‘One Handsome Son-of-a-Bitch’: How Donald Trump Fell for J.D. Vance

Eleven months after leaving the White House, Donald Trump was looking to dole out blessings.

He sat with his political team at Mar-a-Lago in December 2021, going over the polling and latest news stories from each race in the midterms. If Trump made up his mind about an endorsement that afternoon, his team would get the Republican candidate on the phone for a quick message from Trump offering a “terrific endorsement.”

But at the moment he was delivering something more like curses.

He’d just finished chastising Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks over the phone for his comments about the need to move on from the 2020 election — “You’ve got to get your shit together, Mo,” Trump told him — and he was agitated when he turned to the race his aides talked about most: the contentious Ohio Senate contest. Many of the political advisers closest to Trump had direct connections to one of the Republican candidates in the crowded field.

“J.D. Vance,” Trump mused out loud. “I like J.D. but they tell me he is dead as a dog.”

At the time, Vance was struggling to break through in the crowded field with no clear favorite. Trump, like much of America, was aware of the Hillbilly Elegy author whose personal story shed light on the plight of poor, rural white America around the time of the 2016 election. Vance’s Cinderella story — a young man raised by his grandmother who joined the Marines, attended Yale Law School and gained success in the world of finance — made him a popular figure in his home state of Ohio. Still, Trump had reservations.

But as the race played out, Vance gained his trust and support with a mix of personal charms and well-timed connections — and by extolling the virtues of Trump’s brand of MAGA populism.

This is the story of how Trump first decided to endorse Vance — who once called him an “idiot” and “unfit for our nation’s highest office”— for Senate in 2022, and how the former Trump critic became one of his strongest supporters and, now, his running mate. Drawn from my forthcoming book, Trump in Exile , it’s based on multiple interviews with people close to both Vance and Trump.

Today, as Trump’s running mate, the 39-year-old Vance — who once said he’d refuse to vote for Trump — could be second in line to the presidency should he win in November.

“He has said some nasty stuff in these Club for Growth ads that they tell me is killing him. Is that right? What do you say to that, is he getting killed?” Trump said that day in 2021. He turned to one of his political advisers and explained that polling he had seen showed Josh Mandel, an eager young Republican also running in the Ohio primary, was up significantly over Vance.

Trump’s advisers jumped in. While Vance was behind in polling by the conservative anti-tax group Club for Growth, which had backed Mandel, there was still potential for Vance, who wasn’t as far behind in other polls. But Trump wanted to hear from the head of the Club, David McIntosh, and ordered his aides to put him on the line.

McIntosh assured Trump that Mandel was the right pick and remained up in the polls. Perhaps more than with any other race, Trump was under pressure to make an endorsement in order to whittle down the crowded field in a must-win state for Republicans. He was close to throwing his support behind Mandel, but in the meantime, he seemed to relish the backbends the candidates were doing to prove their allegiance to him. And Vance was once critical of Trump. The Hillbilly Elegy author and venture capitalist once called himself a “Never Trump guy” and called Trump “cultural heroin,” an “idiot,” “noxious” and “reprehensible.” But he had since changed his tune and was now, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, unapologetically “America First.” Trump liked Vance’s media savvy, but he also found converting onetime critics irresistible.

At the beginning of July 2021, Vance joined the chaotic seven-person primary — and his rivals were immediately out to draw blood.

Vance had come under scrutiny by Trump and his challengers for his past comments about the ex-president, including an appearance on PBS’s Charlie Rose, where he stated, “I’m a Never Trump guy, I never liked him.” His comments were quickly turned into advertisements by his rivals.

Trump was drawn to Vance’s story — a young man from Appalachia who pulled himself out of poverty to become a Marine and graduate from Yale Law School — and how telegenic he was. But Vance had never run for office, and Trump was leery of backing anyone who had harshly criticized him in the past. Still, he wasn’t sold on any of the other candidates either, even as they paraded through his club.

With so many allies and advisers involved in the Ohio Senate race, Trump remained torn over which candidate to support. Mandel was backed by the Club for Growth; Vance was backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, Tucker Carlson, and Donald Trump Jr.; Jane Timken had the support of two longtime Trump hands, Corey Lewandowski and Dave Bossie; and then there was Mike Gibbons, who had recently been shooting up in the polls. Trump considered sitting out of the race entirely until the debates.

In mid-March 2022, Vance, Timken, Mandel, and Gibbons squared off in the first Senate GOP debate—and it turned ugly, with the two leading candidates, Gibbons and Mandel, nearly breaking into a fist fight onstage. But their awkward encounter turned into a golden opportunity for Vance, who snagged a positive headline in Breitbart: “Chaos in Ohio GOP Senate Debate: Gibbons, Mandel in Heated Altercation as Vance Berates Them for Conduct Unbecoming.”

The first debate was so lively that Trump requested the link to the livestream to watch the second. His takeaway was that Vance won.

Two months before the primary, the race narrowed to Mandel and Vance. Vance faced a barrage of outside polling indicating he wouldn’t perform as well in the general election as his rivals. But Trump, who watched Republican opinion of him change like the wind, seemed unmoved by the criticisms of Vance. And he noted that Vance, a relative outsider to Ohio politics, did have immense support from national conservative figures — in addition to Carlson and Donald Trump Jr., he counted the young conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk among his supporters.

Trump’s son had taken an immediate interest in Vance. Andrew Surabian, an adviser to Trump Jr., mentioned to him that he was working on Vance’s Super PAC. “I read Hillbilly Elegy and I really fucking like that guy,” Trump Jr. replied. But he remembered the harsh criticisms Vance had had for his dad in 2016. “I fuckin’ loved that book and I never really understood how he didn’t understand” Trump. “Is he on our team now?”

Surabian said yes, and he proceeded to put Trump Jr. and Vance on a three-way call. “How didn’t you understand Trump back in 2016?,” Trump Jr. asked Vance. By the time they hung up the phone, Trump Jr. had said he wanted to help.

But Vance’s first meeting with Trump was actually arranged by billionaire venture capitalist and Republican mega-donor Peter Thiel. Thiel was a mentor to Vance; he had backed his venture capital firm and in recent years had become a kingmaker for MAGA-aligned Republicans like Vance. He was particularly focused on a handful of races he was pouring millions into, and he flew down to Palm Beach to personally make sure the introduction of Vance to Trump went smoothly. “You weren’t a big fan of me in 2016,” Trump said with a smile.

“I like you but you said some really nasty things about me.”

Vance got lucky with Trump in other ways. Following that Palm Beach meeting, he was invited to play golf with a Trump friend at the Trump golf club in West Palm Beach, where the ex-president would play and dine on a daily basis in the winter and spring. Vance’s only issue was that he wasn’t a strong golfer.

On the day of his invitation, Vance played in the foursome in front of Trump, who watched as Vance teed off. Vance, to his relief, later told acquaintances it was his best ever round of golf. After the round, Trump was eating lunch in the clubhouse when Vance walked in.

“Are you the Hillbilly Elegy guy?” a woman asked Vance as he entered the room. Trump watched as the Ohio Senate candidate proceeded to shake hands and take photos with club members. He turned to Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax and a longtime Mar-a-Lago member, and said, “Do you know the great J.D. Vance? I hope Newsmax is helping him.”

As Vance was about to leave, Trump called him over for a photo together.

“Do you mind if I post that?” Vance asked. “I wouldn’t do that,” Trump said. “But you are one handsome son of a bitch.”

To try to seal the deal, Vance called then-Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, asking him to put in a good word. Although Trump and Carlson weren’t speaking as regularly in Trump’s post-presidency, he had the kind of voice that Trump would listen to.

Carlson made his case for Vance in a call with Trump, who proceeded to put him on FaceTime in the middle of his golf game.

A Trump adviser eventually told Vance that he should call Trump, and be smart about how he talked to the ex-president. Sucking up to Trump was a fine art — he liked flattery but wouldn’t respect someone if they went too far, and Trump had found some of the other candidates’ compliments obnoxious. So late one evening in April, when Trump was alone in his residence at Mar-a-Lago, he received a call from Vance.

Trump told Vance that he was going to be “very happy.”

The next day, Donald Trump Jr., Surabian, and Trump’s aides breathed a sigh of relief when he finally sent out an endorsement.

“Like some others, J.D. Vance may have said some not-so-great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades,” Trump said. “I’ve studied this race closely and I think J.D. is the most likely to take out the weak, but dangerous, Democrat opponent.”

Trump’s decision to back Vance was in part because of his relationship with his son, who had been one of Vance’s most loyal backers, and the megadonor Thiel, who had dumped millions into backing pro-Trump candidates, but it was a torpedo to Trump’s relationship with the Club for Growth and David McIntosh, who had supported Mandel and hoped Trump would stay out of the race entirely.

In retaliation, the Club for Growth financed a series of ads in support of Mandel that attacked Trump and his endorsement of Vance, and highlighted Vance’s past criticism of Trump. The ex-president had long expected that the Club and McIntosh — like much of the GOP — would follow his lead and coalesce behind his chosen candidate. He was furious when they did not.

The same day that a Club for Growth advertisement aired highlighting Vance’s criticism of Trump, the ex-president asked an assistant to send McIntosh a message from him. It read, “Go fuck yourself.”