Senator JD Vance of Ohio will become the next vice president of the United States if the current polls are accurate, which would entail having a Vice President from the US with strong ties to India for two consecutive administrations.
Usha Chilukuri, a corporate litigator in San Francisco whose parents are Indian, is Vance’s spouse. The New York Times reported that “the pair were…blessed by a Hindu pundit in a separate ceremony” at their 2014 Kentucky wedding.
Who is JD Vance?
First things first: who is JD Vance, the man Donald J. Trump selected as his running mate late on Monday night, July 15, India time, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee?
Middletown, Ohio, native and Yale graduate Vance was raised in modest circumstances before becoming a venture capitalist. Following his high school graduation, he joined the US Marines and participated in the Iraq War as a public relations officer and combat correspondent.
After serving in the armed forces, he completed his undergraduate studies in political science and philosophy at Ohio State University. After that, he continued his legal studies at Yale Law School, where he served as the Yale Law Journal’s editor.
Vance’s Career and Rise to Fame
He briefly practiced law after earning his Yale degree in 2013 before relocating to San Francisco to work as a venture capitalist in the tech sector. Interestingly, he was employed at Mithril Capital, co-founded by PayPal’s Peter Thiel.
Popular author and outspoken opponent of President Trump Vance gained notoriety in 2016 with the release of his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy. Many interpreted Vance’s autobiographical Hillbilly Elegy, published in the same year that Trump stormed to power for the first time, as a window into rural, often-forgotten America, which fueled Trump’s ascent.
Vance’s book was described as “a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump” in a review that appeared in The New York Times.
Vance’s Political Evolution
Vance had strong anti-Trump sentiments at the moment. In October 2016, he declared to talk show host Charlie Rose, “I’m a Never Trump guy.” In July 2016, Vance penned an opinion piece for The Atlantic titled, “Trump is cultural heroine… Trump’s pledges are the needle in the collective American vein. He temporarily lifts some people’s spirits. However, he cannot cure their problems, and they will eventually realize this.
“I go back and forth between thinking that Trump is America’s Hitler or that he is a cynical asshole like [Richard] Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful),” Vance wrote in a 2016 private Facebook conversation to a friend.
Byron Donald’s, Tucker Carlson, and JD Vance all standing together.
What a sight pic.twitter.com/9UKFDoCt9E
— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) July 16, 2024
 Vance’s views on Trump, however, range greatly from “Never Trump” to ardent supporter. According to reports, he supported Trump in 2020 and used his support to win his first senatorial election in 2022.
After being chosen as Trump’s running mate, Vance “explained his ideological shifts as a result of a double intellectual awakening: It turned out that Donald Trump wasn’t as bad as Vance had thought, and that American liberals were much worse,” the New York Times said.
Personal Life and Connection to India
“I allowed myself to focus so much on the stylistic element of Trump that I completely ignored how he was offering something very different on foreign policy, on trade, and immigration,” Vance said in a June interview with The New York Times.
As one of the most tenacious supporters of Trump in the modern era, Vance shares many of the former president’s viewpoints. Furthermore, according to Politico, he has become “the standard-bearer of the ‘New Right,’ a loose movement of young conservatives trying to push the Republican Party in a more populist, nationalist, and culturally conservative direction.”
Usha Chilukuri Vance, whom he met while attending Yale, is the wife of a talented attorney that Vance met there. Together, the couple is the parent of three kids. Usha is Hindu, and Vance is Catholic. Living in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the family.
Conclusion
Experts predict that Vance’s selection will energize Trump’s supporters because the senator is well-liked in the conservative media. Additionally, it is probably going to go well in Silicon Valley, where Trump is trying to get funding for his campaign. One of Vance’s largest backers is the billionaire former CEO of PayPal, Peter Thiel.
But as Trump tries to reach out to more groups, the choice also means that two white men will now head the Republican ticket. According to Reuters, Vance, a devout conservative from a Republican state, “is unlikely to bring many new voters into Trump’s corner and may even alienate some moderates.”
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Supporters of Trump wanted him to choose a woman of color to broaden the coalition’s base of influence. It will be fascinating to see if this is an influence if President Joe Biden, who is facing intense pressure to stand down from major Democratic donors and several Democratic legislators, does so in favor of Harris.