Vance says his mission at GOP convention speech is ‘to fire up the crowd tonight’

MILWAUKEE – GOP vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance says his mission as he delivers his acceptance speech on day three of the Republican National Convention is simple.

Vance, the 39-year-old senator from Ohio whom former President Trump named as his running mate at the beginning of the week, on Wednesday night will address the roughly 2,400 delegates and thousands of other attendees packed inside Milwaukee’s Fiserv Arena, and the millions of Americans watching the GOP convention from home.

‘We’re gonna get out there and try to fire up the crowd tonight,’ Vance said at a financial event hours before his prime time address at the convention.

The senator added that he would ‘make the case, a very easy case to make, but an important case to make, that we have got to re-elect President Donald J. Trump to the White House.’

And he joked, ‘I’m very excited about this evening, and I don’t plan to screw it up. But if I do, it’s too late. He [Trump] made the pick, right. It’s official now.’

Trump, in making his greatly anticipated and high-stakes running mate announcement as the GOP convention kicked off in swing-state Wisconsin’s largest city, will now share the ticket with one of his top supporters in the Senate, a one-time Trump critic who has transformed into a leading America First ally.

The former president and Vance teamed up on Monday and Tuesday nights in the Trump family box above the floor of the GOP convention.

Vance, a former venture capitalist and the author of the bestselling memoir ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ before running for elective office, on Wednesday night will appear on the podium to tell his story.

A source in Vance’s political orbit told Fox News to ‘expect the speech to focus heavily on his bio and incredible life story and how that ties into the America First agenda.’

Another source with knowledge of the speech told Fox News it will ‘connect his life experiences to the Trump policies. Folding in his firsthand experience of a tough upbringing that shaped his views on a lot of the biggest issues he is passionate about.’

The source said those issues include trade, immigration, ending endless wars, fentanyl and drugs, and how inflation hurts the poor the most.

That story began with Vance growing up in a working-class family in a small city in southwestern Ohio. His parents divorced when he was young, and as his mother struggled for years with drug and alcohol abuse, Vance was raised in part by his maternal grandparents.

After high school graduation, Vance enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in Iraq. He later graduated from Ohio State University and then earned a law degree at Yale.

Vance, who lives in Cincinnati, moved to San Francisco after law school and worked as a principal in a venture capital firm owned by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who later became a major financial supporter of Vance’s successful 2022 campaign for the Senate.

Before running for Senate, Vance grabbed national attention after ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ – which tells his story of growing up in a struggling steel mill city and his roots in Appalachian Kentucky – became a New York Times bestseller and was made into a Netflix film. The story spotlighted the values of many working-class Americans who became supporters of Trump’s policies.

Vance was a vocal critic of Trump when the former president first ran for the White House in the 2016 cycle. 

However, Vance eventually supported Trump, praising the former president’s tenure in the White House, and in a Fox News interview in 2021, he apologized for his earlier criticism of Trump.

Trump’s endorsement of Vance days before the 2022 GOP Senate primary boosted him to victory in a crowded, competitive and combustible race.

‘I think the American people are going to love to hear JD’s story of overcoming adversity as a young man, becoming a Marine and serving his country in uniform in Iraq, and going on to becoming a business leader, and now a successful elected leader as well,’ fellow veteran and fellow Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas told Fox News on Tuesday.

Democrats, in a taste of things to come, on Monday wasted no time in criticizing Vance.

President Biden told reporters that Vance was ‘a clone of Trump on the issues.’ 

Vice President Harris, in a campaign video released on Wednesday, charged that ‘Vance will be loyal only to Trump, not to our country.’

And the president’s campaign argued that Vance was selected because he would ‘do what [former Vice President] Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6: bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people.’

Fox News’ Alexis McAdams contributed to this report