Trump taps JD Vance, who once called him ‘America’s Hitler,’ as vice president pick

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — Presumptive Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump said Monday that Ohio Senator JD Vance will be his vice presidential pick.

Posting to his Truth Social Network, 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 JD Vance of the Great State of Ohio.”

Trump, 78, announced his pick on the first day of the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee, an extravaganza turbocharged by the attempted assassination of the former president.

Seen as the standard-bearer for a new kind of populism that has come to the fore under Trump, 39-year-old Vance embraces the ex-president’s isolationist, anti-immigration America First movement.

One of the least experienced VP picks in modern history, the one-term senator is further to the right than the ex-president on many issues, including abortion, where he embraces calls for federal legislation.

He made his name with the 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” a best-selling account of his Appalachian family and modest Rust Belt upbringing, which gave a voice to rural, working-class resentment in left-behind America.

Critics have pointed to numerous awkward remarks one-time “Never Trump guy” Vance has made in the past, including calling the billionaire an “idiot,” “noxious” and “reprehensible,” and suggesting he was “America’s Hitler.”

“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 wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016.

When his Hitler comment was first reported, in 2022, a spokesperson did not dispute it, but said it no longer represented Vance’s views.

Vance reinvented himself as a Trump supporter in recent years and ultimately won the ex-president’s key endorsement in the 2022 Ohio Senate race.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum were both informed that they each were not Trump’s pick, according to people familiar with their conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity before the formal announcement.

Trump had been said to have narrowed his list to three candidates, Vance, Burgum and Rubio, all of whom would bring different benefits and vulnerabilities.

Vance is perhaps most ideologically aligned with the former president and would energize his base.

Burgum would have brought business acumen and a steady hand, though Trump has noted his signing of a highly restrictive abortion law could be a drawback.

Rubio is seen in the party as a respected voice on policy, and his background — as the son of Cuban immigrants and a Spanish speaker — could have helped Trump appeal to Latino voters. He could also have helped draw more moderate and establishment-minded voters and donors turned off by Trump’s coarse rhetoric. But Rubio’s candidacy is complicated by the fact that he lives in Florida, like Trump, and would likely need to move.

Conversations in the last 10 days between Rubio and Trump’s campaign had focused on concerns about the residency issue and how they would work around both men residing in the same state, according to a person familiar with the private talks who insisted on anonymity to discuss them.

The Trump campaign wanted to make sure that it could be 100 percent sure that there would not be a protracted legal battle over the issue, and Rubio was unwilling to uproot his family, the person said.

After Saturday’s shooting, Trump’s choice carries considerably more gravity. If a bullet had struck just a little bit to the right, Trump likely would have been killed or seriously injured.

The close call puts in stark relief the significance of a position that is a heartbeat away from the presidency. Trump has repeatedly claimed that choosing someone who was qualified to take over as commander in chief was his top consideration for the role.

“You need somebody that can be good just in case, that horrible ‘just in case,'” he said, in an interview with “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show” in May.

In an interview with Fox News’s Harris Faulkner, taped hours before the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally, Trump was asked about how close he was to his VP pick and whether his decision-making would change if US President Joe Biden steps aside.

“It’s a very important position especially if something bad should happen,” Trump said. “That’s the most important, if something bad should happen.”

He’s talked about ‘The Apprentice’ — but for VP

Before the shooting, Trump had made clear that he wanted to dramatically reveal his pick at the convention, which he said would make it more “interesting” and “exciting.”

“It’s like a highly sophisticated version of ‘The Apprentice,'” he quipped in a radio interview last week, referring to the show he once hosted that featured him firing contestants on camera.

Trump and convention organizers had said the RNC’s schedule will go on as planned despite the shooting, with Trump writing on his social media site that he could not “allow a ‘shooter,’ or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else.”

“In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win,” he wrote.

He held meetings in the days before the shooting with the top contenders. All had submitted material, including bios and photographs, to convention organizers that could have been used to prepare content if they had been picked, according to people familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the secretive process.

The private meetings with Vance, Rubio and Burgum were first reported by ABC News.

Nothing was offered during the meetings, one of the people said.

Trump waiting until the convention to choose a running mate is later than usual for recent cycles, but is hardly unprecedented.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan negotiated with former president Gerald Ford for hours during the Republican convention in Detroit, and settled on his former primary rival George HW Bush when those discussions collapsed. Reagan cut it so close that his decision came less than 24 hours before he formally accepted the GOP nomination.

Bush himself waited until the 1988 Republican convention in New Orleans before shocking many attendees — as well as some of the then-vice president’s own top advisers — by picking little-known Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle to be his No. 2, rather than a more established running mate.

Since then, though, the tradition has been to pick a running mate shortly before the candidate’s party’s convention opens.

In 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain, looking for a way to reset his race against Democrat Barack Obama, picked little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin shortly before the Republican convention opened in Minnesota. He got a bump in the polls that did not last.

Biden, a Democrat, tapped then-California Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate six days before his party opened its convention, which was held mostly virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic. And Trump chose Indiana Gov. Mike Pence in the days before the 2016 Republican convention opened in Cleveland.