Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance selected as Donald Trump's running mate

Donald Trump has selected his running mate — and despite being just 39, the young politician has already received a biopic from Ron Howard.

Former President Trump named J.D. Vance, the junior senator for Ohio, as his running mate for the 2024 presidential election. Prior to his political career, Vance was best known for publishing the memoir Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, which Howard then adapted into a Netflix movie in 2020.

Born and raised in Middletown, Ohio, Vance joined the Marine Corps after high school and received a bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy from the Ohio State University, graduating in 2009. He then attended Yale Law School, completing his studies in 2013 before becoming a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.

Vance discussed his family's struggles in suburban working-class Ohio in his 2016 book, which became a New York Times best-seller and was praised, primarily by conservatives, as a window into the difficulties of life in the Rust Belt.

Howard's adaptation of the book starred Gabriel Basso (Super 8) as Vance, with Owen Asztalos playing the future politician in extensive childhood flashbacks. Amy Adams portrayed Vance's mother, while Glenn Close played Vance's "Mamaw," receiving both an Oscar nomination and a Razzie nod for her prosthetics-heavy work in the movie.

The film received largely negative reviews, including Entertainment Weekly's, which described the project as "two movies, one laughably bad and one boringly bad… stitched together with the kind of flashback structure that makes you think it's time to cancel flashbacks."

Howard said he had no political intentions in adapting Vance's book, telling CBS This Morning that detractors of the film were "looking at political thematics that they may or may not agree with, that honestly aren't really reflected or aren't front-and-center in this story."

In a 2020 interview, Close told EW that she consulted with Vance to shape her performance. "Talking with the real J.D. was crucial," she said. "I asked how she sat, how she held her cigarette, what her voice was like, what her house looked like — all of that, plus pictures and video that we got, gave me a sense of who she was."

Vance entered the race for one of Ohio's senate seats in July 2021, securing Trump's endorsement in the Republican primary in spring 2022 and ultimately winning the party's nomination that May. He beat Democrat Tim Ryan in the general election, and was sworn in Jan. 3, 2023.

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Prior to Vance's run for office, his personal politics seemed to hew closer to moderate conservatism than to Trump's alt-right-skewing policies. Vance initially criticized Trump policies, calling the then-candidate "cultural heroin" in a 2016 opinion piece for The Atlantic. In since-deleted tweets, Vance also called Trump an "idiot" and "reprehensible," and said that he would instead vote for Evan McMullin in the 2016 election.

In a 2017 op-ed piece in the New York Times, Vance praised Barack Obama. "For at a pivotal time in my life, Barack Obama gave me hope that a boy who grew up like me could still achieve the most important of my dreams," he wrote. "For that, I'll miss him, and the example he set."

Vance later apologized for his comments about Trump, and he now espouses xenophobic and conspiracy-friendly talking points that make him a more suitable match for the former president, even upholding Trump's denial of the 2020 election results.

Over the weekend, Vance argued that the Biden campaign somehow inspired Trump's assassination attempt, despite the fact that the shooter was later revealed to be a registered Republican. "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs," Vance wrote on social media Saturday. "That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."