The only people surprised that Donald Trump chose a white man as his running mate were a couple of senators who had twisted themselves into obsequious knots in an effort to prove they were worthy of being on a ticket with a card-carrying racist.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott upended his life as a “confirmed bachelor” because Trump intimated he was in the running for the number-two slot. Scott found his first girlfriend in decades—she’s white, already has kids and they met at church—and may (or may not) be getting married in August.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, born to undocumented immigrants (who later became naturalized) from Cuba, was willing to give up his Senate seat (two candidates from the same state cannot be on a ticket) for an opportunity to be Trump’s new Mike Pence.
Both men did what Republicans ache for as a party representing white people: told white America what it wants to hear: that there’s no racism in the U.S., but people of color still are dangerous—especially immigrants like, well, Rubio’s parents were.
Scott and Rubio served their function: They debased themselves for Trump and told the GOP that the left is caught up in a “woke” DEI maelstrom that will harm the country if allowed to take full root in the schools, in the workplace, in the courts, in the Oval Office. Vice President Kamala Harris is, according to the GOP, the penultimate DEI hire. Supporting that notion was former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley who told the RNC Tuesday night, “As I’ve been saying, a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris.”
Enter JD Vance, working-class hero, veteran, entrepreneur and quintessential American success story. As his 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis”— a New York Times bestseller, and later a feature film — details, his thrice-married mother struggled with addiction and he and his sister were raised primarily by their grandparents, in poverty. Vance will deliver a prime-time speech at the RNC Wednesday night and delve deeply into that personal history.
Vance broke free of his origins, enlisting in the Marines after high school, then got an undergraduate degree in philosophy. He went on to Yale Law School where he was an editor of The Yale Law Journal.
In 2014, he married Usha Chilukuri, 38, a corporate lawyer who was once a registered Democrat, who he met at Yale. She is the daughter of Indian immigrants and a practicing Hindu. In 2014, she was a law clerk on the D.C. circuit court for now Supreme Court Justice and Trump-appointee Brett Kavanaugh. Usha was also a law clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts during the 2017-2018 term.
JD and Usha are presented as representing the “new” Republican party—young, professional, intellectually oriented. But also connected to the older set, as Usha’s history reveals. And while not all MAGAs are happy with Usha’s ethnicity and race, racist comments have already filtered through social media. The duo presented a clear image of a power couple on the floor of the DNC.
Nevertheless, the people Trump hopes to attract with this choice is the disaffected white working-class in the Rust Belt of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that has seethed with anger over immigration and wage stagnation and what they perceive as a “woke” and DEI takeover of well-paying jobs. That theme constantly harped on by Trump has gained more ground over the past few years since the pandemic put so many working-class people out of work and plunged them into precarious financial circumstances.
There is a chronic misreading of Vance that allowed him to win the Senate seat in 2022—his first run for any office. Vance presents a warm and affable demeanor and is an intellectual—a fact seemingly at odds with his political stances and choices. But Vance’s writings, his commentaries on his decision to convert to Catholicism in 2019—a deeply provocative statement on St. Augustine of Hippo—and his marriage to Usha all point to a vastly different persona than what we have come to expect from the MAGA crowd. MAGA has become synonymous with inchoate toxic rage, bigotry and anti-intellectualism. So those who dismiss Vance as classic MAGA do so at their peril.
At the same time, Vance is the least qualified vice presidential pick in a century. He has no executive history, he’s a Senate newbie, he’s the youngest VP pick in a century and in many respects is himself a DEI hire. For a party that has repeatedly castigated Harris as a DEI hire, when she is a former senator, former Attorney General of the most populous state and former District Attorney of San Francisco, it’s the zenith of hypocrisy.
But Vance has an affability that Trump and his cadre hope will lure more people in those key states Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020—Pennsylvania key among them. All of which makes it far more essential that Democrats vote better—that is, for the Democratic ticket—than they did in 2016.
Another thing Vance brings with him to the ticket is money. Vance has connections to major donors, chief among them Peter Thiel, who donated $15 million to Vance’s Senate run, helping him out-raise Democrat Tim Ryan.
Thiel — co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, and the first outside investor in Facebook — is the wealthiest gay man in the U.S.—an unlikely match-up given Vance’s stunningly anti-LGBTQ+ record and rhetoric. In 2017, Thiel hired Vance at his global investment firm, Mithril Capital. He mentored Vance and propelled his Senate run.
The two men have been linked since Vance was at Yale. CBS News reports, “At Yale Law, Vance attended a talk by Thiel about technological stagnation and the decline of American elites.”
“‘He saw these two trends … as connected,’ Vance later wrote about his first encounter with Thiel in a 2020 blog post in the Catholic journal The Lamp Magazine. ‘If technological innovation were actually driving real prosperity, our elites wouldn’t feel increasingly competitive with one another over a dwindling number of prestigious outcomes.’ Vance called Thiel’s talk ‘the most significant moment’ of his time at Yale.”
Thiel introduced Vance to other mega-donors and Vance has in turn brought millions to the Trump campaign—most recently a $12 million fundraiser. That a gay man is ostensibly fronting the return of Trump to the White House is a brutal irony. But Thiel’s links to Vance add to Vance’s cachet: Vance is a man moving at warp speed to the highest ranks of the party who also has crucial links to the top echelons of the business community—critical for Republicans.
But make no mistake, Vance is also a radical extremist able to smooth-talk the worst aspects of MAGA politics. Vance is opposed to abortion even in cases of rape and incest. Vance has criticized exceptions to abortion laws for rape and incest survivors, saying “two wrongs don’t make a right,” even if the circumstances are “inconvenient.” (It’s important to remember victims of incest are children.) While Trump has claimed recently that he doesn’t support a national abortion ban; Vance does.
Vance proposed a bill that would make gender-affirming care for minors a federal felony and block taxpayer funds from being used for it, saying, “Under no circumstances should doctors be allowed to perform these gruesome, irreversible operations on underage children.”
Vance opposes same-sex marriage, but also says there’s no move to overturn that, now.
Vance supports Israel, but opposes American military aid to Ukraine and says China is the biggest threat to the U.S. And Vance has close ties to the dangerous Project 2025.
While not a full-on climate denialist, Vance has opposed any climate-related legislation and this is yet another area where he will likely fare well with working-class voters who have been led to believe President Biden’s climate initiatives will take away manufacturing jobs in the Rust Belt.
The Inquirer noted July 16 in an op-ed, “Hillbillies don’t need an elegy and the U.S. doesn’t need JD Vance.” Maybe not—but it would be unwise to ignore such a smooth talker whose affability has netted him a very big purse and a future moving at warp speed through the top echelons of first business and now politics. Should Trump win in November, Vance is both a heartbeat away from the presidency and from a 2028 run of his own. Beware that affability—it’s dangerous as hell.