Trump's MAGA legacy and now vice president-elect – DW – November 6, 2024

Following Donald Trump's victory in the US elections, JD Vance is officially Trump's successor as vice president-elect.

When he was elected as Donald Trump's running mate in July, JD Vance's rise through the Republican ranks was confirmed. Many experts see him as the successor to Trump's “Make America Great Again” movement and the favorite to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2028.

While Trump's brash brand of politics is a natural extension of the larger-than-life persona he has cultivated over four decades in the public eye, Vance, a 40-year-old father of three, comes from a different side of America, his own side at that The rise to the vice presidency was unconventional by Republican standards.

Born James David Bowman, Vance was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents – whose last name he later adopted – in a steel-producing town in Ohio, while his mother struggled with drug and alcohol use.

After graduating from high school, Vance joined the U.S. Marines and served for four years, including a six-month deployment to Iraq as a military journalist in 2005. After leaving the Marines, he graduated from Ohio State University and Yale Law School. He later transitioned from law to technology investing in California, where he founded his own venture capital firm.

It was also at Yale that he met his wife, Usha Chilukuri. The couple married in 2014 and have two sons and a daughter.

“Never Trumper” becomes a MAGA senator

In May 2016, Vance entered the public eye with the publication of his acclaimed “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” The bestseller covered Vance's upbringing in the Appalachian Mountains and was considered a glimpse into the lives of people in the declining Rust Belt industrial region just months before Trump came to power in 2016 with narrow victories in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

In an interview on NPR in 2016, Vance said he couldn't “stand” Trump and would consider voting for Hillary Clinton, but also suggested, somewhat prophetically, that the Trump phenomenon was fueled by the support of white, working-class voters are promoted that “are”. I'm not necessarily economically destitute, but I feel somewhat culturally isolated and very pessimistic about the future. This is one of the biggest indicators of whether someone will support Donald Trump.

One of those who heaped praise on the book was PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The New York Times reported in July that Thiel — a longtime mentor of Vance and one of the first high-profile Silicon Valley figures to endorse Trump in 2016 — brokered an initial meeting between the former president and his future vice president in 2021.

Vance would recant his position as “a Never Trump guy” when he successfully ran to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate in the 2022 Republican primary.

Campaign controversies and polished performances

Shortly after his election as vice president, a 2021 interview resurfaced in which Vance described the United States as a country run by “childless cat ladies” – a comment echoed by Democrats as well as Taylor Swift and other celebrities was rejected.

Vance later drew the ire of communities in his home state of Ohio after he spread false claims on social media that Haitian immigrants were eating dogs in Springfield. Trump amplified these false claims in his debate against Kamala Harris.

Vance's own debate performance against Tim Walz earned him a narrow victory in the eyes of critics. His disciplined effort was described by the press as “polished” (Politico), “crisp” and “dominant” (The New York Times) and “slick” (CNN). But the elephant in the room was his inability to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, which his opponent made sure to seize on.

Is Vance a window into the Republican future?

While Trump will dominate headlines as president, Vance's approach to major policy issues like abortion, immigration and foreign policy will be closely watched – and how his stance could shape the Republican Party's post-Trump era.

Although the vice president's job is rarely in the spotlight and Trump returns to office at 78, there is a higher chance than usual that Vance could be in the Oval Office at some point in the next four years.

Edited by: Sean M. Sinico