and whom the former president came to say was “very honest”. Pence ran again in the 2020 election, before confronting the then-president for ignoring his requests to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.

Sometimes a running mate is chosen to help win a state or to strengthen the candidacy in groups of voters where the candidate is weak. This led many to bet that in the end it would be a woman, an African-American, a Latino or someone relatively young. After the desert trip that Trump conquered and his criminal problems, personal loyalty was another component that was shaken up, someone who was quite MAGA (for example) Make America Great AgainTrump’s motto). Seems like he’s lost weight.

Role of the Vice President

In any case, Trump is one of those who believes that he will win or lose the election no matter who comes with him. He said a few months ago, “In fact, it has never had as much of an impact on the election as it did now.” After the debate in which he beat Biden on June 27 and after the assassination attempt last week, perhaps this is even more true.

The vice president’s role is also not overly important once he takes office. His main responsibility is to serve as a replacement for the president in the event of the incumbent’s resignation, incapacity, removal, or death, which has happened relatively infrequently in United States history. Nine vice presidents have held the office

She also presides over the Senate, where she has the deciding vote in the event of a tie, which Harris had to use frequently in the first part of Biden’s term. In practice, the vice president does not usually preside over a session, except on extraordinary occasions such as the State of the Union debate or the need to break a tie. Other assignments are at the president’s discretion. Some have held a specific policy portfolio, others have served only as senior advisers to the president.

Before the ratification of the 12th Amendment in 1804, electors voted only for president, and the person who received the second most votes became vice president, even if he was from the rival party.

If Trump wins the election, the new tenant of the Naval Observatory, the residence of vice presidents since Walter Mondale during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, will also be a frontrunner in the succession race. Five vice presidents have since won election to occupy the White House.

Follow all the information about the elections in the United States Our weekly newsletter,