JD Vance, Trump pick for vice president was once his critic. What you should know about him

On the first day of the Republican National Convention, Ohio Senator JD Vance received an official ticket for the 2024 Presidential elections as former US President Donald Trump's running mate. If the current polls convert to reality, Vance will be the next Vice President of the United States.

Eight years ago, 39-year-old freshman senator from Ohio, said he feared Trump could become “America’s Hitler”. Vance is married to Usha Chilukuri, a corporate litigator based in San Francisco, whose parents are from India. During their wedding in Kentucky in 2014, they also had a separate ceremony where they were blessed by a Hindu pundit, as reported by The New York Times.

Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, and joined the US Marines after high school, serving as a combat journalist and public relations officer during the Iraq War.

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After his military service, he completed a degree in political science and philosophy at Ohio State University. He then studied law at Yale Law School, where he was an editor for the Yale Law Journal.

Upon graduating from Yale in 2013, he practiced law briefly before moving to San Francisco to work as a venture capitalist, including a role at Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital.

Vance gained fame with his 2016 best-seller, Hillbilly Elegy. Released the same year Trump first took office, the book was seen as an insightful look into rural America, which contributed to Trump's rise.

The New York Times described Hillbilly Elegy as "a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has influenced the politics of rebellion, notably Donald J. Trump’s rise." A film adaptation of the book came out in 2020.

At that time, Vance was a vocal critic of Trump. In an October 2016 interview, Vance cakled himself "Never Trump guy”. In a July 2016 op-ed for The Atlantic, he argued that Trump’s promises were like “cultural heroin,” offering temporary relief but failing to address deeper issues.

Vance’s views on Trump are notably different now. He reportedly voted for Trump in 2020 and, with Trump’s endorsement, won his first Senate seat in 2022.

According to The NYT, Vance has "explained his ideological shifts as a result of a twofold intellectual awakening,it turned out that Donald Trump wasn’t as bad as Vance had thought, and that American liberals were much worse."

In a June interview with The NYT, Vance said,“I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration.”

Today, Vance is a staunch defender of Trump and aligns with many of his views. He has also become "the standard-bearer of the ‘New Right’, a loose movement of young conservatives aiming to steer the Republican Party towards a more populist, nationalist, and culturally conservative stance," according to Politico.

In a post on Truth Social announcing the appointment, Trump said that Vance “will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond.” Several of these Midwestern states are likely to play a critical role in November’s election.

(With inputs from agencies)