16 july 2024 Punjab Khabarnama : Once a harsh critic of the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — even calling him “America’s Hitler” and a “moral disaster” — his running mate and Ohio senator JD Vance will be further elevating the former president’s populist agenda.
“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 said on his Truth Social platform.
With Vance being named the running mate, his profile will be further elevated despite his pointed criticism of Trump for years. Shortly after he was selected at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, delegates celebrating the party’s ticket were writing Vance’s name onto Trump signs using markers.
According to CNN, the senator’s appeal to working-class voters was viewed as essential when it comes to winning the key battleground states in November. Sources said his upbringing in a poor Rust Belt town in Ohio and his wife Usha Chilukuri — the child of Indian immigrants — could appeal to minority voters.
Vance, 39, is a venture capitalist and the author of the best-selling memoir Hillbilly Elegy. He was elected to the Senate in 2022 after receiving a boost from Trump in a contentious Republican primary.
But, flashback to six years ago, he was a key voice in the ‘Never Trump’ movement during the 2016 election and was liking social media posts that harshly criticised Trump, presenting a well-documented history of opposing him privately as well as publicly.
In public, he has agreed with those calling Trump a “total fraud” and said he was “reprehensible”. In private, he once told a friend: “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.”
In 2016 and 2017, Vance called him “cultural heroin” and “just another opioid” for Middle America. “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologise for this man. Lord help us,” he said in a social media post after the Access Hollywood tape was published in 2016.