Marta Gichko10:00, 16.07.24

J.D. Vance asked the politician for forgiveness. He forgave him and even helped him become a senator.

If Donald Trump wins the election, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance could become vice president.

As The Times reports , shortly after Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2016, Vance expressed his disdain for the Republican.

“I’ve never been a Trump supporter,” James David Vance said proudly at the time, calling him “America’s Hitler.”VIDEO OF THE DAY

Begged for forgiveness

Vance, however, was able to maneuver politically, because eight years later he became Trump’s official running mate. If he and Trump win the election in November, Vance will become the youngest vice president to be sworn in since Richard Nixon in 1953.

Vance rose to fame with his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about growing up in a low-income family riddled with abuse and addiction. He cast himself as an American success story, overcoming childhood adversity to attend Yale Law School. The book cemented his reputation as a moderate conservative commentator respected by both Republicans and Democrats.

He is said to have used a mutual friend, billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, to arrange a meeting with Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. at Mar-a-Lago in 2021. The politician told Vance he had read Hillbilly Elegy and “loved it.”

Vance apologized to Trump. The politician not only forgave him, but also supported Vance’s fight for a seat in the Ohio Senate.

“Like many people, I was critical of Trump back in 2016, and I ask people not to judge me. I have been very vocal about the fact that I said those critical things, and I regret that, and I regret that I was wrong about this guy,” Vance said in 2021.

The appeals to Trump paid off. Vance finished fourth in the Republican primary for the Ohio Senate seat. Trump’s support propelled him to victory in the 2022 midterms.

Even after endorsing Vance, Trump continued to mock his young protégé. At a 2022 rally, the former president said Vance was “in love” with him and “kisses my ass.”

Vance’s Triumph

But Vence’s approval ratings quickly rose. Nearly two years in office, the telegenic, bearded senator had transformed himself into a populist. He came to blunt the former president’s hard-line stances on immigration, the economy and U.S. involvement in foreign wars.

“We are 100 percent confident that J.D. is America First to the core,” Donald Jr. said this week.

Vance wrote about coming from a broken home, rejecting his father’s surname. He was raised as a Protestant by his family, but converted to Catholicism as an adult. This religion influenced his political views.

After graduating from high school, he joined the United States Marine Corps and served as a combat correspondent in the Iraq War. In 2014, Vance met his future wife, Usha Chilukuri, in a law class. Chilukuri later became a law clerk for conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who is now a Supreme Court justice. The couple had three children.

After a brief stint at a corporate law firm, Vance moved his young family to San Francisco to work as a venture capitalist in the tech industry, then returned to Ohio.

Hillbilly Elegy, which topped The New York Times bestseller list for 48 weeks after its release in 2016, came at a particular political moment. The aggrieved white working class was about to overthrow the political establishment—namely, Hillary Clinton—and vote Trump into the White House.

Vance wrote in his memoir about the decline of American industry and the drug epidemic that ravaged its once-great cities. He recalled how, as a child, his mother would ask him to urinate in a cup for her so she could pass a drug test. Vance wrote that his mother once threatened to crash their car and kill them both. He watched as she was taken away in handcuffs in the back of a police car.

Ron Howard later adapted the book into a film starring Amy Adams as Vance’s mother and Glenn Close as his grandmother.

Threat to Biden

Since Trump’s victory, Vance has become a regular face on CNN’s pundit couch, deciphering for “elite” liberals “what these people are thinking.”

“He’s one of the few people I’ve seen in politics who really has the ability to appeal to both working-class voters because of his background and to highly educated suburban voters because of his intellect,” said a longtime friend of Vance’s who was not identified.

Vance has also proven his ability to raise money. He helped organize Trump’s June campaign fundraiser in Silicon Valley, serving as a liaison between tech entrepreneur David Sachs and the Trump campaign. It raised $12 million.

President Biden’s team is said to be wary of the threat Vance could pose to the incumbent president’s reelection campaign. Kamala Harris’ former communications director Ashley Etienne told CNN last month that she believed Vance “would pose the biggest threat” to her during the vice presidential debate.

“He’s an incredible debater. I think he has a quality that makes him visible to the 1-2 percent who are undecided. I think he’s extremely smart and savvy. I think it’s going to be tough to see them face to face,” Etienne said.

Vance said Democrats often criticize Republicans as insensitive to working-class voters, but “they really can’t do that to me because I grew up poor. I do think there’s something about my background that makes it a little harder for these guys to attack me.”

Trump promised in his running mate that Vance “will be intensely focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and far beyond.”

In an interview this month, Vance said that as vice president he would push for more manufacturing jobs, more school choice and an immigration policy that focuses on deportations and building a wall along the southern border. He also pushed to cut U.S. aid to Ukraine.

“He’s corrupt.”

Experts suggest Vance is part of a new generational cohort that sees Trump as just the first step in a broader populist-nationalist revolution that is already reshaping the American right.

Josh McLaurin, Vance’s Yale roommate who leaked the 2016 “American Hitler” text message, condemned his former friend’s selection as the vice presidential nominee.

“Obviously he’s corrupt, but more importantly he’s angry and vindictive. Perfect for Trump’s revenge. J.D.’s success is a triumph for angry jerks everywhere,” said McLaurin, now a senator from Georgia.

(C)UNIAN 2024