Here's where Trump's running mate sits on the issues

Here’s a look at Trump’s VP pick and his stance on a variety of issues

What you probably already know: Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump announced Monday that his pick for vice president would be Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, a 39-year-old man famous for his bestselling book “Hillbilly Elegy” and his once staunch opposition to Trump’s policies. Vance grew up in a working-class family in Ohio, joined the Marines and served in Iraq, and later went to Yale Law. Then he joined a venture capital firm run by Silicon Valley billionaire and political lightning rod Peter Thiel. Here are a few of Vance’s public statements on some of the topics likely to be pivotal to this November’s election:

“Never Trump” — Vance is going to have to explain away previous statements where he called Trump an idiot, declared himself “a Never Trump guy” and called the candidate “cultural heroin,” in a piece he wrote in 2016 for the Atlantic, and “America’s Hitler,” in a text to a friend that same year. He has since said that Trump “proved him wrong” while in office, calling out the former president’s policies on border security and the economy. He voted for Trump in 2020.

Abortion — Vance has stated he supports a 15-week abortion ban with exceptions only for rape, incest and threats to the life of the mother.

Election integrity —Vance said as recently as Sunday that if he had been in Mike Pence’s shoes in 2020, he would have done what Trump wanted and blocked the electors from states that voted for Joe Biden.

“America First” and military spending — Vance has been supportive of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, including requiring European countries to shoulder more of the financial burden for military defense and pivoting the U.S. resources into supporting manufacturing growth to compete with China.

Russia and Ukraine — He is a vocal critic of the U.S.’s support for Ukraine and has stated: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.”

The Gaza war — In May, Vance doubled-down on Trump’s suggestion that Israel should be allowed to “finish the job with Hamas,” so the country can then build ties with Saudi Arabia and get to what he called “a new era in the Middle East.”

The drug/fentanyl crisis — Vance has been very critical of the Biden Administration’s handling of the fentanyl crisis in the country and has gone so far as to suggest it is a deliberate strategy “to kill a bunch of MAGA voters in the middle of the heartland” because they voted for Trump.

Transgender/Gender-affirming care — He sponsored a bill that would criminalize gender-affirming care for transgender children.

Antitrust and Big Tech — Vance supports the FTC’s work to enforce antitrust policies against the big tech companies, and has been called a “Khanservative” for his support of FTC Chair Lina Khan’s broad approach on the topic of competition. This group, generally, sees antitrust laws as a way to challenge perceived censorship of conservatives on social media.

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