Unique partnership: Donald Trump and his real-life apprentice

Washington: US Senator J.D. Vance has driven some of the most attention-grabbing story lines of the 2024 presidential election, encroaching on the precious spotlight that his running mate, Donald Trump, has long kept for himself.

But instead of admonishing Vance, Trump has cheered him on.

When Vance botched a detail of one of the central issues of the 2024 election – incorrectly asserting that Trump would veto a national abortion ban – the former president calmly corrected the record and quickly moved on.

Republican presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump and vice presidential nominee Senator J.D. Vance attend the 9/11 Memorial ceremony in New York.Credit: AP

Vance eagerly welcomed the idea of a potential second debate with his Democratic counterpart, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, telling a rally crowd in Pennsylvania that debates showed which candidates were willing to work to earn the job. Trump, speaking at his rally in North Carolina about an hour earlier, flatly rejected an invitation for a rematch with Vice President Kamala Harris, unspooling a series of excuses including the time, the place and his unresolved grievances from their first meeting.

Again, no public shaming. No punishment. Not a hint of anxiety over the dichotomy.

Trump’s unusual willingness to overlook his apprentice’s missteps is an early indication of a unique partnership. He seems to be enjoying a more collaborative role with someone he views as a kindred political spirit to help lead his Make America Great Again movement back into the White House — even as the number of Americans who say they dislike Vance continues to climb.

This account of their relationship is based on interviews with aides for both men, their allies and other Republicans who have witnessed recent interactions between the party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees.

Senator JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio and Republican vice-presidential nominee, speaks during an interview in the spin room following the second presidential debate, last month.Credit: Bloomberg

Vance’s role in this relationship will be on display on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) when he meets Walz for the only scheduled vice presidential debate of the year – and the stakes couldn’t be higher. It will likely be the largest single audience Vance will address this campaign, and yet, for him, only one spectator will truly matter.

Vance, 40, has spoken of Trump, 78, as a kind of father figure, albeit one who can call multiple times in a day and at any hour.

Some of those calls from Trump were check-ins and encouragement during the onslaught of criticism over Vance’s complaints of too many “childless cat ladies” among American leaders, including Harris. Trump urged Vance to hold his ground and fight through the attacks. Democrats have seized on Vance’s socially conservative views to paint the Republican ticket as weirdly out of touch, while Trump and his team view him as an ideal messenger to motivate the working-class base of voters they need to win.

Vice presidential hopeful J.D.Vance speaks at the US-Mexico border in Hereford, Arizona, in August.Credit: Bloomberg

Vance has spoken publicly about another call in which Trump heard him trying to quiet his seven-year-old son, Ewan, and asked to speak with the boy. When Vance put his eldest child on the phone, Trump asked the youngster for feedback on a campaign statement he was preparing.

Vance has also hinted, albeit jokingly, at what would be an understandable fear of Trump’s demanding style and hair-trigger wrath, while recounting how he initially missed the call when he phoned to offer him the vice president slot.

“I call him back, he answers the phone and says, ‘JD, you missed a very important phone call and now I might have to pick somebody else’,” Vance recalled last week in North Carolina. “So I almost have a heart attack right there.”

The Trump-Vance partnership remains, undoubtedly, a fledgling one. The two men first met only a few years ago, when Vance commenced a political career and needed to make amends for his venomous past as a Never Trumper.

Long-term security is more of a bug than a feature in any Trump relationship. The former president has treated his closest family and friends mercurially and has a history of dispassionately abandoning longtime allies — including his previous running mate, former vice president Mike Pence — when it suits his political purpose.

Lee Zeldin, a Republican and former congressman from New York who is close with both men, said Trump easily jelled with his running mate thanks in part to personal testimonials from family and longtime advisers who attested to Vance’s political conversion and reliability.

Their trust quickly deepened, Zeldin said, over a mutual affection for economic populism, staunch anti-immigration policy and a restrained approach to international affairs – plus a similar instinct for the jugular on the campaign trail.

“They’re friends, and they have a very strong relationship,” Zeldin said. “They’re more like buddies or confidants who can be frank with each other and enjoy the time they spend together.”

But while Trump has not publicly crowned Vance as the heir apparent to his red-capped conservative movement, he has never stopped his campaign from describing his running mate that way since joining the ticket two months ago.

”Senator Vance reinforces President Trump’s worldview and shows there is a strong carrier of this movement to fight for American workers and take away the power from the entrenched elites,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign. Trump also has a deep respect for Vance’s willingness to fight for the ticket on television, Miller added.

Trump has let Vance freelance in ways he has rarely entrusted to other allies. The two men talk frequently, but Vance does not check each decision with Trump – the former president values that as a sign that Vance has confidence and that he’s not “needy and high maintenance,” according to one Trump aide.

But the latitude Trump has afforded his running mate has led to some potentially uncomfortable moments, most recently over the Vance-led offensive against Haitian migrants as pet-eating monsters.

The attacks drove headlines for days and threatened to make a Trump campaign that has promised to prioritise mass deportations from the White House appear even more radical and extreme. The Haitian migrants who suddenly found themselves the target of baseless claims that they were eating their neighbours’ pets are not an example of illegal border crossings. They are lawfully living in the United States with temporary protected status, a federal designation to protect people from a country in crisis.

But Trump was never remotely upset. Instead, he joined in. In front of a televised audience of 67 million people who tuned in for his debate with Harris, he pushed the attacks even further.

“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in — they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said.

After the debate, Vance left the media filing centre in Philadelphia and inadvertently encountered Trump. Standing amid lighting fixtures and boxes of unused equipment stacked on the back side of a blue curtain, the two men briefly huddled, as if they were a pair of everyday buddies.

Trump noted that he was going to talk to reporters. Awesome, Vance told him, adding that he was heading to a cable news interview. Awesome, Trump responded. They compared notes on the debate and incoming questions from the media. When they parted ways, Trump gave his running mate an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

“Go get ’em,” Trump told Vance.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.