JD Vance officially accepted the Republican Party nomination for the office of the Vice President of the United States. A rising star in the party, at 39 years of age, he walked into prime-time limelight with his first speech at RNC. He wasted no time targeting U.S President Joe Biden even as he showered praise on Donald Trump.
In his first speech after accepting the RNC nomination, Vance drew on his Ohio roots to attack ‘career politicians’. “I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts,” said JD Vance, in Milwaukee. “But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”
JD VANCE TARGETS JOE BIDEN IN HIS SPEECH
“When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico. When I was a sophomore in high school, that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good American middle-class manufacturing jobs.
When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.
And at each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan, in other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war.”
‘WE’RE DONE CATERING TO WALL STREET’
Rooting for the forgotten, working class America, Vance also said, “President Trump’s vision is so simple and yet so powerful,” he said. “We’re done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man.”
He talked about how politicians had failed Americans time and again, whether it was on housing, the financial crisis, immigration, border security or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“President Trump represents America’s last best hope to restore what — if lost — may never be found again,” said Vance, adding, Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I’ve been alive.
For half-a-century, he’s been the champion of every major policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer. We’re going to build factories again, put people to work making real products for American families, made with the hands of American workers.
And before he ended his speech, he made a promise, “I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”
THE RISE OF JD VANCE
Vance’s rise has been meteoric. He took public office for the first time just two years ago. He once called Donald Trump an ‘idiot’ and told his Yale classmate that Donald Trump was America’s Hitler. But he’s had a massive change of heart since 2016, when he was a staunch critic of Trump to now being his biggest defender.
He first shot into the spotlight with his bestseller ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, based on his own struggles growing up in Ohio with a drug addict mother and being raised by his maternal grandparents. It was turned into a movie by Ron Howard in 2020.
He was a Marine and served in Iraq. He studied law at Yale university, where he met his wife, Usha Chilukuri. They got married in 2014 and have three children. He went on to become a venture capitalist before running for senator in 2022.
He won a hard-fought primary thanks to an endorsement from Donald Trump. By then, his views on Donald Trump too had completely changed.
