Unlock the US Election Countdown newsletter for free
The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, came to prominence in 2016 with the publication of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which details his upbringing in a working-class family surrounded by substance abuse.
The 39-year-old senator for Ohio has since undergone a dramatic shift in his political views to align with Trump, as well as becoming a prominent opponent of US military aid to Ukraine.
Here are some of Vance’s ideas in his own words:
On Trump
“What an honour it is to run alongside President Donald J Trump. He delivered peace and prosperity once, and with your help, he’ll do it again.” — X, July 16 2024
“Like a lot of other elite conservatives and elite liberals, I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration.” — New York Times, June 2024
“The elite Republican view of why people voted for Donald Trump is that Trump voters are stupid. I think the elite Democratic view is that Trump people were bigoted and immoral. And that’s probably still very much reflected in popular culture.” — Lunch with the FT, February 2018
“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.” — Said to former law school roommate Josh McLaurin in 2016, according to screenshots shared by McLaurin
On the assassination attempt against Trump
“Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” — X, July 14 2024
On the 2020 election
“I think the election was stolen from Trump.” — Said during a TV debate in April 2022
“If I had been vice-president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the US Congress should have fought over it from there. That is the legitimate way to deal with an election that a lot of folks, including me, think had a lot of problems in 2020.” — Said on ABC News in February 2024, after he was asked if he would have sought to block the certification of the election results as then vice-president Mike Pence refused to do
On the January 6 Capitol rioters
“These people are political prisoners, and their captivity is an assault on democracy.” — X, January 2022
On immigration
“Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racists for wanting to build Trump’s wall . . . Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.” — April 2022 campaign ad written by Vance
“If you cannot hire illegal migrants to staff your hotels, then you have to go to one of the 7mn prime-age American men who are out of the labour force and find some way to re-engage them.” — NYT, June 2024
On his upbringing
“Psychologists call it ‘learned helplessness’ when a person believes, as I did during my youth, that the choices I made had no effect on the outcomes in my life.” — From his memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, 2016
“Social mobility isn’t just about money and economics, it’s about a lifestyle change. The wealthy and the powerful aren’t just wealthy and powerful; they follow a different set of norms and mores. When you go from working-class to professional-class, almost everything about your old life becomes unfashionable at best or unhealthy at worst.” — ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, 2016
On the UK
“I was talking about, you know, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it’s Iran, you know, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK, since Labour just took over.” — Said at the National Conservatism Conference, July 10 2024
On Ukraine
“There is frankly no good reason that aid from the US should be needed. Europe is made up of many great nations with productive economies. They ought to have the capacity to handle the conflict, but over decades they have become far too weak. America has been asked to fill the void at tremendous expense to its own citizens.” — FT opinion piece, February 2024
On abortion
“It’s not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it’s whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society.” — Spectrum News podcast, September 2021
On trade tariffs
“We need to apply some broad-based tariffs, especially on goods coming in from China and not just solar panels and EV stuff. We need to protect American industries from all of the competition.” — CBS News, May 2024
