Trump chooses Vance as running mate

Former U.S. president Donald Trump announced Monday that he has chosen Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate.

Trump made the announcement on Truth Social as delegates were formally voting to name him the GOP presidential nominee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the four-day Republican National Convention started on Monday.

"After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of vice-president of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio," Trump wrote.

In the post, Trump pointed to Vance's potential appeal to voters in the Midwest.

"J.D. has had a very successful business career in Technology and Finance, and now, during the campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond", Trump wrote in his post.

Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania helped propel U.S. President Joe Biden to victory in 2020.

Vance, who will turn 40 (Trump is 78, Biden 81) in August, was once a strong critic of Trump. In 2016, he suggested Trump could be "America's Hitler''.

But as he began his 2022 Senate run, Vance deleted critical comments about Trump, said he was wrong, and credited Trump for the work he did in office as president. Trump then endorsed him in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Ohio.

Vance has been one of Trump's most vocal supporters, appearing outside the New York City courthouse during Trump's criminal trial this year and on cable TV.

Biden posted a fundraising appeal on social media about the Vance selection, saying that the Ohio senator "talks a big game about working people" but wants to raise taxes on the middle class while cutting them for the rich. "Protect democracy. Defeat Trump-Vance," it says.

The convention started just two days after Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump was struck by a bullet in the ear, and one attendee died after being shot by the gunman, who was killed by Secret Service snipers.

There were widespread calls for unity from Republicans and Democrats after the assassination attempt.

Two hours after shots were fired during the rally, Vance wrote on X that he believed the Biden campaign's rhetoric directly contributed to the shooting attempt.

"Today is not just some isolated incident," Vance wrote. "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that president Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to president Trump's attempted assassination."

Vance is an investor, venture capitalist and best-selling author of his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, in which he chronicled growing up in a family beset by drug addiction and poverty.

Vance was born in Middleton, Ohio. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps for four years, including a six-month deployment to Iraq, before studying political science and philosophy at Ohio State University and going on to graduate from Yale Law School. He went on to work at a large corporate law firm and then as a principal at an investment firm in San Francisco.

Vance and his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, have three children. His wife is the daughter of Indian immigrants and grew up in the San Francisco area. They met as students at Yale Law School and got married in 2014, one year after they graduated. She also has a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge.

She was a corporate litigator at a San Francisco law firm and has clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge.

J.D. Vance was elected to the Senate in 2022 after defeating former Democratic representative Tim Ryan for an open seat in Ohio.

Vance has opposed U.S. aid to Ukraine and opposes abortion, saying the government should find ways to encourage people to have children.

Vance changed how he discussed abortion after Ohio and other states voted in favor of abortion access last year. In a December CNN interview, he said Republicans must "accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans". He recently said that he supports access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

In the Senate, Vance has pushed both bipartisan and conservative legislation. He introduced a rail safety bill with Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, Ohio's senior senator, after the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Vance also worked with Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on legislation to hold executives accountable for failed banks.

Vance's other bills reflect conservative views. He introduced legislation to ban gender-affirming care for minors and a bill to eliminate government diversity programs.

Before the V-P announcement, Trump learned that a judge had thrown out a federal classified documents case filed against him by special counsel Jack Smith.

A federal judge in Florida dismissed the case, siding with defense lawyers who said the special counsel who filed the charges was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.

Hours later, Smith's office said it would appeal the order.