J.D. Vance banishes his bulldog image in favor of calm heir apparent

MILWAUKEE — J.D. Vance had been billed as a bulldog — a rabid anti-interventionist and MAGA warrior who some expected would appeal more to Trumpist diehards than expand the Republican base.

But as he stepped into the national spotlight on Wednesday to accept the Republicans’ nomination for vice president, Vance sought to portray himself as a calmer, lower-temperature frontman for the MAGA movement his running mate built — and for which he is now the heir apparent.

He leaned on his rural roots to portray himself as a champion of “the working man” who would work to elevate the interests of blue-collar America over those of its allies abroad. He showcased his youth — at 39, he is the first millennial to join a major-party ticket — to draw a contrast with 81-year-old President Joe Biden, who Vance described as an “out-of-touch” career politician.

And he argued that Biden’s foreign and domestic policies over his decades in Washington have had ruinous consequences for the “forgotten communities” of the Rust Belt states, where he grew up and where Trump put the first-term Ohio senator on the ticket in part to help win.

“Joe Biden has been a politician longer than I’ve been alive. For half a century he’s been the champion of every major policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer,” Vance said. “Many of the people that I grew up with can't afford to pay more for groceries, more for gas, more for rent, and that's exactly what Joe Biden’s economy has given them.”

Trump’s vision, Vance said by way of contrast, “is so simple and yet so powerful. We’re done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man.”

Vance’s speech served as a trial run for how he will promote Trump as his new partner on the campaign trail. Vance exalted the former president and, as many other Republicans have across the first three days of the Republican National Convention, portrayed Trump as a martyr after he survived an assassination attempt during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.

“Look at that photo of him — defiant, fist in the air. When Donald Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field, all of America stood with him,” Vance said. “And what did he call us to do for our country? To fight. To fight for America. Even in his most perilous moment, we were on his mind. His instinct was for us.”

Vance also recounted his journey from poverty to Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee, sharing pieces of his hardscrabble upbringing that were detailed extensively in “Hillbilly Elegy,” the memoir that helped catapult him to national recognition ahead of his 2022 Senate run.

His recollection of the role his grandmother played in raising him while his mother fought addiction prompted chants of “Mamaw” from the crowd. And his mother, Beverly Aikins, got her own standing ovation and shouts of “J.D.’s Mom” as Vance announced that she was nearly a decade sober from drugs. Aikins, seated next to Speaker Mike Johnson in Trump’s suite, was emotional as she took in the applause, and appeared to mouth “I love you J.D.” to her son. Vance later ad-libbed a line about marking her 10th year of sobriety with a celebration at the White House as Trump looked on.

Vance’s remarks served as a culmination of his yearslong transition from self-described “Never Trump” conservative to MAGA stalwart, a political journey in which the ambitious and articulate former venture capitalist harnessed populism and promoted isolationism to propel his rise through a changing GOP .

On Wednesday, Vance sought to establish himself as a reinforcer of Trump’s values, an approach that follows just 18 months of serving as a MAGA loyalist in the Senate — and before that, working to earn Trump’s endorsement in a crowded Republican primary in his Ohio Senate race.

In Vance, Trump is elevating a politician he believes can resonate with working-class voters concentrated in the Rust Belt. With Trump outperforming Biden for months in polls of swing states, operatives of both parties have acknowledged the number of competitive battlegrounds has shrunk — and the campaigns will likely spend significant time in the “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Vance fulfilled that role on Wednesday, showing an off-the-cuff style similar to Trump’s by cracking jokes about the sports rivalry between his alma mater, The Ohio University, and the University of Michigan — while also suggesting a command of the struggles facing working-class families in those states that Trump does not possess.

“This moment is not about me, it’s about all of us, and who we’re fighting for,” he said. “It’s about the auto worker in Michigan, wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs. It’s about the factory worker in Wisconsin, who makes things with their hands and is proud of American craftsmanship.”

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Indiana), told POLITICO afterward that it was clear Vance was tapped to be “the future of our Republican party, the future of the America First movement.”

“It is a personal story for literally tens of thousands of Americans who feel like Washington has completely ignored them,” Banks said of Vance’s acceptance speech.

But Vance delivered a message meant to reach far beyond the nation’s borders. In brief remarks that played on the night’s theme of foreign policy, Vance vowed to protect American workers from foreign competition and delivered a warning that under a second Trump administration, allies across the world would “share in the burden of securing world peace.”

“No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer,” he declared to hollers from the crowd at Fiserv Forum.

Vance did not explicitly mention Ukraine or NATO, two topics on which his isolationist views have alarmed more hawkish members of his party.

He also steered clear of other potentially troublesome topics to raise in an introductory address to the general electorate — including his hardline anti-abortion stance.

But the Biden campaign worked to elevate those issues anyway, releasing a statement after the speech trying to tie Vance to the conservative-led Project 2025 blueprint for the next Republican administration that Trump has attempted to distance himself from.

“Backed by Silicon Valley and the billionaires who bought his vice presidential selection, Vance is Project 2025 in human form — an agenda that puts extremism and the ultra wealthy over our democracy,” Biden campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said. “An agenda that cuts health care, bans abortion, slashes Social Security and Medicare, and is a rubber stamp for Donald Trump to become a dictator on ‘day one’ and ‘terminate’ our Constitution as he wishes.”

Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.