On Monday, former president and current Republican nominee for president Donald Trump officially named senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his pick for vice president and running mate.
“After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social announcing his pick.
Vance has appeared on the campaign trail in support of Trump. In the hours following the Trump rally shooting, Vance posted on X saying, “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”
Vance wasn’t always a Trump supporter. But he has long had connections to Silicon Valley through his former life as a venture capitalist, including to long-time Trump supporter and investor Peter Thiel. Since winning his Senate race in 2022, Vance has come out as an ardent Trump supporter and a critic of big tech companies, and could play a key role in shaping how a Trump administration would approach the industry.
Vance’s 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy is about growing up in poverty in the Rust Belt, and he branded himself as someone who understood–and could explain–the forces of discontent that led to Trump’s victory. At the time, Vance referred to himself as a “never-Trump guy,” even going so far as to reportedly speculate that Trump could be “America’s Hitler” in a 2016 text message. The text was made public by a former Yale Law School classmate of Vance’s in 2022.
But since Trump’s 2016 victory, Vance has become more aligned with the former president. In a 2021 interview with Time, Vance explained his change of heart, saying he “sort of got Trump’s issues from the beginning. I just thought that this guy was not serious and was not going to be able to really make progress on the issues I cared about.”
During his Senate campaign in 2022, Vance met with Trump, who later endorsed him. “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,” the former president said in a statement at the time. Vance has since said that he would not have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election, allowing states to send multiple electors, which former vice president Mike Pence refused to do.
Vance is no stranger to the world of tech and venture capital, and has long had connections in Silicon Valley. In 2020, he started an Ohio-based venture capital fund, Narya Capital. Billionaire and right-wing backer Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Eric Schmidt, and Scott Dorsey were all investors. He also worked for Thiel’s own fund, Mithril Capital, and Thiel also backed Vance’s successful 2022 senate run. In June, Vance attended a fundraising dinner for Trump, hosted by tech investor David Sacks.