As the Republican National Convention gets underway in Milwaukee, and as President Trump prepares to give a video address to discuss the attempt on his life Saturday but purportedly trying to deliver a "uniting" message, he has just formally announced his pick of running mate: Ohio Senator JD Vance.
Vance, 39, is the youngest person to sit at the top of a main-party presidential ticket in over 160 years — younger even than the 41-year-old Dan Quayle when he was picked as George H.W. Bush's running mate in 1988. Vance was still in college during the last, pre-Trump Republican administration, and he was just graduating Yale Law School in 2013, two years before Trump would launch his first presidential campaign on that escalator.
The Chronicle delves into Vance's connections to San Francisco, which began right after law school. He was living here, for instance, when he wrote his bestselling memoir about growing up in Ohio and Kentucky, Hillbilly Elegy. From 2013 to 2017, he reportedly lived in the Presidio with his wife while working for Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital Management, where he became a principal in 2016.
You can be sure that his relative youth and political inexperience will be harped upon by Democrats, not to mention his flip-flopping on his opinion of Trump.
A college roommate of Vance's, Georgia state Rep. Josh McLaurin, revealed a text message he received from Vance in 2016 making a comparison between Hitler and Trump. "“I go back and forth between thinking Trump might be a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he might be America’s Hitler,” Vance wrote. “How’s that for discouraging?
The text message was posted to Xitter, but has since been removed.
You can hear the condescension from Bay Area House Rep. Eric Swalwell, responding to a tweet from Vance on Sunday — which no doubt pleased Trump — suggesting that Biden's and Democrats' rhetoric was to blame for the attempt on Trump's life.
"You called Trump ‘American Hitler’ — now show your self back to the kids’ table. Violence will NEVER be the answer," Swalwell wrote.
You called Trump “American Hitler” — now show your self back to the kids’ table.
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) July 14, 2024
Violence will NEVER be the answer. https://t.co/RGqyRQ82Rc
Republicans in Vance's native Ohio have repeatedly tried to use Vance's time in San Francisco against him, suggesting he's just some liberal in disguise. Some have pointed to his 2016 essay in The Atlantic, where he first laid out his case against Trump when it came to solving the ills of his homestate — particularly opioid and heroin addiction, and economic struggle. The essay reads a bit like a promotion for his memoir, but it begins discussing his most recent weekend in San Francisco — trying to illustrate the contrast between struggling red states and well-off blue ones.
"A few Saturdays ago, my wife and I spent the morning volunteering at a community garden in our San Francisco neighborhood. After a few hours of casual labor, we and the other volunteers dispersed to our respective destinations: tasty brunches, day trips to wine country, art-gallery tours. It was a perfectly normal day, by San Francisco standards," Vance wrote. "That very same Saturday, in the small Ohio town where I grew up, four people overdosed on heroin."
It was reportedly Vance, and his connections in the Bay Area, that helped facilitate a meeting between billionaire David Sacks and Trump, which then led to the fundraiser at Sacks's Pacific Heights home last month that raised $12 million for the Trump campaign.
Sacks, who is particularly obsessed with keeping us out of World War 3 with Russia, said of Trump's pick of Vance, "an American patriot, with the courage to fight America’s wars but the wisdom to know when to avoid them."
We know that Trump is all-forgiving with his critics if they turn around and act like he's won them over and he's the best — just look at Lindsay Graham! And the list goes on.
California Congressman Adam Schiff, who is the favorite to fill Dianne Feinstein's former Senate seat next year, summed up Vance's latest move saying, "Having declared Trump unfit for office, he now joins the ticket, ready to advance all that he once deplored. In raw pursuit of power."
Update: Vance's wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, apparently still had professional ties to San Francisco until today. Ms. Vance resigned from the prestigious SF law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, where she was a corporate litigator, minutes after her husband was announced as Trump's running mate.
The firm put out a statement saying, "Usha has been an excellent lawyer and colleague, and we thank her for her years of work and wish her the best in her future career."
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Top image: Trump's pick for Vice President, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and his wife Usha Chilukuri Vance arrive on the first day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Delegates, politicians, and the Republican faithful are in Milwaukee for the annual convention, concluding with former President Donald Trump accepting his party's presidential nomination. The RNC takes place from July 15-18. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)