In mid-July 2024, not long after the assassination attempt against him, former president Donald Trump announced Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate in the 2024 presidential election,. Two days later, at the Republican National Convention, Vance accepted the nomination, becoming the GOP's vice presidential pick. But before entering politics, the Ohio native published his best-selling 2016 memoir "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis." The book explores the life for poor white comunities where poverty is the "family tradition" and reveals his family's experiences with this reality. It was made into a Ron Howard-directed feature film that released in 2020 and dives into Vance's childhood in all of its harrowing detail.
J.D. Vance Has A Shady Side We Can't Just Ignore
Between his difficult upbringing and all of the exposure and criticism that comes from rising into the public eye, Vance's life, comments, and decisions have painted quite a picture. Described on The Atlantic as a "self-described hillbilly turned Marine turned Ivy League law-school graduate turned venture capitalist turned Senate candidate," his trajectory has been controversial, to say the least.
Trump and his vice presidential pick's complicated history began in 2016 when Vance rose to national prominence with the publication of his non-fiction book "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis." The work explored not only Vance's childhood growing up poor in Appalachia, an often misunderstood region of the Southeastern U.S., but also its opioid and economic issues, and political disenfranchisement. Back when Trump was running for U.S. president in 2016 and Vance was on the talk show circuit promoting his book, he was strident in his opposition to the controversial candidate. In August 2016, he told ABC News that he didn't see him "offering many solutions" to the white working-class.
No one who picked up and read "Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis" back in 2016 could have predicted that its author, J.D. Vance, would be running for Donald Trump's vice president in 2024. That includes Vance himself, who says in the intro to his book that he is "not a senator, a governor, or a former cabinet secretary." He is no one special at all, he explains, and has done nothing extraordinary. He is a self-described "Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart" whose family has roots in rural Kentucky in the massive and impoverished swath of Greater Appalachia. The midlife ordinariness of his happy marriage, home, and two dogs, he explains, was prefaced by the tragic ordinariness of his upbringing — the kind which he shared with countless individuals.
It's objectively one of the most powerful positions in the United States, if not the world, but the vice presidency is also somewhat misunderstood if not mystifying. Almost all of the dozens of men and one woman who have held the office were elected to the post alongside presidents, but their actual role and day-to-day duties as vice president of the United States aren't the same or abundantly well known. They help pass laws and assist the president, but it's a bit obtuse beyond that. You'd be surprised at how much the vice president of the United States really gets paid, for example.
Discover the untold truth behind historical political moments as well as today's politicians.