The Hillbilly Elegy author and reformed Trump hater has aligned himself more closely with the former president in recent years.
On Monday, Donald Trump announced that Ohio senator J.D. Vance would be his running mate in the 2024 presidential election. Vance beat out a slew of contenders that included Senators Marco Rubio and Tim Scott and Representative Elise Stefanik. So, will American voters trust a former venture capitalist with a full beard? I guess we’re about to find out. In the meantime, here’s what you need to know about J.D. Vance.
Who is J.D. Vance?
If you don’t live in Ohio or follow congressional politics, you still probably know who Vance is. A former marine and venture capitalist, Vance rose to prominence in 2016 with his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, a recounting of his lower-class upbringing in Middletown, Ohio. In its review, the New York Times wrote that the book was “a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump.” Despite overwhelming praise, the book did garner some negative criticism. Bob Hutton wrote in Jacobin, “The book is primarily a work of self-congratulation, a literary victory lap, and a vindication of a minimalist safety net.” In 2020, it was turned into the movie for which Glenn Close lost her eighth Oscar race, playing Vance’s grandmother.
Soon after the success of Hillbilly Elegy, Vance moved from San Francisco back to Ohio, where he started a Cincinnati-based venture capital firm with backing from Peter Thiel. In 2022, Vance ran for senate in his home state and won, thanks in part to an endorsement from Trump.
What are his politics?
Depends on the day and who’s asking. Vance has shifted his politics in recent years to more closely align with Trump’s. As of right now, he’s anti-immigration, anti-gay marriage, and anti-gender-affirming care for minors.
Interestingly, as the path to becoming Trump’s VP pick became more clear, Vance, who has been staunchly anti-abortion, started obfuscating those hardline views. Just last week, Vance addressed access to the abortion pill mifepristone on Meet the Press. “On the question of the abortion pill, the Supreme Court made a decision in saying that the American people should have access to that medication,” Vance said, “Donald Trump has supported that opinion, I support that opinion.”
Previously, Vance had stated that he didn’t believe that there should be exceptions for rape or incest when it comes to abortion bans. In a 2021 interview, Vance said that “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society,” Vance said at the time.
Last year, when Ohio voters passed a ballot measure enshrining abortion rights into the state’s constitution, Vance called it a “gut punch.” He also wrotein a post on X, that “abortion restrictions very early in pregnancy with exceptions” was the way to push through a broader anti-abortion agenda – a slightly different tune than his previous belief about the “inconvenient” circumstances someone with an unwanted pregnancy might find themselves in.
What has he said about Trump?
Here’s where Vance is revealed to be a guy who will do anything to get on top. Vance used to hate Trump. When he was running for Senate, USA Today reported that in 2016, Vance had written to a friend, “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) or that he’s America’s Hitler.” Somehow, he’s gotten over the latter belief!
Also in 2016, Vance wrote an op-ed in The Atlantic titled “Opioid of the Masses,” in which he wrote of the then-candidate: “Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.”
Around the time Vance moved back to Ohio (perhaps with a political future on his mind), he started to change his tune about Trump. He supported Trump in the 2020 election, and even apologized for his previous criticisms when he was on his own campaign trail in 2021. “I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy,” Vance said on Fox News. “I think he was a good president, I think he made a lot of good decisions for people, and I think he took a lot of flak.” Vance even went so far as to say that the 2020 election was illegitimate, saying, “There were certainly people voting illegally on a large-scale basis.”
Vance’s kissing up worked, and he scored a coveted Trump endorsement in his 2022 senate race. Now, Vance will get a national stage on which he can espouse his beliefs on domestic violence (people should stay in “violent” marriages for the sake of their children), the climate crisis (he doesn’t think there is one), and efforts to codify same-sex and interracial marriage (“a bizarre distraction”).
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