BREAKING: Donald Trump picks JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate
LifeSiteNews) — Just two days after surviving an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally, Donald Trump announced that he has selected U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio to be his vice presidential running mate.
Making the announcement on his own social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday, Trump said:
After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country. J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the Campaign, 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….
Trump made the announcement on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, at which he was formally ratified as the party’s candidate for the 2024 presidential election. The announcement comes on the heels of his attempted assassination at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, when suspected shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire on the former president while he was speaking on stage, hitting Trump in the ear and wounding others in the crowd. Tragically, one man died of his injuries, while law enforcement shot and killed Crooks.
Vance has long been considered a front-runner candidate as Trump’s running mate. He first came to prominence with his book, and subsequent Netflix movie, Hillbilly Elegy. It tells the story of how he overcame a broken home and poverty in Ohio to obtain a Yale law degree and serve his country in the Marines.
First elected to the Senate in November 2022, Vance declared on the campaign trail that he was “100 percent” pro-life. However, Vance, a self-professed Catholic, is known to be a supporter of “exceptions” in abortion law. In a statement after the passage of Ohio’s pro-abortion constitutional amendment last November, Vance wrote:
[A]s Donald Trump has said, ‘you’ve got to have the exceptions.’ I am as pro life as anyone, and I want to save as many babies as possible. This is not about moral legitimacy but political reality. I’ve seen dozens of good polls on the abortion question in the last few months, many of them done in Ohio. Give people a choice between abortion restrictions very early in pregnancy with exceptions, or the pro choice position, and the pro life view has a fighting chance. Give people a heartbeat bill with no exceptions and it loses 65-35. (The reason we didn’t lose 65-35 last night is that some people who hate ‘no exceptions’ restrictions will still refuse to vote for things like Issue 1).
Vance also seems to have distanced himself from the Church’s fully pro-life position by recently saying that he supports access to abortion pills, aligning himself more closely with Trump on the critical issue.
“On the question of the abortion pill, what’s so many of us have said … the Supreme Court made a decision saying that the American people should have access to that medication, Donald Trump has supported that opinion, I support that opinion,” Vance said, discussing the recent FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine decision.
Vance appeared to not understand the Supreme Court decision – the court did not rule that the “American people should have access to that medication.” Rather, the court ruled that the plaintiffs in the case, pro-life medical professionals, did not have standing to sue to stop the Biden administration’s loosening of regulations.
Vance is also aligned closely to Trump’s foreign policy views, including criticizing endless foreign wars and intervention in Ukraine.
The Catholic convert told Crisis in 2021 he supports a complete ban on pornography. “I think the combination of porn, abortion have basically created a lonely, isolated generation that isn’t getting married, they’re not having families, and they’re actually not even totally sure how to interact with each other,” LifeSiteNews previously reported.
However, Vance is also closely tied to Peter Thiel, a libertarian Republican donor who is “married” to a man.
Vance entered the Senate in January 2023, so he did not have a chance to vote on the misnamed “Respect for Marriage Act,” which codified Obergefell and requires all 50 states to recognize same-sex “marriages.” He said he would have voted against the law but does not want to try to reverse the Supreme Court decision.
“I’ve come out against this bill, and I don’t think it’s actually about gay marriage or same-sex marriage or same-sex equality,” Vance said. “Look, gay marriage is the law of the land of this country and I’m not trying to do anything to change that.”