In his first public speech as the Republican vice presidential candidate, Senator J.D. Vance kept the focus on his boss, a trait shared by those who tend to remain in favor of former President Trump.
Speaking Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Vance used his childhood in Middletown, Ohio (made famous by his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy”) to highlight Trump’s campaign points. He decried inflation, promised to keep the United States from getting involved in foreign wars and pledged to stop “importing foreign labor.”
“President Trump represents America’s last, best hope to restore what, if lost, may never be found again: a country where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America,” Vance said.
His speech was peppered with anecdotes from his childhood in Ohio. His mother, Bev Vance, who struggled with addiction and mental health issues, sat in the audience and quietly told him, “I love you, JD.”
“I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from,” Vance said.
Vance came across as a confident and affable speaker, frequently cracking off-the-cuff jokes and at one point turning to the camera and telling his children watching on television to “get in bed.”
The crowd rewarded him with chants of “JD.”
Usha Vance, who introduced her husband, tried to humanize him, as political wives often do. She described meeting him at Yale Law School and the unlikely friendship and romance between a working-class man raised by his grandmother and a middle-class woman raised in San Diego by two parents.
“The fact that JD and I were able to meet, let alone fall in love and get married, is a testament to this great country,” said Usha Vance.
The former Marine's idea of a good time when they met was playing with puppies and watching the movie “Babe,” she said. Once they became a couple, she said, he adapted to her vegetarian diet and learned to cook Indian food for her mother.
“The JD I knew back then is the same JD I know today, except for that beard,” Usha Vance joked.
Like most of the speakers before him, Vance acknowledged Saturday's assassination attempt on Trump, which left him injured in the ear. He praised the now-famous photograph of Trump immediately after the shooting, with blood on his cheek and his fist raised.
“His instinct was to call us, to call his country,” Vance said. “To call us to something bigger, something higher.”
Moments after the shooting, Vance wrote in X that the Biden campaign’s rhetoric “led directly to the attempted assassination of President Trump.”
But in his speech he alluded to Trump's call for “unity” since the shooting, saying: “We love this country and we are united to win. I think our disagreements actually make us stronger.”
Speaking earlier in the evening, Donald Trump Jr. highlighted his father's actions in the moments after the shooting to argue that he has the courage to right this country.
“He showed not just his character, but the character of America,” Trump Jr. said. “When he stood up, with blood on his face and the flag behind him, the world saw a spirit that can never be broken. And that is the true spirit of America.”
Later Wednesday evening, Michael Tyler, communications director for the Biden-Harris campaign, issued a statement calling Vance “unprepared, unqualified, and unwilling to do anything Donald Trump demands.”
Tyler called Vance “Project 2025 in human form… a rubber stamp for Donald Trump to become dictator on ‘day one.’”
Vance's keynote address capped the third night of the Republican National Convention, where a jovial atmosphere pervaded the Milwaukee auditorium.
Trump, wearing a white bandage over his ear, watched the evening's proceedings from his seat. The former president is scheduled to deliver his final speech of the week on Thursday.
Trump beamed proudly as his 17-year-old granddaughter, Kai Trump, said he was “just a normal grandpa” who sneaked candy into her mouth and asked about her golf game.
Kai's father, Trump Jr., painted a dystopian picture of the country under Democratic rule — a lawless nation overrun by illegal immigrants, with a cost of living out of reach for most Americans, a government centered on elites and schools more focused on indoctrinating young people than educating them.
Reportedly one of Vance’s (a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist) chief backers as his father’s vice presidential candidate, Trump Jr. highlighted the friendship between the two men — one from Appalachia, the other from Trump Tower — as proof of the nation’s promise. “Now we’re both fighting side by side to save the country we love,” he said.
And he told undecided or uncommitted voters that they faced a difficult choice in November.
“It’s a choice between a team that wants to build this country and a team that wants to destroy it. It’s a choice between people who are proud of America and people who are ashamed of America. And ultimately, it’s a choice between America last or America first,” Trump Jr. said.
Earlier in the evening, a pair of Californians took the stage to energize the crowd in support of the Trump-Vance ticket. Richard Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence during the Trump administration, began his speech by greeting the Californians in the room. Grenell, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany, criticized President Biden’s foreign policy, referencing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
“Donald Trump doesn’t care if you’re gay or straight, black, brown or white, or what gender you are,” Grenell said. “He knows we’re all Americans and it’s time to put America first.”
Peter Navarro, a former UC Irvine professor who was released from prison early Wednesday, was greeted with a long, enthusiastic standing ovation from the audience.
Navarro, who worked in the Trump administration, was jailed on two counts of contempt of Congress after refusing to testify before the House Select Committee on Jan. 6.
“If they can come for me, if they can come for Donald Trump, be careful, they will come for you,” Navarro told those gathered.
His speech followed a recurring theme of the Trump campaign: that the U.S. Justice Department, under Biden and the Democrats, targets political enemies. “I went to prison so you don’t have to,” he said.
Navarro was the first Trump administration official to go to prison.
Mehta reported from Milwaukee, Pinho from Los Angeles.
