UPDATED 2:42 P.M.
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Donald Trump selected U.S. Senator J.D. Vance on Monday to serve as his vice presidential running mate, as the Republican Party officially nominated the former president as its 2024 presidential nominee at the start of the party’s national convention in Milwaukee.
“As Vice President, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our Troops, and will do everything he can to help me MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The four-day convention opened in downtown Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum two days after Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, and hours after he secured a major legal victory when a federal judge dismissed one of Trump’s criminal prosecutions.
Trump is due to formally accept the party’s nomination in a primetime address on Thursday and will challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.
Trump, 78, and Biden, 81, are locked in what opinion polls show to be a tight election rematch. Trump continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Biden was the result of widespread fraud and has not committed to accepting the results of the election were he to lose.
In the wake of the assassination attempt, Trump said he is revising his acceptance speech to emphasize national unity, rather than highlight his differences with Biden.
“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” Trump told the Washington Examiner. The would-be assassin’s bullet clipped Trump’s right ear but did no major harm.
Trump said that following the judge’s decision dismissing the documents case, his other outstanding prosecutions should also be thrown out. He is still awaiting trial on two cases – a federal prosecution in Washington and a Georgia state prosecution – for his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
Both of those cases could be hamstrung by a July 1 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that he has immunity for many actions he took as president.
Trump is due to be sentenced in New York in September for trying to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in the weeks before his 2016 election victory.
“This dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts,” Trump said on his Truth Social site on Monday, also referencing the prosecutions of hundreds of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
NO PLACE FOR VIOLENCE
Biden has tried to bring the temperature down after months of heated political rhetoric.
“There is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized,” Biden said of the assassination attempt in a televised address from the White House on Sunday.
The shooting on Saturday whipsawed discussion around the presidential campaign, which had been focused on whether Biden should drop out due to concerns about his age and acuity following a halting June 27 debate performance.
Nearly two dozen of Biden’s fellow Democrats in Congress have called on him to end his reelection bid and allow the party to pick another standard bearer.
The focus this week will be squarely on Trump.
Having consolidated party control, Trump could seize on the prime-time opportunity to deliver a unifying message or paint a dark portrait of a nation under siege by a corrupt leftist elite, as he has done at times on the campaign trail.
Trump has frequently turned to violent rhetoric in campaign speeches, labeling his perceived enemies as “vermin” and “fascists,” and accusing Biden without evidence of a conspiracy to undermine the United States by encouraging illegal immigration.
Biden has often warned that a Trump victory would erode U.S. democracy. Some Republicans say those comments helped create the conditions for the shooting.
Investigators say they have been unable to identify an ideology that may have inspired 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to shoot at Trump from a rooftop outside a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania. Though Trump escaped serious injury, a supporter was killed.
Biden ordered an independent review of how the gunman, who was shot dead by agents, could have come so close to killing Trump. Congressional investigators were also due to question the head of the U.S. Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting the former president.
Republicans attending the party’s convention said they were not inclined to reassess the party’s traditional opposition to firearms restrictions.
“If someone runs someone over with a car, they don’t ban cars,” said Melanie Collette, a delegate from New Jersey. “If someone stabs somebody, they don’t ban knives.”
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Milwaukee and Andrew Goudsward in Washington, additional reporting by Tim Reid, Helen Coster and Nathan Layne in Milwaukee and Sarah N. Lynch and David Morgan in Washington; Additional reporting by Alexandra Ulmer and Steve Holland; Writing by Andy Sullivan and Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone, Alistair Bell and Howard Goller)
———————————
MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Donald Trump selected J.D. Vance, a Republican U.S. senator from Ohio, as his running mate on Monday, elevating a politician who once criticized the former president in acid terms but has since become one of his most stalwart defenders.
The news, carried on Trump’s Truth Social media website, emerged at the start of the four-day Republican National Convention in Milwaukee to nominate the party’s presidential ticket.
The selection of James David Vance, author of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” could increase the odds of Trump supporters turning out for the Nov. 5 election as the Ohio native is deeply popular with the Republican candidate’s base.
A staunch conservative from a Republican state, Vance is unlikely to bring many new voters into Trump’s corner, however, and may even alienate some moderates. Some Trump supporters had pushed him to select a woman or person of color as his No. 2 to expand a coalition that skews toward white men.
The former president, 78, survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday by a gunman whose motive remains unknown.
Several of Trump’s highest-profile backers – including former senior adviser Steve Bannon and Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. – have praised Vance for pushing the Republican Party to embrace a more hands-off foreign policy approach and for supporting trade barriers.
Vance has also delighted Trump supporters with his confrontational social media presence, a relative rarity in the Senate, where many lawmakers still try to maintain a sense of decorum and civility.
At 39, Vance will represent a younger generation in an election that features Trump and President Joe Biden, 81, bringing a counterweight to the Democratic ticket that also includes Vice President Kamala Harris, 59.
In selecting Vance, Trump passed over other possible contenders such including U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Tim Scott and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum.
Vance’s rapid ascent has been unusual for American politics. After a troubled and impoverished childhood in southern Ohio, he served in the Marine Corps, won a scholarship to Yale Law School and later worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco.
He rose to prominence after 2016 when he wrote “Hillbilly Elegy,” in which he explored the socioeconomic problems confronting his hometown and the cycle of poverty that had entrapped Americans in the Appalachian Mountains, where his mother and her family had their origins.
The book criticized what Vance saw as a self-destructive culture in rural America and sought to explain Trump’s popularity among impoverished white Americans.
Vance himself was harshly critical of Trump before and after Trump’s 2016 election win against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, calling him an “idiot” and “America’s Hitler,” among other epithets.
But as Vance geared up to run for the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2022, he transformed into one of the former president’s most consistent defenders, supporting Trump even when some Senate colleagues declined to do so.
Vance has played down the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He said he “doubted” Mike Pence’s life was in danger, despite violent protesters getting within yards of the former vice president as Secret Service agents rushed him out of the Capitol building. Vance has also echoed Trump’s criticisms of the way the Justice Department has prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters, accusing the department of disregarding due process protections.
In February, he declined to criticize Trump for encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack America’s NATO allies if they failed to increase their defense spending.
While the Republican Party historically stood for free markets and embraced foreign intervention as an important national security tool, Trump’s 2016 election opened up significant rifts within the party. Vance has been one of the most vocal opponents of continued aid to Ukraine in the Senate, a stance at odds with many Republican legislative leaders.
On the campaign trail, the former venture capitalist has also served as a bridge between Trump associates and wealthy Silicon Valley donors, many of whom have opened their wallets to Trump this election.
Still, Vance’s selection has its detractors among Trump associates, notably those who had wanted Trump to select a diverse vice presidential candidate. Though Trump and Biden are virtually tied in most national polls, Trump trails the Democratic president by significant margins among women and Black Americans.
Some Trump associates privately questioned whether it would be wise to take Vance out of the Senate with Democrats and Republicans vying for control of the upper chamber. Democrats hold a one-seat advantage, though they are likely to lose ground in the November election.
Ohio, while safely Republican in presidential elections, does occasionally elect Democrats in other races. Vance won his 2022 election by six percentage points.
(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Editing by Colleen Jenkins, Alistair Bell and Howard Goller)
Comments