Who is JD Vance? The 'never Trumper' who became his VP - and could be tipped for president
Despite having been a senator for less than two years, JD Vance was Donald Trump's pick for vice president. But how did he go from being a Trump sceptic to his second in command?
Wednesday 26 March 2025 15:00, UK
James David Vance - better known by his initials JD - grew up in poverty but rose to become the vice president of the United States.
On the way, he served as a marine, had a book turned into a Netflix movie and spent two years as a senator for Ohio.
Mr Vance also went from being one of Donald Trump's fiercest critics to one of his most ardent supporters, making him an unusual addition to the president's inner circle.
At the age of 40, he also offers Republicans a millennial face to complement the older man in the top job.
He, like the president, is not one to shy away from controversy, with some of his views both before and after his vice presidency causing outrage.
From humble beginnings to a Netflix movie
Mr Vance was born into an impoverished household in southern Ohio.
After serving in the Marine Corps, he went to Yale Law School, and even became a venture capitalist in San Francisco.
He initially rose to prominence with his book Hillbilly Elegy which explored the socioeconomic problems confronting his hometown, as he tried to explain Mr Trump's popularity to readers.
The book was called "one of the six best books to help understand Trump's win", by The New York Times, and it was later made into a Netflix movie starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.
He is married to Usha Chilukuri Vance, a lawyer who has clerked for two Supreme Court justices. The pair met at Yale University.
Once a 'never Trumper'...
Mr Vance once described himself as a "never Trumper" and in private even compared the ex-president to Hitler.
He was harshly critical of Mr Trump in 2016 and during the opening stages of his 2017-2021 term.
He called Mr Trump "dangerous" and "unfit" for office.
"I go back and forth between thinking Mr Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," Mr Vance wrote privately to an associate on Facebook in 2016.
When his Hitler comment was first reported in 2022, a spokesperson did not dispute it, but said it no longer represented Vance's views.
From critic to stalwart supporter
However, Mr Vance has since U-turned into being a reliable Trump supporter.
Before he developed a relationship with the president, he is said to have grown close to Mr Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.
By the time Mr Vance ran for the Senate in 2022, his demonstrations of loyalty - which included downplaying the 6 January Capitol riots - were enough to score Mr Trump's coveted endorsement.
Mr Trump's support helped put him over the top in a competitive primary.
The president has also complimented Mr Vance's beard, saying he "looks like a young Abraham Lincoln".
In interviews, Mr Vance has said there was no "eureka" moment that changed his mind on Trump.
Substance over style
Instead, he claimed to have gradually realised that his opposition to Mr Trump was rooted in style over substance.
He agreed with Mr Trump's contentions that free trade had hollowed out middle America and that political leaders were too interventionist in conflict abroad.
"I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored the way in which he substantively was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration," Mr Vance previously told the New York Times.
In the same interview, Mr Vance said that he met Mr Trump in 2021 and the two grew closer during his Senate campaign.
While Democrats and even some Republicans have questioned whether Mr Vance is driven more by opportunism than ideology, Mr Trump and many advisers see his transformation as genuine.
His help in convincing wealthy donors to open their wallets to Mr Trump during his campaign didn't hurt his standing either, Reuters has reported, with some of the president's highest-profile allies firm believers in Mr Vance.
Vance's 'power move' for presidency
Donald Trump has at times played down Mr Vance's prospects for the top job.
In a Fox News interview, he was asked if he viewed Mr Vance as the 2028 Republican nominee and he replied: "No, but he's very capable."
He added: "So far, I think he's doing a very fantastic job. It's too early; we're just starting."
But in March, Mr Vance became finance chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), a move that Ronna McDaniel, who was RNC chair for seven years until 2024, said made him favourite to be the Republican's next presidential candidate.
It's the first time a sitting vice president has served as finance chair.
Ms McDaniel told the it was a "power move from a political standpoint" from "somebody who understands how the rules are made".
"Understanding that process, which is boring and very technical - and most people don't understand how the RNC works - that was a huge move this week for JD to take over as finance chair," she said.
"This has never happened in the history of the party, where the vice president said 'I'm gonna be the finance lead for the national party'. So what does that mean? It means he's gonna interact with all the major investors heading into 2028. He's gonna know them intimately.
"But more importantly, in the next two years, the RNC will be passing the rules that will govern the primary process for 2028. What states will be first? What primaries will be the first?
"That whole process will be passed in the two years by different state parties across the country.
"JD will have access to every single RNC member and Republican National Committee state chair who will be making those governing rules. That shows you, the power that he has right now."
There have been suggestions that Mr Vance could run for president only to hand the top job over to Mr Trump as part of a supposed loophole that would see him serve a third term, even though the constitution limits presidents to two.
Mr Trump has that it's "too early" for him to think about trying to serve a third term, but that using Mr Vance to do it is "one method" - although experts have told Sky News it is unlikely to work.
Mr Vance has not commented on the speculation.
What are his views?
Mr Vance certainly fits the Trump mould, and in some areas his views have proved more conservative than his president's.
Kevin Roberts, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, called Mr Vance a leading voice for the conservative movement on key issues including a shift away from interventionist foreign policy, free market economics and "American culture writ large."
Democrats call him an extremist, citing provocative positions he has taken but sometimes later amended.
For example, Mr Vance signalled support for a national 15-week abortion ban during his Senate run then later softened that stance once Ohio voters overwhelmingly backed a 2023 abortion rights amendment.
He also said he would not have voted to certify the 2020 election results, as former vice president Mike Pence did over Mr Trump's objections.
Read more:
The secretary of state who once said Trump had small hands
The real estate mogul tasked with brokering peace in Ukraine
'Childless cat ladies'
One of his most contentious comments came in 2021, when he said the Democratic Party was run "by a bunch of childless cat ladies".
In a Fox News interview, he said: "We're effectively run in this country... by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too."
Naming then vice president Kamala Harris and then transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg as examples, he said "the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children".
The comments resurfaced in July 2024, when he said he stood by the sentiment but that his remarks weren't a criticism of people who decide not to have children.
He told Megyn Kelly on YouTube: "The simple point I made is that having children - becoming a father, becoming a mother - I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way.
"This is something, of course, we've recognised for hundreds of years in this country - that human civilisation has always recognised."
Mr Vance added: "This is not about criticising people who, for various reasons, didn't have kids. This is about criticising the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child."
Spreading the 'eating the dogs' myth
When Mr Trump debated Ms Harris in September 2024, he made one of his most infamous comments to date.
Referring to the city of Springfield in Ohio, the soon-to-be president said: "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats… They're eating... they're eating the pets of the people that live there.
"And this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame."
He was referring to completely unsubstantiated claims on social media that Haitian immigrants in the city were eating residents' pets. Mr Trump's comments were immediately fact-checked by moderators, who had spoken to city officials about the rumours.
Mr Vance, who was an Ohio senator at the time, was the first out of the two to mention the pet eating rumours.
He had contributed to the rumours spreading in the run-up to the debate, tweeting the day prior saying his office had received "many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield who've said their neighbours' pets or local wildlife were abducted by Haitian migrants".
And Mr Vance defended Mr Trump's comments after the debate, saying: "No one has spread false claims."
He added the Haitian community had "caused a lot of problems" in the area and said animals had "disappeared".
Telling ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y to say 'thank you'
The world was watching when Ukrainian president Volodymyr ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y met Mr Trump and Mr Vance at the White House at the end of February in an attempt to secure a ceasefire agreement with Russia and a possible mineral deal with the US.
Plans for the deal to be signed that day fell apart when Mr ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y's visit was cut short due to a clash in front of the world's media.
The meeting started politely enough but took a quick and unexpected turn about 35 minutes in, when Mr Vance - a long-time critic of American support for Ukraine - berated Mr ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y for airing disagreements in front of the media.
He told Mr Zelenksyy: "I think it's disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media.
"You should be thanking the president [Trump] for trying to bring an end to this conflict."
He made a number of claims about topics including the Ukrainian military, official visits to Kyiv and Mr ZelenAG百家乐在线官网y's political affiliations.
Frustrations with Europe
The vice president has consistently taken aim at Europe - and particularly the UK - over a range of issues.
The US vice president pulled no punches when addressing European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in Germany in February, lecturing them on what he claimed was "backsliding" free speech and democracy.
"When I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War's winners," he said.
"Perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs," he added.
Later, he said: "In Britain, and across Europe, free speech I fear is in retreat.
"In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town and under Donald Trump's leadership we may disagree with your views but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree."
Then in early March, the vice president was accused of "disrespecting" British forces who served alongside the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He had said a potential peacekeeping force in Ukraine would be "20,000 troops from some random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years" - and this was taken to be a dig at the UK and France, because they were the only countries to have pledged troops to the peacekeeping force.
He denied criticising those countries, writing on X: "I don't even mention the UK or France in the clip, both of whom have fought bravely alongside the US over the last 20 years, and beyond."
"There are many countries who are volunteering (privately or publicly) support who have neither the battlefield experience nor the military equipment to do anything meaningful."
The findings of a poll shared with Sky News at the end of March showed that Mr Vance was less liked among the UK public than Mr Trump, Sir Keir Starmer or any other major UK politician.
'I just hate bailing Europe out again'
The poll was carried out before a conversation on the messaging app Signal - between US officials, including the vice president - was accidentally leaked to an American journalist, who was added to the encrypted chat in error.
In the conversation, Mr Vance and other officials discussed plans to conduct airstrikes on Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis, which took place on 15 March.
During the discussion, Mr Vance questioned the rationale behind the military action, arguing that attacking the Houthis would largely serve European interests, with the continent benefiting from US protection of shipping lanes in the Red Sea that are a frequent target for attacks.
In a message addressed to US defence secretary Pete Hegseth, Mr Vance said: "If you think we should do it let's go. I just hate bailing Europe out again."
It was one of several comments made by the top officials which criticised Europe, with Mr Hegseth responding: "VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It's PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this."