J.D. Vance’s MAGA Transformation Is Complete

J.D. Vance’s speech at the Republican National Convention completed his transformation from Never-Trumper to Trump’s MAGA torch-bearer.

Vance dutifully spent his first five minutes praising the GOP leader sitting in front of him. “Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump,” he told the crowd. “And then look at that photo of him, defiant fist in the air.”

When he turned to policy, he sounded especially Trumpian. Under the Trump-Vance administration, he said, “When we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms.” He spoke of preserving “the continuity of this project,” of reopening factories and making products “with the hands of American workers.” He blamed the country’s real estate woes on the “millions of illegal aliens” that Democrats had “flooded” into the United States. Citizens, he said, “had to compete with people who shouldn’t even be here for precious housing.”

The crowd loved it: Through it all, the floor of delegates and thousands of attendees cycled through chants of approval, from “U-S-A!” to “Drill baby drill!” to “Joe must go!”

The response to his speech reflected an overall excitement about Vance at the convention this week. In my conversations with party leaders, delegates, strategists, and operatives, I heard enthusiasm for Vance’s youth and his potential to attract Rust Belt voters. That Vance once referred to Trump as “cultural heroin” isn’t seen as a liability. Some Vance supporters even try to spin it as a redemption tale: Vance was a doubter, now he’s a believer.

Many Republicans seem enamored with Vance’s life story: He grew up poor in Middletown, Ohio, joined the Marines, then earned degrees from Ohio State and Yale Law School. Plus he’s only 39. “Very, very smart, remarkable entrepreneur, great background in middle America,” Newt Gingrich told me of Vance while posing for selfies on the convention floor. “It will be fascinating to watch him debate Kamala.” Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told me that Trump had made “a great pick” in selecting the Ohio senator. “He's going to be able to go into areas in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan that normally don't vote for Republicans, and when people get to know his life story, I think it's going to resonate pretty well,” McCarthy said. Bruce LeVell, a longtime Trump ally and a 2024 Georgia delegate, said, “We need that youth!”

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At a panel this morning hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and The Cook Political Report, the Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio touched on Vance’s impact on the race. He said that Trump’s easiest path to 270 electoral votes is to win every state he won in 2020, plus Georgia and Pennsylvania. Vance, he predicted, would appeal to blue-collar voters. As proof, he pointed to the way Teamsters president Sean O’Brien had praised Vance during his fiery RNC speech on Monday night. Without holding the “blue wall” of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, Biden cannot win this election. Trump’s team is ready to exploit this weakness. “You will see J.D. Vance planted in Rust Belt states very heavily between now and election day,” Fabrizio said. As it happens, Trump and Vance are already scheduled to appear at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this coming Saturday.

A Trump campaign sign with ‘VANCE’ handwritten on it at the RNC. (Joseph Rushmore for The Atlantic)

But for all his political assets, Vance has one huge mark in his record: his history of criticizing Trump. Most of the Republicans I spoke with were diplomatic about Vance’s political evolution. “I think, like so many other people, he formulated his opinion based on what people told him—not on what he actually observed,” Dr. Ben Carson, who served as Trump’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told me.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and Turning Point Action, pushed back on my assertion that Vance had made a heel-turn. “His values did not transform—his opinion of Trump did,” Kirk argued to me this morning. (He was wearing a t-shirt splashed with a photo of Trump’s raised fist above the phrase NEVER SURRENDER.) Kirk told me that Vance was “shocked” when, earlier this year, his name began popping up as a potential vice president. He considers Vance a personal friend. Kirk also played a role in Vance’s rise within Trumpworld, boosting him on social media and in real life. Last month, Vance unsubtly made his pitch to be vice president at Turning Point’s People’s convention in Detroit. Kirk had his back. “When I first spoke to President Trump, I said, ‘You know, [Vance] said bad stuff about you in 2016.’ He's like, ‘I know.’ I said, ‘That's why you should choose him.’” Kirk’s logic was that seeing someone like Vance come around to the former president might convince the millions of Trump skeptics out there to follow his lead.

[Tom Nichols: The Moral Collapse of J.D. Vance]

The most charitable interpretation of Vance’s switch is that he came away impressed with Trump’s first term. But some Republicans I spoke with acknowledged the pragmatic politics of the situation. Tiffany Folk, an election commissioner in Seneca County, New York, and an alternate delegate, told me that she believes Vance “absolutely” detected the political winds shifting toward MAGA. “I think he saw something in Trump that we all at some point in our lives see in Trump,” Folk said. “When you really see our party, there's no other option right now,” she said.

Vance has looked elated all week. On Monday afternoon, not long after he became a made man, Vance waded through a mob of delegates on the convention floor, shaking hands and smiling ear-to-ear. Some delegates had hastily scribbled VANCE below Trump’s name on their white campaign signs. The attention he drew seemed to grow by the hour. On Tuesday, I saw Vance hustling through the Fiserv Forum’s 100-level corridors flanked by about 20 Secret Service agents, plus officers in full tactical gear. A few dozen Vance fans waited outside the satellite Newsmax studio where the potential VP was doing a midday interview. When Vance emerged, they called out to him like a Beatle: J.D! J.D.! He waved and nodded, then darted down the hall, surrounded by his entourage, a permanent grin on his face.