Milwaukee – Sen. J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024, struck a populist tone when he formally accepted the Republican Party’s vice presidential nomination Wednesday night, vowing to be a vice president who “never forgets” where he came from.
Vance, who delivered his acceptance speech two days after Trump selected the 39-year-old Ohio senator as his running mate, said the Republican convention was a “celebration of the America that was and, by the grace of God, will soon be again.”
“This is a reminder of our sacred obligation to defend the American experiment and to choose a new path for our children and grandchildren,” he added.
Vance said that over the next four years, the Republican Party will be “united in love of our country and committed to free speech and the free exchange of ideas,” and looked fondly back to the small town where he grew up, “where people spoke their minds.”
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Republican vice presidential nominee Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) speaks onstage during the third day of the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 17, 2024. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Vance also pointed to Biden’s decades-long political career, saying, “When I was a sophomore in high school, a politician named Joe Biden shaves off China and destroys more good, middle-class American manufacturing jobs.”
“When I was a high school senior, Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq,” he added, “and in the process, jobs were shipped overseas and our children were sent to war in small towns like mys in Ohio, and next door in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and every state in the country.”
Vance also addressed housing and the economy in his speech, declaring, “Joe Biden’s inflation crisis is really a house price crisis.”
“Many of the people I grew up with can’t afford to spend more on groceries, gas and rent, and Joe Biden’s economic policies have given them just that,” he said.
Vance, the vice presidential nominee and heir apparent to the MAGA movement, made the comments in a speech to some 2,400 delegates and thousands of attendees at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Arena, as well as millions of Americans watching the Republican convention at home.
“Let’s talk about the future. President Trump’s vision is very simple, but it’s very powerful: No more catering to Wall Street, my friends. We’re going to work for workers,” he said.
“No more importing foreign labor. We’re going to fight for the American people and their good jobs and good wages,” he continued. “No more buying energy from countries that hate us. We’re going to get our energy from American workers in Pennsylvania, in Ohio and across the country.”
The convention began just two days after the former president survived an assassination attempt at a Trump rally in western Pennsylvania in which a spectator and a gunman were killed.
Republican Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio speaks onstage during the third day of the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 17, 2024. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
““I want every American to watch the video of the would-be assassin coming within a quarter of an inch of taking his life, think about the lies they told about Donald Trump, and then look at the picture of him with his fist raised and defiant. When Trump stood up in that field in Pennsylvania, every American stood with him,” Vance said Wednesday.
“What did he call us to do for our country? To fight. To fight for America. Even when he was in the most dangerous situation, our hearts were with him,” he added. “His instinct was for us, for our country, to call us back to being people who ask for higher, for greater things, asking again what our country asks of us.”
“I’m going to go out there tonight and I’m going to get the crowd going,” Vance, a former venture capitalist who wrote a best-selling autobiography, “Hillbilly Elegy,” before running for office, said at the Financial Events House before a prime-time speech at the convention.
And judging by the reaction of party loyalists and MAGA supporters in the arena, Vance succeeded.
During his speech Wednesday night, Vance paid tribute to his mother, Beverly Akins, in a moving eulogy.
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“This is about single moms like me who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up,” Vance said, with her mother watching from the former Trump friend and family seat. “I’m proud to have my mom here with me tonight. I’ve been sober for 10 years. I love you, Mom.”
Vance stepped aside to greet his mother as the crowd chanted, “JD’s mom! JD’s mom!”
Trump announced his highly anticipated and high-stakes running mate as the Republican convention kicked off in the Midwestern battleground state of Wisconsin’s largest city. He will now share a slate with one of his top Senate allies and a one-time Trump critic who has transformed into a leading America First advocate and MAGA champion.
The former president and Vance teamed up Monday and Tuesday nights in the family box on the Republican Convention floor.
Vance’s story began with him growing up in a working-class family in a small town in southwest Ohio: His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother struggled with drug and alcohol abuse for years, so Vance was raised by his maternal grandparents.
Sen. J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha Chirukuri Vance, watch as he is nominated for vice president during the first day of the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
After graduating from high school, Vance enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, serving in Iraq, before graduating from Ohio State University and earning a law degree from Yale University.
Vance, who lives in Cincinnati, moved to San Francisco after law school and worked as a principal at a venture capital firm owned by a billionaire venture capitalist. Peter Thiel, She later became a major donor to Vance’s winning campaign for the 2022 Senate election.
Before his Senate run, Vance gained national attention for his book “Hillbilly Elegy,” a New York Times best-seller and later adapted into a Netflix film that told the story of his upbringing in a struggling steel town and his roots in Appalachian Kentucky. The story focused on the everyday struggles and values of many working-class Americans who came to support Trump’s policies.
Vance was a vocal critic of former President Trump when he first ran for president in 2016.
But Vance ultimately supported Trump, praising the former president’s tenure in the White House and, in a 2021 Fox News interview, apologizing for his previous criticism of Trump.
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Trump’s endorsement of Vance just days before the 2022 Republican Senate primary gave him a victory in what is expected to be a crowded and fiercely contested race.
“I think the American people are going to want to hear the story of J.D. overcoming adversity as a young man, serving his country in uniform as a Marine in Iraq, then becoming a business leader and now a successful elected leader,” Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, a fellow military veteran, told Fox News on Tuesday.
Former President Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Senator J.D. Vance on the first day of the Republican National Convention at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA on July 15, 2024. (Reuters/Mike Seeger)
In a preview of things to come, Democrats were quick to criticize Vance on Monday.
President Biden told reporters that Vance “is a Trump clone on many issues.” Vice President Kamala Harris, in a campaign video released Wednesday, accused Vance of being “only loyal to Trump, not to our country.”
And just hours before Vance’s speech, Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz, a key Biden campaign surrogate, called Trump’s running mate “the perfect Frankenstein’s monster.”
Fox News’ Alexis McAdams contributed to this report.
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