JD Vance’s net worth and close links to Project 2025 as Donald Trump’s pick for Vice President
More details have emerged about JD Vance, including his link to a controversial project that Donald Trump has tried to distance himself from.
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Donald Trump has chosen Ohio senator JD Vance as his running mate for this year’s US election, a choice that has taken on remarkable significance in the wake of the attempted assassination of the election frontrunner.
The former president announced his decision on his social media platform on the opening day of the Republican convention in Milwaukee, in a move that anoints the 39-year-old as his preferred successor if he returns to power in November.
“As Vice President, JD will continue to fight for our constitution, stand with our troops, and will do everything he can to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump said.
In a fundraising email, Senator Vance said it “would be an honour” to serve as Trump’s vice president.
He said America was “at its best” during his first term in power.
“Our economy was roaring, our border was under control, our cities were safe, and we were respected overseas,” Senator Vance said.
“As your Vice President, I will faithfully serve by your side (as) you make our country GREAT AGAIN!”
TRUMP CHANGED MY MIND: VANCE
In his first interview since accepting the nomination, Senator Vance said Trump told him he had to help “save this country”.
Recounting his conversation with the former president to Fox News, Vance said Trump added: “I think you’re the guy who could help me in the best way. You can help me govern, you can help me win, you can help me in some of these Midwestern states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and so forth.”
Vance admitted he was “certainly sceptical” of Trump during his first presidential run in 2016.
“I don’t hide from that,” he said.
“I bought into this idea that somehow he was going to be so different, a terrible threat to democracy ... It was a joke.”
“But President Trump was a great president and he changed my mind, I think he changed the minds of a lot of Americans, because again, he delivered that peace and prosperity.”
VANCE TO TARGET BIDEN’S ‘BLUE WALL’
Senator Vance was chosen over North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, each of whom were earlier informed that they had missed out.
The Ohio delegation erupted on the floor of the convention when the decision was revealed, breaking into chants of “JD, JD, JD”.
It came moments before delegates at the convention completed their roll call to confirm Trump as their election candidate, a nomination he will officially accept on Friday.
Trump said he believed Senator Vance was the “best person suited to assume the position”, citing his military record, his Yale Law School degree and his authorship of Hillbilly Elegy, his best-selling memoir of his working class upbringing.
“JD has had a very successful business career in technology and finance, and now, during the campaign, will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American workers and farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota and far beyond.”
Senator Vance’s candidacy was championed by Trump’s son Donald Jr as the best pick to electrify his conservative base and target Joe Biden’s critical “blue wall” of states that the US President will need to win to stay in power.
But the 39-year-old was once a vocal opponent of the former president, suggesting he could be “America’s Hitler” and dubbing him “cultural heroin” before his 2016 election victory.
“He makes some feel better for a bit,” Senator Vance said at the time
“But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realise it.”
For months, Trump had been teasing the outcome of a process he has compared to The Apprentice – the reality show that helped propel him to the White House – and had even suggested he could make the announcement at the weekend rally.
But his team had planned for the 78-year-old to reveal his decision on the opening day of the party’s convention in Milwaukee.
In a social media post the day after he was shot, Trump said he was going to delay his trip to the convention by two days but decided “that I cannot allow a ‘shooter’, or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling or anything else”.
The three candidates posted messages of support for Trump on social media in the wake of the attack, with Senator Vance unleashing on the Biden campaign by claiming their “rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”.
Mr Burgum was more circumspect in his response, saying that Trump was “stronger than his enemies” and “showed it”, while Senator Rubio said: “God protected President Trump.”
Former president Barack Obama’s campaign strategist David Axelrod said Senator Vance’s claim “ought to disqualify him in the eyes of the Trump campaign”.
“Wrong vibe in that moment … Trump probably doesn’t want a shoot-from-the-hip VP,” he said.
Trump repeatedly said in recent months that he wanted to choose “somebody that can be a good president”, who could take over as America’s commander-in-chief if required while also drawing a contrast to Vice President Kamala Harris.
In an interview a week ago, however, Trump slightly changed his tune on his requirements.
“It’s going to be a great vice president, meaning a person that can do a fantastic job as president, because you always have to think of that first,” he told Fox News.
“And then, second, somebody that helps you get elected. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
He reportedly had not informed his preferred pick of his decision prior to the rally in Pennsylvania, with close aides also waiting to be told so they could spend hundreds of thousands of dollars printing signs and other campaign materials for the convention.
In 2016, Trump unveiled his choice of Mike Pence two days before the convention, although he second-guessed himself and asked his staff if he could back out of the announcement in the hours before it was due to be made.
WHO IS JD VANCE?
The 39-year-old Republican from Ohio is in his first term in the Senate having won his seat in 2022
He was born and raised in Middletown, Ohio and joined the Marines, serving in Iraq, and later earning degrees from Ohio State University and Yale Law School which he has spoken often about having to culturally adjust to fit in. He also worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.
He had a challenging impoverished upbringing with his biological father giving him up for adoption when he was six years old. Vance then changed his name from James Donald Bowman to James David Vance. He had spoken openly about how his mother struggled with both alcohol and drug addiction forcing him to spend much of his time growing up with his grandparents in Kentucky
He described his grandmother as a “blue dog” Democrat who owned 19 handguns, who had a great influence on his life.
HOW MUCH IS JD WORTH?
Vances is estimated to be worth around A$7.4 million.
LINKS TO CONTROVERSIAL PROJECT 2025
Vance has close associations with the right-wing organisation behind Project 2025, which Trump has been trying to distance himself from.
Project 2025 serves as a blueprint for the next conservative administration, particularly under a potential Trump presidency.
Created by the Heritage Foundation with backing from other right-wing organisations, it has garnered significant attention for its extensive 900-page policy roadmap.
This roadmap proposes sweeping and contentious reforms across all facets of the executive branch.
Trump has publicly distanced himself from Project 2025 amidst scrutiny over its far-right proposals.
On Truth Social, he said he didn’t know about the project’s origins, despite over 100 former administration officials contributing to it. Trump asserted he has no affiliation with them, labeling certain policies as “ridiculous and abysmal.”
However, Vance openly has close ties with the Heritage Foundation and its founder Kevin Roberts.
THE BOOK
In 2016, as Donald Trump became president, Vance moved back to his native Ohio and set up an anti-opioid charity. He also took to the lecture circuit and was a favoured guest at Republican Lincoln Day dinners where his personal story - including the hardship he endured because of his mother’s drug addiction - resonated.
He rose to prominence with his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”, about his life in the “Rust Belt”. The book’s central theme about willpower being the only way Americans in economically and socially struggling regions could improve their own lives saw it become a best seller, and a movie brought him to the attention of Trump. It has often been referred to as a “bible” to understand who it was, the type of hard working but barely surviving white American voter, that went on to support Trump in that election.
Such was his early popularity and suggestions for how to “fix” the country and its “self-destructive culture” particularly in rural America, it was suggested in 2021 he entered politics, fortuitously with a Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Rob Portman.
ON TRUMP
Vance famously called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” for office. His wife, lawyer Usha Chilukuri Vance, is Indian American and the mother of their three children, also criticised Trump as racist rhetoric declaring he could be “America’s Hitler”.
But when Vance met Trump in 2021 the paid gelled and he reversed his decision saying he had done much for America in his term as president. Both men have since downplayed the Vance household’s scathing criticism. They speak regularly on the phone and Trump even described Vance as looking “like a young Abraham Lincoln”, a revered elder statesman and former president.
Vance married his wife in 2014.
She currently works as a litigator and had worked as a clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when Kavanaugh was a federal judge.
ABORTION
In 2022 Vance, by this stage a leading voice in American conservatism, said he’d back a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks. But he also supported Trump on leaving the question to the states.
“I am pro-life. I want to save as many babies as possible,” he told CBS News two months ago. “And sure, I think it’s totally reasonable to say that late-term abortions should not happen with reasonable exceptions. But I think Trump’s approach here is trying to settle a very tough issue and actually empower the American people to decide it for themselves.”
UKRAINE
The elevation and possible election of Vance as vice president could spell disaster for embattled Ukraine. He has publicly stated he opposed US aid to Ukraine because the country did not have enough arms or troops or a plan for success and the US did not have the manufacturing capacity to make up the difference. He believes Ukraine should surrender half the country, giving back to Russia most of the eastern part of the county - including the majority of all its resources including coal and grain - to Russia and redefine borders that existed under the former Soviet Union in 1990. He also said America could learn much from authoritarian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in dealing with dissidents, notably on US university campuses. Trump met with Orbán last week, when the Hungarian prime minister was in the US for the NATO summit.
POLITICS
Vance is seen as ultra conservative but believes in embracing bipartisanship on issues. He has already established himself as a leading voice for the conservative movement, on key issues including a shift away from interventionist foreign policy, free market economics and “American culture writ large”. Democrats call him an extremist and firebrand, citing provocative positions Vance has taken but sometimes later amended, including soften his abortion stance (once Ohio voters overwhelmingly backed a 2023 abortion rights amendment). His supporters though say he can better articulate Trump’s vision particularly in critical seats in the rust belt. He downplayed the January 2021 assault on Capitol Hill and echoed Trump’s view on the injustice in prosecuting those involved.
RELIGION
Vance is a practising Catholic, albeit new to the faith having only been baptised in August 2019. He has described how he was raised Christian but during his university years identified as an atheist. If Trump and Vance win November’s general election, Vance would become the country’s second Catholic vice president. President Joe Biden was the first when he was elected VP in 2008 under President Barack Obama.
Originally published as JD Vance’s net worth and close links to Project 2025 as Donald Trump’s pick for Vice President
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