Introducing himself to the nation after being tapped as Donald Trump's running mate, JD Vance used his Wednesday night address to the Republican National Convention to share the story of his hardscrabble upbringing and make the case that his party best understands the challenges facing struggling Americans. In his first prime-time address since Trump made his pick, the 39-year-old Ohio senator cast himself as fighter for a forgotten working class, making a direct appeal to the Rust Belt voters who helped drive Trump's surprise 2016 victory and voicing their anger and frustration. Standout lines from the AP:
- The first millennial on a major-party ticket, Vance spent much of his speech talking up Trump and going after Biden, using his relative youth to draw a contrast with the 81-year-old president. "Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington as long as I've been alive. For half a century he's been a champion of every single policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer."
- "Never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I'd be standing here tonight," Vance said. He shared his story of growing up poor in Kentucky and Ohio, his mother addicted to drugs and his father absent. He later joined the Marines, graduated from Yale Law School, and went on to the highest levels of US politics—an embodiment of an American dream he said is in now in short supply.
- The Hill reports the personal details he shared included references to "Mamaw," the grandmother who helped raise him, and his mother, who has been sober for the last decade and was greeted with cheers of "JD's mom!" as she was seated.
- The Wall Street Journal reports he ended his speech by sharing the story of proposing to his wife, the daughter of South Asian immigrants. "We were in law school, and I said, 'Honey, I come with $120,000 worth of law school debt and a cemetery plot on a mountainside in eastern Kentucky.'"
- He spoke more about his Appalachian background, and said, "In small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war. To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from."
Vance was introduced Wednesday night by his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, who spoke of the stark differences between how she and her husband grew up—she a middle-class immigrant from San Diego, and he from a low-income Appalachian family. She called him "a meat and potatoes kind of guy" who became a vegetarian and learned to cook Indian food for her mother.
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