Trump taps former critic JD Vance as running mate: What it means - by Emily Maitlis
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He was once a 'Never Trumper', now he's Donald Trump's pick for Vice President. Who is the man running alongside the former president, and why did Trump choose him? Emily Maitlis explains.
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The point about being a Never Trump guy, you would think, is that he is ‘Never’ Trump.
But last night suddenly, he was. JD Vance - 39 year old first term senator - was named the lucky guy on the Trump golden ticket. If the duo win come November's election, he will become the first millennial VP in history - and the first bearded one for a hundred years.
He’s a Yale educated lawyer - two for the price of one for Trump, as the late night comedy shows have put it. And just a few years back he was explaining why Trump might be ‘America’s Hitler’. He called him noxious and referred to him as cultural heroin. He wanted better for the working class white voters than a pull towards Trump’s empty populism.
He wrote candidly and movingly about his childhood of abuse and privation in a best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. It became a blueprint of sorts for how to improve the lives of ordinary Americans from the grassroots up.
He was, as I say, the man who swore blind he was a “never Trumper’.
But power is perhaps the cultural heroin he was originally talking about. And he’s now addicted to the point where he’s happy to admit his past comments were wrong. He’s had the conversion. And he’s now on the ticket.
JD Vance is a hardline pro lifer, anti abortion, anti the use of IVF, anti victims of domestic violence leaving their marriages. There’s a lot of anti woman right there before you even drill down.
On foreign policy, it’s even starker. He is against America supporting Ukraine. He thinks a settlement should be achieved with Putin. And he’s referred to the UK as an ‘Islamist nation’ - as alarmist as it is wrong. Spare a thought for PM Starmer working out his relationship with any future White House after that one.
Biden’s team is calling JD Vance a Trump clone. And maybe there is something significant rather than critical in this. He has proved he can mould himself around whatever the former president wants. And right now Trump wants loyalty. Someone in his image - but half his age.
The pick of Vance for running mate tells us two things about Trump’s mindset.
Firstly that he doesn’t believe the democrats will swap out Biden. Or he’d be thinking more carefully, more strategically about how to get women voters onside against Kamala Harris and a strong pro choice message on abortion.
The second, is that Donald likes clans. We’ve seen this in the way he uses his family, his sons, the most loyal sergeants he has. Right now, the former president is thinking about not just this election but the next. The Maga movement is complete if it remains in Trump’s indelible image for long after he’s gone.
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