J.D. Vance, from downgraded America to Trump's running mate

Photo: Mark Peterson Getty Images via Agence France-Presse Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance (center) watches as Donald Trump (foreground, left) speaks to the media during the ex-president's trial at the Manhattan District Court in New York, on May 13.

Frankie Taggart – Agence France-Presse in Milwaukee

Published at 3:30 p.m.

• United States

Ex-critic turned fervent defender of Donald Trump, J.D. Vance was chosen as his running mate by the former Republican president, an appointment which confirms the whirlwind and atypical career of this voice of declassified America.

A former soldier and bestselling author, this 39-year-old elected official from Ohio with an eclectic profile has never stopped defending the causes dear to the former Republican president in the American Congress , such as fighting immigration and defending economic protectionism.

“I have a good memory. If you politically fight Trump and the candidates he supports today, do not come and ask me for my help in a year to pass your law or the projects that are close to your heart,” warned the senator at the beginning of the year round face, impeccable locks and well-groomed beard.

Comments mocked by his opponents, who did not fail to highlight the irony of the situation: before defending Donald Trump tooth and nail, J.D. Vance was not short of criticism of the billionaire.< /p>

Once calling himself a “guy who will never be pro-Trump,” he has also called the mogul “idiot” and “harmful” in the past, even worrying that he is “the Hitler of America.”

After the assassination attempt on the former president on Saturday, the Republican pointed the finger ” the Biden campaign” which portrayed Donald Trump as “an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs.”

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“This rhetoric directly led to the attempt to assassination of President Trump,” he accused.

Before joining Washington, J.D. Vance had an atypical career path, to say the least. He grew up in a modest single-parent family in the “Rust Belt”, a region in the northeastern United States deeply marked by industrial decline, then joined the army. He then studied law at one of the most prestigious universities in the country before making a career in Silicon Valley.

But it's a book, < i>Hillbilly Elegy, published in 2016 which made him known. In this autobiographical story that became a bestseller adapted for the cinema, J.D. Vance recounts his chaotic childhood in a white America ravaged by unemployment and addictions, and gives voice to a disillusioned and declassed working population, full of resentments.

Faith

It was only later that he became closer to the Trumpist movement. His book attracted the attention of the former president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with whom he became a close friend. The latter is said to have played a major role in his nomination as vice president.

J.D. Vance adopted Donald Trump's major themes, as well as his combative tone and populist discourse, and obtained the billionaire's support in his campaign for the Senate in 2022.

He who puts forward his Christian faith as his private and political compass, imposes himself in Congress as a fierce defender of the Republican tycoon, targeted by several criminal and civil proceedings.

“The Biden administration wants to see Trump die in prison and ruin his family. “This is the greatest attack on democracy ever,” he slammed on X in March.

And he continued: “If you are too cowardly to denounce it, you are not ready for this moment in American politics.”

New Right

This father of three children has become a popular figure on television sets, on which he energetically and loyally defends the Republican candidate for the November presidential election.

If he is perfectly aligned with the migratory and economic positions of his boss, J.D. Vance however appears more to the right on other issues, such as abortion, where he has spoken out against exceptions to the bans, even in cases of rape or 'incest.

J.D. Vance has even become the leading figure of the “New Right” movement, young conservatives who are trying to give a more radical direction to Donald Trump's isolationist and anti-immigration movement, Politico wrote in March.

“Unlike Trump's more conventional Republican supporters, Vance's New Right cohort sees Trump as only the first step in a broader populist-nationalist revolution that is already reshaping the American right,” could – it reads.

“And, if they get their way, it will soon reshape America as a whole. »