How a 'redneck' made his way to the White House
2024-08-11
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When the anti-war ballad "America First" sounded at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump's running mate, 39-year-old JD Vance, walked onto the podium with a smile.
Vance served in Iraq as a Marine, has a doctorate in law from Yale University, and has published a popular memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," but he is not a particularly eye-catching campaign speaker. Compared with Trump, Vance's interaction with the audience seems uncoordinated: when he expects enthusiastic responses from the audience, the applause is sparse; when he tries to express a serious point of view, the audience suddenly boils and cheers.
In his speech, Vance, who comes from the Appalachian Mountains, criticized Biden for supporting trade agreements that transfer jobs overseas and supporting overseas wars that send young people to the battlefield. "Biden screwed up, and my community paid the price for it." Trump, who was injured in the shooting and had a bandage on his right ear, sat in the audience, looking at Vance and smiling with relief from time to time.
From a conservative who "will never support Trump" to a loyal "MAGA (Make America Great Again)" politician and a replica of Trump, Vance's political views have undergone subversive changes in the past eight years. His road to counterattack is also a reflection of the changing relationship between Trump and the Republican Party.
On July 18, Trump (left) and Vance attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
With the help of noble people, we can fight our way out
On a warm winter afternoon in February 2021, Vance walked into Trump's office at Mar-a-Lago. This was the first time the two met, and the atmosphere was hard to describe as harmonious.
Vance was introduced to Trump by venture capitalist Peter Thiel, founder of digital payment company PayPal. His most famous investment was $500,000 in Mark Zuckerberg in 2004, which brought him a return of $400 million in the future.
Vance and Thiel met in 2011. At that time, Thiel gave a speech at Yale Law School, where Vance was studying. The billionaire reflected on two social trends: when elites were caught in a cruel and meaningless competition for diplomas, technological innovation also stagnated. Vance later wrote that Thiel's speech was the "most important moment" during his study at Yale and changed his career trajectory. Thiel, a Christian, even shook Vance's views on religion. Before meeting Thiel, Vance held the view that "stupid people are Christians and smart people are atheists." Many years later, Vance was baptized as a Catholic.
After graduating from Yale University, Vance worked briefly in law. In 2016, the same year Vance published his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," he joined Thiel's venture capital firm Mithril Capital. In 2020, Vance opened his own fund company, Narya Capital, in his hometown of Ohio, and Thiel was also one of the investors. Thiel likes to name companies after objects from Tolkien's fantasy novel "The Lord of the Rings," and Vance followed this habit. Narya is a ring of power that gives the user the power to resist tyranny, oppression, and despair. During this period, Vance invested in several technology platforms that support conservatives.
When Thiel gained attention for supporting Trump in his first campaign in 2016, Vance chose a different path: becoming a critic of Trump. He called Trump "America's Hitler" in a text message to a friend, and wrote an article in The Atlantic describing Trump as "cultural heroin" who offered false promises to the white working class, and that in the future America "will have a real medicine to replace the short-lived high of MAGA." In an interview, Vance even said,
Self-report
Is someone who "will never support Trump."
As the idea of running for state legislator became clearer, Vance's attitude changed. When Vance walked into Trump's office, there was a thick stack of documents on the latter's desk, most of which were Vance's previous articles criticizing Trump. Vance decided to apologize immediately, and he told Trump that he believed the lies of the media and misunderstood Trump. According to people familiar with the matter, the meeting lasted nearly two hours and covered the 2020 election, Trump's political dilemma after the Capitol Hill riots, and the Senate election in Ohio. Vance seemed to reduce Trump's doubts about himself, and when the conversation ended, Trump told Vance to take care of himself and come over often.
Five months after the Mar-a-Lago meeting, Vance announced his candidacy for Ohio's soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat. In the Republican primary at the time, the candidate with the best polling performance was former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, who came from the Tea Party faction. Mandel was backed by the influential conservative organization Club for Growth, which ran $1.5 million in ads, repeatedly playing Vance's past posts criticizing Trump and reminding voters of his "dark history" of speculation. These attacks once made Vance's poll performance very bleak.
Thiel helped Vance again by donating $15 million to the latter's super PAC. This largest individual donation in the history of Senate campaigns helped Vance reverse his declining campaign. At the same time, Vance's performance in TV debates and the conservative talk show "Tucker Carlson Tonight" impressed Trump. Trump paid close attention to the performance in the debate and has always talked about his experience of challenging Hillary on TV in 2016. He praised Vance as a "debate killer" several times and showed his excellent qualities. A month after the debate, Trump officially endorsed Vance: "Vance may have said some bad things about me in the past, but he understands it now, and I see it." In the end, Vance defeated Mandel in the fiercely competitive Republican primary, fought his way out, and successfully defeated the Democratic challenger that fall.
“MAGA Dealers in the Senate”
On November 15, 2022, Trump announced his third presidential campaign. At the presidential campaign launch ceremony held at Mar-a-Lago, there were only a few Republicans. In the midterm elections a week ago, many candidates supported by Trump suffered Waterloo, and the predicted Republican "red wave" ended up with only a faint ripple.
When the Republican-leaning media abandoned Trump and chased the rising star DeSantis, Vance published an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal in January 2023, praising Trump's foreign policy and supporting Trump. Since then, Vance has always stood up at critical moments: during Trump's criminal trial in Manhattan, Vance joined the former's entourage and spared no effort to defend him on TV; when Trump suffered an "attempted assassination", Vance immediately accused Biden of being the culprit on social media, even though the results of the investigation had not yet been released.
During Trump's first term, many Republicans in the Senate disagreed with him. Vance believed that his mission was to promote Trump's agenda in the Senate. He allied with younger conservatives who tended to be populist, such as Hawley, Rubio, and Cotton, and called on the Republican Party to abandon the old ideas of free trade and globalization, and embrace the concepts of raising tariffs, restricting immigration, and strong state intervention in the economy.
Vance is also one of the few Republicans in the Senate who has publicly opposed U.S. economic aid to Ukraine. With Trump's support, Vance and his conservative colleagues rejected a bipartisan agreement that would have combined aid to Ukraine with measures to combat immigration on the southern border. After graduating from high school, Vance was deployed to Iraq as a Marine, an experience that made him skeptical of the post-World War II "rules-based international order."
Unlike the average MAGA politician, Vance has worked across party lines with progressive Democrats in the Senate. Last March, after a serious hazardous materials train derailment in Ohio, which resulted in a toxic chemical leak, Vance teamed up with Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown to draft the Railroad Safety Act, which proposed raising safety standards for the rail industry and helped arrange Trump's trip to Ohio. That same year, after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Vance worked with Elizabeth Warren of the Senate Banking Committee on a plan that would require federal regulators to recover executive compensation when a bank fails.
Although none of these bills made it to the Senate, the bipartisan collaboration earned Vance a reputation as the "MAGA dealmaker of the Senate." Vance said the collaborations reflected his skepticism of big business, which often put him in the shoes of progressive Democrats rather than traditional pro-business Republicans.
Vance comes from a broken family in Middletown, Ohio: his parents are divorced and his mother abuses drugs. Vance was lucky enough to grow up thanks to his strong grandmother. In his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy", which made him famous, Vance described the social collapse of the white working class in the "Rust Belt", including poverty, drug abuse, and domestic violence caused by the loss of job opportunities. Some book reviewers believe that this book explains the anger of the American working class against the elite class, which was this anger that pushed Trump to power in 2016. Although Vance did not propose a solution to the ills of his hometown, he was convinced at the time that Trump was not the answer to the problem.
During his campaign for the Senate, Vance explained his transformation to the New York Times. He said that in the past, like many political elites, he focused on Trump's "style elements" and ignored his unique insights on foreign policy, trade and immigration issues. Vance also used "corruption" to explain his transformation from opposing Trump to embracing Trump. "The biggest change in my view of Trump is that I saw the corruption in our system."
In March this year, Vance said in an exclusive interview with Politico that after decades of decline, the United States has entered the "late republic" and is on the verge of a complete collapse of civilization. The American political community is either unwilling or unable to deal with the stagnation of society. Vance believes that electing Trump is the only hope for the United States to escape the path of civilizational collapse. In order to ensure Trump's election, he is prepared to take extreme and even unconstitutional measures.
When a reporter asked Vance what he would do if he were the vice president on January 6, 2021, Vance said unequivocally that he would follow Trump's wishes and prevent the certification of the election results, rather than confront Trump like Pence did. He even suggested that Trump should immediately fire a large number of mid-level federal officials after returning to the White House, and that if the Supreme Court intervened to stop it, he should openly defy the Supreme Court's order.
Vance's college classmate recalled to The Washington Post that Vance entered college after serving in the Marine Corps for four years. Although he was older than other students, his round face and blurred edges gave him a childish look. The classmate lamented that Vance looked different now, with a Lincoln-style beard. "He pursues a serious masculinity. He looks like a young version of Trump."
On July 22, Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, answered questions from reporters on the plane. Photo by Visual China
Carrying the Republican banner four years later?
When Vance accepted the nomination and officially became the Republican vice presidential candidate, he was two weeks away from his 40th birthday. He had served in the Senate for less than two years and had the least political experience among the vice presidential candidates.
Generally speaking, the vice presidential candidate is either able to bring votes to the presidential candidate, or can attract constituencies and voter groups that the presidential candidate cannot reach, or has complementary political resumes. Among the other candidates with high voices, Cuban-American Senator Rubio may bring more Hispanic voters to Trump, and Haley may calm the concerns of moderate voters about Trump, but in the end, Trump chose a younger version of himself.
Why did Trump finally choose Vance? People close to Trump provided different explanations to the media: as the first "millennial" to be nominated by a major party, Vance's age may ease voters' anxiety about Trump's age; Vance, who came from a poor background and turned the tide, can resonate more with working-class voters in the Rust Belt; in addition, Vance's relationship in Silicon Valley will open up new sources of funds for the Republican Party; former Fox News host Carlson told the audience at the Republican National Convention that Vance "does not secretly hate Trump like others, he fundamentally agrees with Trump's views."
"I'm not sure if Vance will help Trump's campaign. He is not a campaign candidate, but a policy candidate, a governing candidate," Republican pollster Neil Newhouse told the media. This choice, which goes against traditional election strategies, may reflect Trump's determination to win. In 2016, Trump still needed to choose Pence to win the support of the party establishment and evangelical voters, but now the Republican Party has united closely around him.
Trump has said that he wants a running mate in 2024 who will not make mistakes, looks very decent and can help him win. He also said that he believes that running mates have little influence on voters' choices. The Guardian pointed out that Vance can play the role of "attack dog" very well, and Vance can be tough when Trump is reserved. For example, in order to win the support of independent and moderate voters, Trump chose to lower the political atmosphere and call for political unity after escaping assassination, while Vance's crusade against Biden and the Democratic Party can consolidate the support of MAGA voters.
Trump made the decision almost at the last minute, following a fierce battle between those supporting Vance and those opposing him.
When Vance got closer to Trump after the midterm elections, the relationship between his benefactor Thiel and Trump began to crack. At a conference in Colorado in June this year, Thiel said that he would not vote for Trump unless someone "put a gun to my head." Even so, Thiel called Trump and urged the latter to choose Vance as vice president.
Thanks to his early venture capital experience, Vance has established extensive and close connections with billionaires and investors other than Thiel. In March of this year, Vance introduced another close friend of his, the famous venture capitalist David Sachs, to Trump's eldest son, Trump Jr. Three months later, Sachs held a fundraising dinner at his mansion in San Francisco and raised $12 million in donations for Trump's campaign. In addition, Vance has also received support from Tesla founder Musk, former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya and others. These people have been helping Vance increase his visibility in wealthy circles and on social media, and have been calling Trump to lobby him to choose Vance as his running mate.
Several traditional Republican donors, including media mogul Murdoch and hedge fund tycoon Ken Griffin, have strongly lobbied Trump not to choose Vance. These establishment conservatives prefer politicians who are experienced and more friendly to big business. For example, Murdoch endorsed another candidate, Doug Bergum, in an editorial in his New York Post.
The person who gave Vance the most and most firm support was Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. According to media reports, Vance's past negative comments about Trump still rankled, but Donald Trump Jr. convinced his father that Vance's previous criticism no longer represented his attitude towards Trump. After learning that Trump would choose him as his running mate, Vance made his first call to Donald Trump Jr. to thank his friend for his help.
Vance's relationship with Trump Jr. dates back to 2016, when Trump Jr. read Vance's memoir and "went crazy about it," and the two established a close friendship and political alliance before the 2022 midterm elections. Trump Jr. did not hold a formal position in his father's administration, but he has been helping his father in the decision-making process.
"No matter who you are, you can join the MAGA movement. Look at me and my friend Vance, one of us is from the mountains of Appalachia, and the other is from Trump Tower in Manhattan. We grew up in completely different environments, and now we are both fighting to save the country we love," Trump Jr. said at the Republican National Convention on July 17.
At a recent public event, Trump Jr. also said that the 93-year-old Murdoch is a thing of the past. "There was a time when if you wanted to survive in the Republican Party, you had to kneel to Murdoch or someone else. I think that has changed now." He then changed the subject and said that Vance is very likely to carry the banner of the Republican Party in 2028 and be elected as the 48th President of the United States.
Published in the 1150th issue of China Newsweek magazine on July 29, 2024
Magazine headline: 'Countryman' Vance heads to the White House
Reporter: Chen Jialin
