Ohio senator JD Vance, a 39-year-old former US Marine, has accepted the Republican Party’s nomination as US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s running mate.
Vance’s remarks concluded the three-day Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, following those on the same day made by former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Governor Doug Burgum, Donald Trump Jr. and Vance’s wife Usha Chilukuri Vance, a daughter of Indian immigrants.
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“I officially accept your nomination to be vice president of the United States of America,” Vance said during his speech on Wednesday, July 17.
Trump, who was watching the speech at the venue, stood up to applaud Vance, as reported by CNN.
Should Trump be re-elected in November’s election, Vance would become the youngest vice president in American history.
The 39-year-old Marine Corps veteran and Yale law school graduate worked as a venture capitalist before running for the Ohio senate seat in 2022, backed by deep Silicon Valley pockets. It is the first time he has held public office.
Aside from his railing against US foreign aid at every opportunity, Vance is perhaps best known for his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” which chronicled his youth in the poverty-stricken Appalachian Mountains.
Many believed Vance’s pick as Trump’s running mate aimed to secure white working class votes across the nation, as evidenced by Vance’s humble background, veteran status, and his own speech at the convention.
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“But the American dream that always counted most was not starting a business or becoming a senator … My most important American dream was becoming a good husband and a good dad, and giving my family the things I never had,” Vance said at the convention.
“For decades, that divide between the few with their power and comfort in Washington and the rest of us only widened. From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the great recession, from open border to stagnating wages, the people who governed the country have failed and failed again,” he said to applause from the crowd.
Vance has long opposed further aid to Ukraine, arguing that the US is “stretched too thin” in its resources and should instead focus on other allies.
“It’s not that we don’t admire the courageousness of the Ukrainians. We certainly do.”
“It’s that America is stretched too thin. We do not have the industrial capacity to support a war in Ukraine, a war in Israel, potentially a war in East Asia if the Chinese invade Taiwan, so America has to pick and choose,” Vance told Fox News in April.
However, he admitted in 2022 that he does not care what happens in Ukraine.
“I think that it’s ridiculous that we’re focused on this border in Ukraine,” Vance said in a Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast in 2022. “I gotta be honest with you: I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”
Vance has also called for territorial concessions from Ukraine in exchange for Russia halting its ongoing invasion.
“Any peace settlement is going to require some significant territorial concessions from Ukraine, and you’re gonna have a peace deal, because that's the only way out of the conflict,” Vance told Politico in February.
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