J.D. Vance, Once a Die-Hard Never Trumper, Completes His MAGAmorphosis

J.D. Vance leaned heavily on his Ohio-roots in his much anticipated speech at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, describing how his upbringing—what he referred to as his own “American Dream”—made him the right man to join Donald Trump on the 2024 Republican ticket.

“Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I’d be standing here tonight. I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community, and their country with their whole hearts,” Vance said, adding, “But it was also a place that had been cast aside by America’s ruling class in Washington.”

This sentiment dominated Vance’s speech—a retelling of his childhood that was punctuated by “out of touch politicians” making matters worse. He cast blame on President Joe Biden, saying, “Joe Biden screwed up, and my community paid the price.” Vance struck a populist tone throughout, accusing the powerful of neglecting communities like his, referencing trade policies, like NAFTA, and the Iraq War. (Though as The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes both “got more support from Republicans in Congress than Democrats.”) Vance also, notably, supports the Trump economic agenda, which includes extending the former president’s 2017 tax cuts, the gains of which, the New York Times noted, this week, “disproportionately accrue to the rich.”

Michael Tyler, the communications director for the Biden-Harris campaign, called Vance the “poster boy for Project 2025,” a radical conservative plan for remaking government. While Vance “took center stage” on Wednesday, he said, “it’s working families and the middle class who will suffer if he’s allowed to stay there.”

Tyler added, “Backed by Silicon Valley and the billionaires who bought his vice presidential selection, Vance is Project 2025 in human form—an agenda that puts extremism and the ultra wealthy over our democracy.”

Trump revealed the 39-year-old Senator as his vice-presidential pick on Monday as the RNC kicked off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just days after a gunman attempted to assassinate Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Before the suspect was identified or a motive determined, Vance was quick to blame the shooting on Joe Biden and the democrats he serves alongside in Congress.

“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs,” Vance wrote on X. “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Vance echoed his remarks during his speech Wednesday, saying that Trump has endured “abuse, slander, and persecution.”

“Consider what they said, they said he was a tyrant, they said he must be stopped at all costs,” Vance said. “Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump, and look at that photo of him defiant, fist in the air.”

Before running for office, Vance was best known for his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which chronicled his life growing up in Middletown, Ohio. In the book, Vance described his hometown as “hemorrhaging jobs and hope” and recalled how his mother suffered from drug addiction and had bouts in rehab, forcing him to move into his grandparents home in the 10th grade.

His mother, Beverly Vance, was in Trump’s VIP box, sitting alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson.

“My movement is about single moms like mine who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up,” Vance began. “I’m proud to say that tonight, my mom is here ten years clean and sober. I love you mom,” he said, chants of “J.D.’s MOM” bellowing in the arena.

From 2003 to 2007, Vance served in Iraq as a U.S. Marine before going on to study at Ohio State University. Vance’s memoir also details his bootstrapping rise from a young Ohioan to a Yale Law graduate. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance, recalled their meeting at Yale during her introduction. She spoke of Vance as a “working class,” “meat and potatoes kind of guy,” and a “tough marine” whose “idea of a good time was playing with puppies and watching the movie Babe.”

In his speech, Vance, too, focused on his relatability, taking extra care to appeal to swing states in the process. “To the people of Middletown, Ohio and all the forgotten communities, in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio and every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from,” he said.

After Yale, Vance began his career as a venture capitalist, starting as a junior investor with the Peter Thiel-backed Mithril Capital. Thiel later donated $15 million to his Senate campaign.

Other powerful players in the tech world expressed support for Trump tapping Vance. Elon Musk, for one, told Trump “directly that he should choose Vance as his running mate, describing the Trump-Vance pairing as ‘beautiful,’” according to the New York Times. AI maxers, or those who advocate for unheeded development and deployment of artificial intelligence, were also thrilled, noted 404 Media.

Vance’s entrance on the RNC stage late Wednesday symbolized the final step of his evolution from a self-described “‘Never Trump’ guy” to the former president’s New Right hand man.

Two presidential election cycles ago, he was a staunch opponent, calling Trump “unfit for our nation’s highest office” and akin to “cultural heroin.” In 2016, Vance’s ex-roommate and Georgia State Senator Josh McLaurin shared an apparent screenshot of a conversation the two shared about then-candidate Trump. “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful),” Vance wrote in the message, “or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

Trump acknowledged Vance’s past criticism when endorsing his Ohoi Senate bid in 2022.

“He’s the guy that said some bad shit about me,” Trump said during a rally at the time. “If I went by that standard, I don’t think I would have ever endorsed anybody in the country.” Vance responded, “I wasn’t always nice. But the simple fact is, he’s the best president of my lifetime.”

Vance gushed about Trump on stage Wednesday night and his support has appeared unwavering in public appearances, a characteristic that Trump covets in a teammate, and especially in a vice president.

In a February interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Vance got visibly upset when the anchor asked him about if he would have certified the 2020 election. (Trump reportedly called former vice president Mike Pence a “pussy” to threaten him to not certify the results.) “Oh George, this is such a ridiculous question,” Vance said, adding, “do I think there were problems in 2020? Yes I do.” (Officials across the country said that they found no evidence of irregularities that influenced the election.) Vance also didn’t confirm that he would accept the results of the 2024 election unconditionally, saying that he would only do so if the election was “free and fair.”

After Trump announced Vance as his VP, Biden’s team released a statement, saying in part that Trump chose “Vance as his running mate because Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda.”

Vance’s past comments and Senate voting record provide a glimpse into what might happen if Trump, and in turn Vance, take office in 2025.

In February 2022, the same month that Russia invaded Ukraine, Vance told former Trump adviser and right-wing host Steve Bannon, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” Last December, Vance introduced the “College Admissions Accountability Act,” claiming that “America’s higher education cartel has discriminated against applicants and students by adhering to racial preferences under the banner of ‘equity.’” This month, Vance told supporters in an email that, “We need to deport every single person who invaded our country illegally.”

For years, some of Vance’s loudest opinions have been about gender, the role women ought to have in a society, and abortion. In 2023, Vance introduced legislation that would make providing hormones or surgery to transgender minors punishable by up to 12 years in prison. “We’re effectively run in this country,” Vance began telling his ally Tucker Carlson, “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable.”

And on abortion, Vance has said he would support a country-wide ban, noting in a 2022 podcast interview, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.” In 2021, he lauded Texas’ near-total abortion ban and argued against exceptions for rape and incest, referring to those experiences as “inconvenient,” adding, “two wrong don’t make a right.”

Lately, Vance has seemed to follow Trump’s lead in trying to appear more moderate on abortion, even as the former president also brags about killing Roe v. Wade by installing three conservative justices on the Supreme Court. As Bess Levin recently noted, Trump’s election-year messaging “is because he knows extreme positions on abortion have cost Republicans elections.”

In his speech Wednesday evening, he didn’t mention abortion once.