The Christian Science Monitor, July 2024
By naming Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate, former President Donald Trump has picked an articulate young firebrand whose politics align closely with his own. It’s a ticket that reinforces Mr. Trump’s root-and-branch makeover of the Republican Party in his own image, one that Senator Vance, a self-described “Never Trump guy”-turned-archloyalist, has come to embrace and embody: pugnacious, populist, and nationalist.
Mr. Vance, a first-term senator just shy of his 40th birthday, is one of the youngest vice presidential candidates in U.S. history. Should he be elected in November, he would become a next-generation leader of Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and his presumed successor, given Mr. Trump’s advanced age and presidential term limits.
