Trump’s VP Pick: This Campaign Is About The Future

Adapted from “The Michael Knowles Show,” July 16, 2024.

President Trump has selected his running mate, and it is — drumroll, please — Senator J.D. Vance from Ohio. Many people have only heard of J.D. Vance recently. Some are probably only hearing of him for the first time. I, however, have been following Senator Vance’s career for a long time. I am a long time admirer of him, and I think he is absolutely the perfect VP pick, especially now. This pick tells us something extremely important about Trump 2024, which is that this campaign is all about the future.

I think J.D. Vance is a really great pick. There were a number of people who were discussed as potential VP picks, and many didn’t quite make the short list. But I have said for a long time I thought Vance would be an excellent choice.

President Trump posted the announcement on Truth Social, writing:

After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio. J.D. Honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association. J.D.’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” became a Major Best Seller and Movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our Country. J.D. 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…. As Vice President, J.D. will continue to fight for our Constitution, stand with our Troops, and will do everything he can to help me MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Congratulations to Senator J.D. Vance, his wife, Usha, who also graduated from Yale Law School, and their three beautiful children. MAGA2024!

Others have noted that picking Vance. is an insurance pick. Presidents often want to pick what we would call impeachment insurance, or, after Saturday, you might say assassination insurance: someone who the liberals would really hate to have assume the role. Vance provides that. Vance is solidly conservative. He is extremely intelligent. He knows what he believes.

Some Vance critics have voiced that he used to be more liberal or more opposed to Trump. However, that is true of a lot of people, and I do not think the evolution of his thought and his politics is just a convenience. I don’t think it’s disingenuous nor something that happened overnight because I have followed it somewhat closely for quite some time.

WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show

He explored many of the themes that have now come to dominate his political vision and agenda in his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” so the seeds were obviously planted long ago. Of note, Vance is a convert to Catholicism. His religious conversion seems to have begun around 2015 or 2016, and then he was baptized and received into the Catholic Church in 2019.

When one has a religious conversion, all politics ultimately is religious, as Cardinal Manning reminds us. That leads to rethinking or clarifying or deepening some of your political positions. So inasmuch as Vance has developed his views over the years, I think they’ve developed in a really beautiful direction, a very solidly conservative direction. 

There are all sorts of factions in the Republican Party. There is the squish faction; the pro Chamber-of-Commerce faction; the libertarian faction, which has great contributions but is sometimes founded on shaky and liberal principles and moves Left on certain issues; and so on. With 100 conservatives in a room, they will all disagree on something.

But Vance seems in-line with the ways that President Trump has restored the Republican Party to its roots. The Republican Party was founded on economic protection. Not to say we shouldn’t trade with the rest of the world, but we must protect our own American industry. We must recognize that the economy is here. We have a flourishing country, and the country isn’t here for the economy. The people are not here to serve the GDP number. It’s the other way around.

A strong economy is good for us, but it’s also good for our political society. Good political societies have limits, restrictions for what has now become total open borders and mass migration. That is important to protecting American workers and encouraging the growth of American families, which a lot of the GOP neglects or undermines. But President Trump has made that a big focus of his campaign, dating back to 2016. Vance is focused on those issues tremendously. It was a motivator behind his Ohio Senate run and his whole political vision in his memoir, which became a Hollywood movie. (I’m sure Hollywood wouldn’t make that movie now.)

The question about Trump’s VP pick was: Is he going to pick someone to balance out the ticket? Is he going to pick a black guy just because he’s black or pick a woman because she’s a woman? Is going to pick a wallflower because Trump is so eccentric and such a showman? Since he takes up so much attention, is he going to pick someone who just blends in with the furniture to balance that out? Or is going to pick an old guy so he’s totally innocuous? Or is he going to pick someone like Vance?

Vance is brilliant. Not that he would ever upstage Trump — I don’t think he would do that at all — but he’s clearly brilliant. He has a strong political vision that is very much in line and could continue the project on which Trump is working to then become a candidate for 2028 or 2032.

He’s young. He’s at the beginning of his political career, and he has not hit the peak yet. So this is a pick about legacy. When the libs say Trump’s second term is just going to be all about revenge, settling old scores, and mollifying his ego, I think a pick like this proves that’s not what Trump’s doing.

Trump is setting up a political vision that he intends to extend far beyond 2024 to solidify the restoration that he has brought in many ways to the GOP.

Even if you don’t like that language or you don’t like Trump because you believe he’s changed the GOP from the party of George Bush or even the party of Milton Friedman or Ronald Reagan, what you would have to conclude is that this is a guy who is oriented now toward the future and building a legacy. And I think that’s a good thing.