Tag: 2024 Election

Former President Donald J. Trump, the 2024 presidential front-runner, has named U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) his vice-presidential pick. The 39-year-old Vance was elected to the Senate during the 2022 mid-term elections and has quickly become a populist firebrand in the upper legislative chamber. While the Ohio Senator was once a critic of Trump—prior to his election in 2016—Vance has emerged recently as one of the former president’s fiercest defenders.

A HILLBILLY VENTURE CAPITALIST.

Before his run for office, Sen. Vance was best known as a venture capitalist in the tech industry and an author, publishing a moving retrospective on his upbringing in Appalachian Ohio entitled: Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. The memoir was later made into a 2020 film directed by Ron Howard, starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.

Born in 1984 in Middletown, Ohio—nestled between Cincinnati and Dayton—Vance is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former principal with Peter Thiel‘s venture capital firm, Mithril Capital. While Vance initially considered a run for the U.S. Senate in Ohio against the Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown during the 2018 midterm elections, the Ohio Republican decided to wait until 2022. That year, Vance defeated former Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) in a close and hard-fought race for the U.S. Senate.

THE POPULIST PICK.

Earlier this year, The National Pulse held a straw poll of our readership to determine who Trump should name as his running mate. Vance was, by and large, the runaway favorite, securing 32 percent support. This was more than double the support of the runner-ups, Ben Carson and Vivek Ramaswamy, who both polled at 14 percent.

A critic of the unconditional support of the Biden government for Ukraine, Vance has noted that the country suffers a lack of manpower. By throwing billions of dollars in weapons and equipment into Ukraine’s conflict with Russia, the Western nations—including the United States—are only prolonging the war’s death and suffering.

VANCE ON UKRAINE.

“Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide,” Vance wrote in The New York Times, refuting Joe Biden’s allegations that the only obstacle to Ukrainian victory is conservatives’ reluctance to authorize open-ended U.S. taxpayer funding for the war.

“Biden has failed to articulate even basic facts about what Ukraine needs and how this aid will change the reality on the ground,” Vance noted, adding, “$60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor.”

TAKING ON HIGHER ED. 

The Ohio Republican has also called for tighter controls on U.S. universities receiving taxpayer dollars—noting that the far-left capture of academic institutions has resulted in poor education and the waste of American taxpayer dollars. Additionally, Vance’s opposition to a Congressional ban on bump stocks—a modification that can be made to firearms to increase stability and aim—drew an unhinged response from the New York Times in late June.

In choosing Vance as his vice presidential nominee, former President Trump is laying the groundwork for the future of the Republican Party and the national populist movement. A formidable ticket with working-class appeal, Trump-Vance promises to put the very best of American populism against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in November’s election.

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