J.D. Vance During the 2016 Republican National Convention: The Case for a Stop, Not for the End of the Trump Era

Former President Donald Trump has announced Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. Trump is expected to accept the Republican nomination on Thursday. If he wins the election, he would serve as vice president. Peter Thiel, a tech investor, has ties to the well-connected Vance.

The selection came on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and just a few days after Trump survived an attempted assassination in Pennsylvania. Trump said on Truth Social that a bullet pierced the upper part of his ear, and law enforcement confirmed one spectator died during the incident and two were critically injured. The FBI has identified the man killed by the Secret Service as a 20-year-old from Pennsylvania.

After his close call, Trump called for unity, though he quickly returned to more familiar rhetoric railing against what he called legal “Witch Hunts” against him by “the Democrat Justice Department.”

Vance has appeared on the campaign trail in support of Trump. In the hours following the Trump rally shooting, Vance posted on X saying, “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric caused the attempted assassination of President Trump.

In his Truth Social post announcing his selection, Trump noted that Vance served in the Marine Corps, and graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He also referenced Vance’s famous book, Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about his family and hometown of Middletown, Ohio, that was later made into a film. Trump also pointed to Vance’s “very successful business career in Technology and Finance” and said during the campaign, he’d be focused on “the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond….”