Former President Donald Trump has selected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) to be his running mate, he announced Monday afternoon as the Republican National Convention began in Milwaukee.
Vance, 39, is a freshman senator from Ohio who has pivoted from anti-Trump conservatism to become Trump’s chief acolyte and a prime advocate of America First.
Vance became a household name in 2016 with the publication of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which detailed his experience growing up among the white working class in middle America in Jackson, Kentucky and Middletown, Ohio. Many urban elites took it as a textbook explainer of Trump’s shocking rise. (J.D. stands for James David.)
