July 15, 2024
Who is JD Vance?
As you know former President Trump just selected Vance as his pick for vice president.
JD Vance of course is currently serving as a United States Senator for Ohio. He is a 39-year-old conservative Republican. He was first elected to office in 2022. Prior to that – he had no history in politics.
He was born and raised in Ohio, in a home he described as both “middle class” and “turbulent.” He served as a united states marine attended The Ohio State University for his undergraduate degree and then earned a law degree from Yale law school. He went on to work in the tech industry in San Francisco as a venture capitalist.
In 2016 he wrote a book called Hillbilly Elegy: a memoir of a family and culture in crisis. The book is based on his life and upbringing rooted in his family’s Appalachian values. Vance himself says the book is a powerful account of growing up in a poor rust belt town. The book offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class which he says is “slowly disintegrating”. That book ultimately became a New York times best seller. And was made into a Netflix film directed by Ron Howard.
As for his politics, JD Vance is known as populist who also believes the 2020 election was stolen from trump. If you look at a list of bills he’s introduced since taking office you can see what he stands for. Important to note – none of these have been passed but you can see what lawmakers are about by the bills the try and get passed. He introduced the English Language Unity Act which establishes English as the official language of the united states and requires all candidates for citizenship to be able to read and write English and the Freedom to Breathe Act which would prohibit airlines, public transit operators or schools from mandating masks. He also introduced bills that would ban gender affirming care for minors and a bill to eliminate diversity programs in the federal government. But he has also introduced bipartisan legislation including the East Palestine Health Impact Monitoring Act to address the potential impacts of that train derailment in his home state of Ohio.
Now – it is also true that back in 2016, when he worked as a pundit for CNN JD Vance used his book to explain why then candidate trump was popular with white rural voters. He also identified himself as a “never Trumper” and said some pretty harsh things about Donald Trump. I actually can’t repeat them here because it’ll probably get taken down for community guidelines. Of course when he turned to politics to run in 2022, he changed his tune and Trump actually endorsed him.
Lastly – after the attempt on Trump’s life over the weekend – as you know – trump himself called for unity. But in a post hours after the incident Vance said the Biden campaign was “directly” responsible because of the “rhetoric” used by the Democrats.
