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Two days before Donald Trump named J.D. Vance as his running mate, the Ohio senator boarded real estate titan Steve Witkoff’s G6 Gulfstream jet. His destination: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
The surreptitious meeting, which has not previously been reported, helped to solidify Trump’s decision to pick the 39-year-old freshman senator as his running mate. Trump had spoken with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the other two vice presidential contenders, earlier in the week. To those familiar with his deliberations, it was clear he had been the most impressed with Vance.
For Trump, the pick represented the selection of an heir apparent to his MAGA movement — and the latest stage of a relationship that evolved from Trump’s initial skepticism of Vance, to his full-on embrace of a pol he now views as a fierce loyalist.
The relationship between the two men, detailed by more than a half-dozen people close to both of them, began in 2021, when Vance was running for Senate. Vance, who famously documented his blue-collar upbringing in “Hillbilly Elegy,” had savaged Trump, whom he called “noxious” and said he “loathed,” during the 2016 campaign.
Vance’s effort to win over Trump involved forging a relationship with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. — who lobbied for him, and against Burgum, with his father — a crucial visit to East Palestine, Ohio, and an aggressive effort to overcome internal opposition from major Republican donors and Rupert Murdoch-affiliated news outlets. And it involved a campaign by Vance and his advisers to convince Trump that Vance could both raise money for his presidential run and forcefully defend him on TV.
By the time he ran for Senate in 2021, Vance was firmly in the former president’s camp — or at least understood the value of a Trump endorsement. In the spring of 2021, tech billionaire and Vance ally Peter Thiel brokered a meeting between Trump and Vance. During the meeting, which was also attended by Thiel and Trump Jr., Vance highlighted his and Trump’s shared populist viewpoints. In the coming months, Vance closely aligned himself with Trump and built a relationship with Trump Jr.
Trump, meanwhile, told close allies he was impressed by Vance — complimenting him on everything from his debate performances to his physical appearance and his golf swing. The image-focused Trump saw Vance as telegenic and a powerful communicator.
Ultimately, Trump’s endorsement — “Like some others, J.D. Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades,” Trump wrote — vaulted Vance to a primary win. But they still weren’t personally close, according to people familiar with their relationship. That came later, with what Vance did for Trump in return.
The day after the primary — when many Republicans were still leery of Trump, casting for alternative candidates for president — the Vance team, which shared several strategists with Trump’s operation, back-channeled to Trump that the Ohio Republican was eager to support a Trump 2024 comeback bid, if he ran, and would do whatever he could to help.
Vance followed through, writing in a Jan. 31, 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed that Trump has his “support in 2024 because I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight overseas.” The op-ed, which came just weeks after Vance was sworn into office, made him one of the first Republican lawmakers to endorse Trump. Some other figures once regarded as vice presidential contenders — like Trump White House press secretary-turned-Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders — took months to announce their support.
Trump took notice of Vance’s support — and his polished TV appearances. The following month, when Vance helped organize a trip Trump took to the site of a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, Trump and his son watched Vance do a live interview on Fox News.
“This guy is turning out to be fucking incredible,” Trump said to his son and the group of aides on the plane with them.
Trump advisers later described the East Palestine visit as a critical moment in his presidential campaign. Trump’s launch had been rocky. His November 2022 announcement was so tepid that, rather than scare competitors off, they sensed an opening. Then, soon after, Trump dined with the rapper and Nazi sympathizer Ye, formerly Kanye West, and Holocaust denier Nicholas Fuentes, and he posted on social media that he supported terminating the Constitution — both of which drew intense criticism. Trump’s trip to the hardscrabble northeastern Ohio village served to remind Republicans of the populist image he had cultivated as president, helping stanch the bleeding.
Starting then, and throughout the presidential primary, Vance became a regular on Trump’s call log, and he emerged as a fierce defender of the former president. When reporters stopped Vance in a Senate hallway and questioned him about whether, in saying immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country, Trump was using Adolf Hitler-like rhetoric, Vance pushed back.
“You guys need to wake up,” Vance said. “It’s an absurd question. It’s an absurd framing.”
Video of the exchange made the rounds among conservative figures on social media — and eventually made its way to Trump. Trump — always on the lookout for defenders who defy the media — told allies he loved it.
By now the vice presidential rumors were beginning to swirl. Vance himself didn’t initially take the prospect seriously, according to two people familiar with his thinking. But by late January, as Trump closed in on becoming the presumptive Republican nominee, Vance and his team were hearing the rumors from enough people that they decided he needed a plan to persuade Trump to select him. So they developed a two-pronged blueprint. First, he would regularly appear on TV networks not seen as favorable to Trump, using the interviews to defend the former president. Second, he would work aggressively to raise money for him.
The move was aimed at addressing one of the main criticisms of Vance: That he was a subpar fundraiser. Many of the party’s mainstream donors regarded Vance — a political newcomer with ties to Silicon Valley — as an anti-establishment outsider who broke with them on foreign policy and trade issues. So Vance, a former venture capitalist, tapped his Silicon Valley connections to organize a major fundraiser hosted by investor David Sacks. He also hit the phones, dialing up donors on call lists supplied by the cash-hungry Trump campaign.
Vance’s opposition from the donor community, however, presented a challenge in the under-the-radar race for the vice presidential slot. Other contenders, like Burgum, Rubio, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, had deep relationships with mainstream donors who were eager to undercut Vance. Republican megadonor Ken Griffin’s team conveyed to Trump that they didn’t want the Ohio senator. Murdoch, the former News Corp. chief executive, was also weighing in with Trump and making it clear he supported other prospects, including Burgum. The Murdoch family-owned New York Post and Wall Street Journal published separate editorials endorsing Burgum for the position.
And then there was Kellyanne Conway. Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and White House counselor, Conway repeatedly conveyed to the ex-president that she was against Vance.
But Vance overcame the opposition. The former president, according to a person familiar with his thinking, tired of the arrows being slung at Vance. And it didn’t hurt Vance that he had such strong Trump allies in his corner — a group that included Trump Jr., Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson. Vance’s allies moved aggressively to counter opposition, framing Vance’s critics as being part of something Trump and Vance shared a hatred for: the establishment.
Last week, as the search for a running mate neared a close, Trump Jr. presented his father with an article from the Trump-friendly Breitbart News that he knew the former president would hate. The younger Trump had, by now, been public in his support for Vance and had spoken negatively about Rubio and Burgum.
This article, he suggested to his father, was an indication that the North Dakota governor was simply a mainstream Republican Party figure who was more aligned with the old guard of the GOP than his populist movement.
The article’s title?
“Karl Rove endorses Doug Burgum for vice president.”
