“HILLBILLY” JD Vance once suggested Donald Trump might be “America’s Hitler”.
Now the tycoon’s Vice Presidential pick, he is among his most dependable attack dogs.
Unlike pampered rich kid Trump, Vance has a tough backstory which is political gold.
His best-selling 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy — highlighting social decay among the US’s Rust Belt white working class — was his breakthrough into the public arena.
Vance was born James Donald Bowman in the deprived former steel city of Middletown, Ohio.
His biological parents — Donald Bowman and Bev Vance — divorced when he was a toddler.
Bev, who fell into heroin addiction, began putting Pepsi in Vance’s bottle when he was nine months old.
Once, she asked her son to urinate in a cup so that she could use it to pass a drugs test.
He was raised by his grandparents and despite his disadvantaged upbringing, Vance made it to the Marine Corps then on to Yale Law School.
There he met his wife Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Indian immigrants, and they went on to have three children.
Catholic convert Vance became a tech venture capitalist before moving into politics and became a senator for Ohio in 2022.
Yet, the bearded 39-year-old has never forgotten where he came from.
He said of the poverty-blighted Midwest white working class: “Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash.
“I call them neighbours, friends, and family.”
