2024-07-17 04:44:38
Senator JD, 39, popular in the US after a memoir about his poor childhood with an addicted mother
From fierce critic of Trump to his companion in the race for the White House – this is the political path of Senator JD Vance, who was officially selected as the Republican candidate for vice president.
“The man best suited to fill the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance from the great state of Ohio,” Trump said.
Vance, a Republican, is 39 years old and has not always been particularly positive about Donald Trump. On the contrary! “My God, what an idiot”, “I never liked him”, “Complete fraud”, “I find him reprehensible” – all these words were spoken to the billionaire precisely by Vance in 2016. Then he wrote a private message to an associate on Facebook: “I go back and forth between thinking that Trump is either a cynical ass… or America’s Hitler.” In a post called “The Opioid of the Masses,” Vance wrote, “Many Americans have reached for a new pain reliever. It enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.” He even compared the Republican’s political campaign to “cultural heroin” to which his voters are addicted.
Since then, however, Vance has undergone a complete transformation and has become one of the former president’s staunchest allies. As the 2022 Senate race nears, his rhetoric about the Republican leader has softened considerably — he even apologized for his previous comments. With that, Vance was able to win Trump’s endorsement and later the Senate seat. His campaign was also supported by a $10 million donation from his former boss, Silicon Valley conservative Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal.
Vance became wildly popular in the US with the 2016 memoir A Provincialist Elegy (Hillbilly Elegy – hillbilly is a derogatory definition, meaning literally “peasant”, originally associated with remote regions in the Appalachians). The book tells about his growing up in poverty in the Appalachians and in the so-called Rust Belt USA. Its main message is that only through their own will can Americans in backward regions improve their lives. “J.D.’s book has become a bestseller because it stands up for the hardworking men and women of our country,” Trump said after announcing his choice of Vance as his running mate.
“JD has had a very successful business career in technology and finance and now, during the campaign, he will be very focused on the people he fought for – American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and etc.,” Donald Trump also assured.
The Republican was not always named James David Vance. He was born James Donald Bowman in Middletown, Ohio. His name actually changed several times as his mother, who suffered from addiction, married five times. His father left the family when Vance was only 6 years old. “It was the saddest thing I ever felt,” he wrote in his memoirs, adding, “Of all the things I hated in my childhood, nothing can compare to the revolving door of father figures”.
Vance’s relationship with his mother is particularly strained. In one of the saddest parts of his memoir, he recounts how, while in the car with his mother, “she accelerated to a hundred miles an hour and told me she was going to hit her and kill us both.” She then slowed down to get to the back seat and beat him, but he fled to a neighbor’s house, who called the police.
Vance was raised primarily by his grandparents, whom he describes in the book as “classic union Democrats.” Only once did his grandfather bow and vote in the presidential election for Ronald Reagan.
After graduating from Middletown High School, Vance joined the U.S. Marines and deployed to Iraq, later attending Ohio State University and Yale Law School. In 2015, two years after graduating, he got a job at Mithril Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm headed by Peter Thiel. He is married to the lawyer Usha Chilukuri – daughter of Indian immigrants, they have three children.
“He is a clone of Trump” – this is how US President Joe Biden described the candidate for vice president. The Democrat is certainly not just about appearances – Vance is a staunch conservative and an outspoken opponent of US aid to Ukraine, abortion and migrants. The Republican is also a supporter of the oil and gas industry, and does not believe that climate change is dangerous for the world.