J.D. Vance, the 39-year-old U.S. senator from Ohio known for promoting an America First policy, was revealed Tuesday as former President Donald Trump’s running mate at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin. U.S. politicians and American voters are divided over what they believe will be Vance’s impact on the Trump Administration’s Middle East policy.
Vance’s fellow MAGA Republicans, like Abe Hamadeh, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer running for Congress in Arizona, believe Vance will be strong on foreign policy and that he will be good for the Middle East.
“Senator Vance is a dedicated America First fighter in this movement, and I am confident the Trump/Vance Administration will build upon the successes of President Trump’s previous term that gave us a foreign policy that brought peace and prosperity here at home and peace in the Middle East through the Abraham Accords,” Hamadeh, a pro-Israel Druze, told The Media Line.
Meanwhile, across the aisle, some criticize the vice presidential pick as lacking integrity,
“Vance has no apparent core views. They shift with the political winds and align to whatever Trump desires,” Ohio State Rep. Casey Weinstein said. “So his impact on Jews, both in Israel and in America, is entirely dependent on Trump.”
Weinstein, a Democrat, is currently running for the Ohio State Senate. He has faced antisemitism during his time as state representative, including harassment by a group of self-identified “Christian veterans” who showed up at his house in 2022.
Vance’s Senate term expires in 2028. If a Trump-Vance ticket is elected in November, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, would appoint a replacement.
Vance served in Iraq in 2005 as a U.S. Marine Corps public affairs specialist with an aviation unit. He did not see combat. During his four years in the Marine Corps he rose to the rank of corporal.
After finishing his military service, Vance went on to earn degrees from Ohio State University and Yale Law School.
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Donald Trump and J.D. Vance at the Republican National Convention
(Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
Vance is the U.S. senator's third last name. Named James Donald Bowman after his absent biological father, he changed his last name to Hamel when his mother remarried. Sometime after his four-year Marine tour, the future U.S. senator changed his last name to Vance, his maternal grandparents' last name. The reasons for most of this were covered in his book, the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which was a runaway success.
Vance's last name isn't the only thing that has changed over the years. Between 2016 and 2022, his political views also changed.
During the media blitz that followed the 2016 release of his book, Vance made a slew of critical remarks about Trump. He called Trump an “idiot” during a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose and described himself as “a never-Trump guy” during the same interview.
In private messages with Josh McLaurin, a Democratic strategist who attended Yale Law with Vance – now a Democratic member of the Georgia House of Representatives – Vance went further with his disdain for Trump.
“I go back and forth between thinking 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,” Vance wrote in 2016.
McLaurin released the messages to Vice News in 2022. He is running for Georgia State Senate this year.
Vance did an about-face on Trump when he sought a U.S. Senate seat in 2022. He took back the statements he had made and ended up getting a coveted Trump endorsement over several other Ohio Republicans who were vying for the seat.
“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,” Trump said in a statement endorsing Vance for the Senate.
Vance won the seat because of the endorsement and has been solidly identified with the MAGA movement ever since. He is a strong advocate for Israel who has expressed support for Israel’s war against Hamas.
“Our goal in the Middle East should be to allow the Israelis to get to some good place with the Saudi Arabians and other Gulf Arab states,” Vance said on CNN’s State of the Union talk show in May. “There is no way that we can do that unless the Israelis finish the job with Hamas. If they can’t even do that, the attitude in the Middle East will be, you can’t trust these guys, they’re not pursuing their own national security. So we’ve got to let them finish this job, and I think hopefully, on the other end of it, get to a new era in the Middle East.”
In November 2023, Vance, along with fellow Republican Senators Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott and Marco Rubio of Florida, sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging the administration not to provide special immigration protections for Palestinian migrants. The letter, a reaction to a Democratic request that Biden grant Palestinians a special immigration status, warned that “dangers would be borne heavily by Jewish Americans” if the president allowed such a thing to happen.
“Following the horrific October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas and Israel’s response, our nation was wracked by pro-Palestinian and, in some cases, pro-Hamas protests,” the senators wrote.
“Activists waved foreign flags. They chanted threatening slogans like, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ ... We should be finding ways to reduce the number of terrorist sympathizers in America, not increase them.”