Once a Never Trumper, J. D. Vance Is Trump’s 2024 VP Pick

By Nikos Biggs-Chiropolos and Leah Watson, The Kennedy Beacon

Two days after an attempt on his life, and on day one of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, former president Donald Trump announced 39-year-old J. D. Vance, senator of Ohio, as his running mate. 

This news has the potential to solidify and even boost Trump’s support among young voters and the “forgotten” white, working-class, typically Christian voters that Vance writes about in his best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. 

However, Kennedy’s running mate, attorney and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan (about the same age, 38), who like Vance grew up in harsh financial conditions, has a strong appeal for young voters, too, particularly those concerned with the environment, sustainable agriculture, and health. She served as executive producer for the lauded regenerative agricultural documentary Kiss the Ground and is one of the most vocal advocates for a central issue in Kennedy’s campaign: ending America’s chronic disease crisis. A Shanahan-Vance debate would be fascinating to watch, showcasing American stories that rarely make it to prime time.

In light of Saturday’s shooting, which left one rally attendee and the shooter dead, and two additional attendees in critical condition, Trump is talking about unity, very much along the same lines as Kennedy’s calls to “heal the divide.” But his VP choice is a man who himself has engaged in political and cultural division. 

Vance initially rose to fame when Hillbilly Elegy was published just before Trump’s first presidential victory in 2016. The book was widely viewed at that time as a postmortem analysis of the conditions leading to Trump’s victory, describing economic and moral strife in postindustrial Ohio where he grew up. The book viscerally depicts many of the problems plaguing rural and small-town America – including drug addiction, which Kennedy has covered as part of his own campaign.

The book’s popularity, combined with Vance’s credentials as a former Marine and a Yale Law School graduate, led him to a successful 2022 run in Ohio for the US Senate. Bloomberg reported at the time that Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, along with other GOP megadonors, such as the Mercer family, set up a super PAC that initially supported Vance’s run and gave him the necessary momentum to win. Thiel donated $10 million to fund Vance’s campaign to improve the material interests of the languishing middle class, as Thiel noted in an interview with Mary Harrington of UnHerd.

In the same interview, Thiel claimed to be a supporter of transhumanism and radical developments in biotech. Thiel is also involved with high-tech surveillance technologies that are being used for marketing research, AI training, and more nefarious purposes. In contrast, a  Kennedy-Shanahan administration promises, as Kennedy did in his speech at Freedom Fest on July 12, to use technology to surveil the government, not the people. 

In the past, Vance has been extremely critical of Trump. In a 2016 article entitled “Opioid of the Masses,” Vance wrote that he does not believe Trump will be able to fix America’s social and cultural crisis, saying, “Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” He echoed this criticism while promoting Hillbilly Elegy. Vance told NPR in 2016:

There’s a recognition that Trump isn’t going to solve a lot of these problems, but he’s, at the end of the day, the only person really trying to tap into this frustration.

… my dad is a Trump supporter, and I love my dad, and I always say, “Dad, you know, Trump is not going to actually make any of these problems better.”

According to Business Insider, in 2016, a private Facebook message between Vance and Georgia state representative Josh McLaurin revealed more criticism. In it, Vance wrote, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America's Hitler.” Vance also said, in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose, that he was a “never-Trump guy” and that he knew Trump was going to be a “terrible candidate.” 

Since then, Vance’s position on Trump has changed. In 2022, he received Trump’s endorsement in Ohio’s Republican primary for Senate and retracted his previous opinions on Trump, deleting his controversial tweets. He has praised the “innovative” technology of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, credit for which Trump continues to take without acknowledging its problems. 

Today, Vance does not hesitate to throw damning political blows at Democrats criticizing Trump. In response to the attempted assassination on Saturday, Vance wrote on X that “[Biden’s] rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Nevertheless, Trump himself has called for unity and even advocated for Kennedy receiving Secret Service protection in the days following the attempt on his life. In fact, unlike President Biden, Trump has acknowledged Kennedy as a serious candidate, even going so far as to say he had “no problem” including him in CNN’s presidential debate. 

Will a Trump-Vance presidency go beyond trying typical Republican strategies to improve the economy at a time when the US needs something far more complex? Do they consider the impacts of our food and medical systems on our health and our economy, or care one whit about the culture of corporate capture – how large corporations influence the policies of the federal agencies that are supposed to regulate them.

In an opinion piece in The Hill last year, Kennedy wrote: 

The health of our nation has succumbed over the last two generations to an epidemic of chronic illness. Could that have anything to do with the fact that Big Pharma effectively runs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — the agency Anthony Fauci led for four decades?

Such ideas contrast sharply with both the failed policies of the Democrats within the Biden administration and anything foreseeable in a Trump-Vance White House.