By: Lydia Chew

Former United States president and Republican nominee Donald Trump has tapped Ohio Senator James David Vance as his running mate for the 2024 presidential elections. The announcement was made on the first day of the Republican National Convention, held in Milwaukee, Minnesota, from July 15 to July 18, 2024. If elected, Vance, 39, will be the nation’s youngest vice president since Richard Nixon in 1952. He will also be the only United States vice president to have served in the Marine Corps.

“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 in a post on his Truth Social network.

Democrats, and even some Republicans, have questioned whether Vance, author of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” and a U.S. senator from Ohio, is driven more by opportunism than ideology.
But Trump survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday, and many of his advisors see Trump’s transformation as genuine.

Trump’s advisors point out that Vance’s political beliefs, which mix isolationism with economic populism, dovetail with those of Trump. This could put both men at odds with the old guard of the Republican Party, where foreign policy hawks and free market evangelists still hold sway.

Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, whom Vance has described as a mentor, told Reuters that Vance shifted his views on Trump because “he saw the successes that President Trump as president brought to the country.