MILWAUKEE — J.D. Vance — the freshman Ohio senator who used to rebuke Donald Trump’s character and policies before becoming one of his most ardent supporters in Congress — formally accepted the nomination as Trump’s running mate Wednesday at the Republican National Convention.
Vance spoke directly to the swing-state voters who will determine the outcome of the presidential election as well as control of the Congress during his 38-minute prime time speech on the third night of the convention.
“This moment is not about me. It’s about all of us. It’s about who we’re fighting for,” Vance said, as Trump looked on from a special seating section inside Fiserv Forum.
“It’s about the autoworker in Michigan, wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs,” Vance said. “It’s about the factory worker in Wisconsin, who makes things with their hands and is proud of American craftsmanship.”
“It’s about the energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio, who doesn’t understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tinpot dictators across the world when he could buy it from his own citizens right here in our own country,” he added.
Biden-Harris 2024 communications director Michael Tyler released a statement after Vance’s acceptance speech concluded, arguing that working and middle class Americans would be harmed if Trump and Vance are elected later this year.
“J.D. Vance is unprepared, unqualified, and willing to do anything Donald Trump demands,” Tyler wrote.
Raised by grandmother
Vance spoke at length about his upbringing and his family during his speech, including his mother, who is close to reaching 10 years clean and sober, as well as his grandmother, who raised him while his mother was struggling with addiction.
He said that his mother should reach that benchmark in January 2025 and that they should celebrate in the White House.
Vance rolled in a story about his grandmother to emphasize the GOP’s support for gun rights, receiving loud cheers from the crowd.
He noted that in 2005, just before he deployed to Iraq as part of the Marine Corps, she died and while going through her home, he and his family found 19 loaded handguns.
“They were stashed all over her house; under her bed, in a closet and in the silverware drawer,” Vance said.
“We wondered what was going on. And it occurred to us that towards the end of her life (she) couldn’t get around so well,” Vance said. “And so this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That’s who we fight for. That’s the American spirit.”
Vance said that his version of the American dream wasn’t becoming a senator or starting a business, but having the type of family he wasn’t able to grow up in.
“My most important American dream was becoming a good husband and a good dad,” Vance said. “I wanted to give my kids the things that I didn’t have when I was growing up. And that’s the accomplishment that I’m proudest of.”
Vance emerges as favorite despite inexperience
Trump announced Monday that he had selected Vance to be his running mate after narrowing down a shortlist that included several other GOP senators with more experience in Congress.
The relationships that a vice president has with both Republicans and Democrats in the upper chamber are especially important given that bills must gain the support of at least 60 senators to advance toward final passage. It’s also the chamber responsible for approving judicial and executive branch nominees.
Additionally, the vice president is responsible for casting tie-breaking votes in the Senate, a job that could take up much of the vice president’s time if the election yields another two years with a 50-50 split.
Vance has been a member of Congress for less than two years and is best known as the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a controversial book about rural poverty in Appalachia, that was later turned into a movie.
The delegates at the convention moved to formally nominate Vance as their vice presidential nominee the same day Trump announced him as his running mate. Vance’s speech on Wednesday night served as his official acceptance.
Foreign affairs
Vance doesn’t have a lengthy record on domestic or foreign policy issues given his especially brief tenure as a lawmaker, but he has repeatedly opposed funding for Ukraine.
Speaking on the floor of the convention to an enthusiastic crowd, Vance said that “we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace.”
“No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer,” Vance said, seemingly referring to NATO countries that have yet to reach the benchmark of spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense.
NATO allied countries agreed to move toward that goal in 2014 after Russia invaded Crimea in Eastern Ukraine. Twenty-three of the 32 countries in the alliance are expected to meet that target this year.
Vance said if reelected, Trump “will send our kids to war only when we must.”
Vance also spoke about China and the Chinese Communist Party throughout his speech.
“We will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens,” he said.
‘A meat and potatoes kind of guy’
Vance’s acceptance speech, which largely served as an introduction to GOP voters, followed a lengthy night of more speeches, including by his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, and Donald J. Trump, Jr., who pressed for his father to choose Vance as his running mate.
Chilukuri Vance said she wanted “to explain from the heart why I love and admire J.D. and stand here beside him today, and why he will make a great vice president of the United States.”
Telling the story of how they met at Yale Law School, Usha said Vance approached their differences with “curiosity” and that she learned he had “overcome childhood traumas that I could barely fathom.”
“My background is very different from J.D.’s. I grew up in San Diego, in a middle-class community with two loving parents, both immigrants from India and a wonderful sister,” Chilukuri Vance said. “That J.D. and I could meet at all, let alone fall in love and marry, is a testament to this great country.”
Chilukuri Vance spoke for just under five minutes and told the crowd that although her husband is a “meat and potatoes kind of guy,” he learned to cook Indian vegetarian food for her mother. She said he’s the same person now that she met when they were younger, “except the beard.”
“It’s safe to say that neither J.D. nor I expected to find ourselves in this position. But it’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American dream,” Chilukuri Vance said. “A boy from Middletown, Ohio, raised by his grandmother through tough times, chosen to help lead our country through some of its greatest challenges. I am grateful to all of you for the trust you placed in him and in our family.”
Ties between Vance and Donald Trump Jr.
Though he largely spoke about his father, Trump Jr. used his platform to spotlight the friendship between him and Vance. He used the differences in their upbringings as an invitation for voters to support his father in November.
“For everyone watching at home, no matter who you are, you can be a part of this movement to make America great again. Look at me and my friend J.D. Vance. A kid from Appalachia and a kid from Trump Tower in Manhattan. We grew up worlds apart,” Trump Jr. said. “Yet now we’re both fighting side by side to save the country we love. And by the way, J.D. Vance is going to make one hell of a vice president.”
Trump Jr. spoke for nearly 20 minutes prior to Vance taking the stage, focusing most of his speech on defending his father and taking sharp jabs at Biden.
He said he had “never been prouder” of his father than he was Saturday after the former president survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
He compared his father standing up and raising his fist after the shooting to how the “America we all grew up with” will return again.
“We’re like that man who stood on that platform and felt the bullet pierce his flesh just days ago in Pennsylvania. He may have moved to the ground, but he stood back up. And when he did, my father raised his fist into the air, he looked out at the crowd, and what did he say?”
“Fight, fight, fight,” the crowd at the RNC shouted back.
“And we will fight. We will fight with our voices. We will fight with our ideas. And then November 5, we will fight with our vote,” Trump Jr. said.
Prior to speaking, Trump Jr. called his oldest daughter Kai Madison Trump — the former president’s eldest granddaughter — to the stage briefly.
She accused the left of attacking her grandfather and told stories of him calling her to ask about her golf game and telling his friends that she made the high honor roll.
“The media makes my grandpa seem like a different person, but I know him for who he is. He’s very caring and loving,” Kai Madison said. “He truly wants the best for this country and he will fight every single day to make America great again.”
Bashing Biden
Dozens of other politicians spoke on the third night of the Republican National Convention, with the vast majority praising Trump while criticizing Biden.
Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Georgia, said voters need to elect Trump to the White House in November to prevent Biden and Democrats from implementing their preferred policies.
“We have to remember that the greatest threat to American safety is not Biden’s brain,” Gingrich said. “The greatest threat is Biden’s policies, and the people he appoints.”
Gingrich added that Americans could “vote for weakness and war with Biden,” or they could “vote for strength and peace with President Trump.”
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who was on Trump’s shortlist for a running mate but wasn’t selected, said during a brief speech that Trump would be better for fossil fuel production than Biden.
“When President Trump unleashes American energy, we unleash American prosperity and we ensure our national security,” Burgum said.
The crowd inside Fiserv Forum chanted “drill baby drill” during part of his speech.
Kellyanne Conway, senior counselor to Trump during his first administration, told attendees at the RNC that the GOP ticket is the best path forward for the country.
“The answer to weakness is strength. The antidote to division is unity. And the alternative to failure and incompetence, to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, is to send them packing and send Donald Trump and J.D. Vance to the White House,” Conway said.
U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida told the GOP delegates and guests that Trump — who never served in the military and made up an injury to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam War — “respects our military and understands the true cost of war.”
“President Trump knows what it means to put your life on the line,” Luna said. “Our service members and their families make immense sacrifices, and they deserve a president who respects that sacrifice and who will lay down his own life in defense of this great nation.”
Lia Chien contributed to this report.
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