Donald Trump’s pick for Vice President, JD Vance, served our nation in the Iraq War as a U.S. Marine, then graduated from The Ohio State University and Yale Law School. After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served as a military journalist, where he wrote articles and took photos. He wrote a bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, which was turned into a Netflix movie.
Democratic grandparents raised him in Middletown, Ohio after the separation of his mother and stepfather, Bev Vance and Bob Hamel. The divorce of Bev and Bob occurred once Bev’s drug addiction became too much to handle, and JD moved in with his grandparents. Vance wrote in his book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ that his grandparents are “without question or qualification, the best things that ever happened to me.”
James David Vance wasn’t always his name. When Bev and Bob first married, Bev changed JD’s name from James Donald Bowman to James David Hamel. After the divorce, JD changed his last name back to Vance.
Vance released his best-selling memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ and became a New York Times Best-Selling Author. The book talks about what it was like growing up in a small town in Ohio and how he dealt with his drug-addicted mother who is now 10 years sober. His book was later adapted into a movie in 2020, just 4 short years after the book was published.
After much hype, Donald Trump revealed Vance as his running mate on July 15th, 2024. Some Democrats have criticized the choice, considering JD Vance’s history of deeply criticizing Trump around the time of the 2016 debate. According to PBS News, Vance stated that he was always, “back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical *-**** like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
Vance says he’s had a genuine change of heart about Trump. When his Hitler comment was first reported, in 2022, a spokesperson did not dispute it, but said it no longer represented his views.
Donald Trump isn’t the only candidate in this race that JD Vance has a history of criticizing. In 2021 Vance commented that Kamala Harris and the Democratic party were just “a bunch of childless cat ladies miserable at their own lives.” These comments resurfaced just days after Trump revealed Vance as his running mate. The former president then came to Vance’s defense in an interview with Fox News saying that Vance doesn’t put people who have children above others, Vance just “likes families.”
“I criticized Kamala Harris for being part of a set of ideas that exists in American leadership that is anti-family. I never, Dana, criticized people for not having kids. I criticized people for being anti-child.” Vance said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.
Vance stands up for family and wants to let the states decide on their abortion plans, and he aspires to implement a new policy to “make it easier for families to start in the first place.” He goes on to say that he wants to bring down housing costs and provide more options for mothers so they can raise their kids in a thriving country.
He has said that if he had been in Mike Pence’s shoes in 2021, he would not have certified the results of the 2020 election: “If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” he said in February.
