Trump's Pick for Vice President: Who Is JD Vance?
In politics, opinions can change with the wind. If you need an example, look no further than JD Vance, the man Donald Trump has chosen to be his running mate ahead of November's presidential election.
In 2016, Vance called Trump an "idiot," and described himself as "a 'never Trump' guy."
But that same guy will be by Trump's side during the 2024 campaign. So what changed?
The 40-year-old has been a Republican senator in Ohio since 2023, and has enjoyed a fast rise to the top.
He first came to the attention of the US public in 2016, when he published a bestselling book — which was later made into a Netflix movie — about his difficult childhood.
Vance wrote in the book, called Hillbilly Elegy, that his mother had problems with addiction, and he spent a lot of his early years with his grandparents in Kentucky.
After finishing high school, he joined the US Marines, then studied law at Yale University, and later worked as a venture capitalist.
The success of his Hillbilly book meant he was often asked to comment on Trump's appeal to white, working class voters.
He didn't have much good to say about the former president then. But he has admitted that, over time, his opinions have changed.
In May 2024, he told The New York Times he realized Trump was "offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration."
And Vance shares many of the Republican Party's conservative views — including on issues like abortion — while he also disagrees with the US' support for Ukraine.
Joe Biden described Vance as a "clone of Trump," and that's believed to be one of the reasons he was seen as an appealing running mate.
But he's also much younger, and has some influential supporters — he received a $10 million donation from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel while running for office in Ohio, for example.
And for a man who was, until recently, a political unknown, Vance could soon be America's new vice president.
