Who is JD Vance, the 50th vice president of the US?

He is a former Trump critic

Before serving as Trump's running mate, Vance was his former bitter critic.

Reuters reported that in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, he called Trump an "idiot" and said he was "reprehensible." He also compared him to Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany responsible for the Holocaust, the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.

However, when Trump tapped him as his running mate in July, Vance became one of his staunch defenders.

The self-described "Never Trumper" has become the heir apparent to Trump in the 2028 elections and his "Make America Great Again" movement.

During his senatorial campaign, Vance told Fox News he regretted his criticisms against Trump and asked viewers to not judge him on his past statements, per CNN.

“Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016,” he said. “And I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy.”

“I think that’s the most important thing, is not what you said five years ago, but whether you’re willing to stand up and take the heat and take the hits for actually defending the interests of the American people,” he added.

He had an impoverished, difficult childhood

Vance was born James Donald Bowman on Aug. 2, 1984, in Ohio to Beverly Vance and Donald Ray Bowman. According to a PEOPLE Magazine profile, Vance was raised in an Appalachian community (hence him being a self-described hillbilly), Middletown, a place with primarily low-income residents.

His parents divorced when he was six years old after his father left the family a few years prior.

Beverly, a nurse, struggled with substance abuse and addiction. She would enter several relationships, leading to Vance adopting different father figures in his life. She was married five times.

Bob Hamel, Beverly's third husband, adopted Vance and renamed him James David, replacing his biological father's name with her uncle's name yet preserving the JD nickname. Vance, however, would have to change his name again after Hamel and Beverly split.

His grandparents James and Bonnie Vance eventually took care of him after Beverly's alleged growing abuse toward him. He took his maternal last name Vance once his grandparents became his caretakers.

He was a cashier, a Marine, a summa cum laude, and an Ivy League law school graduate

At 17, Vance worked as a cashier in Dillman Foods, a grocery store in Middletown. After graduating from Middletown High School in 2003, he enlisted as a combat correspondent in the US Marine Corps.

During his four-year stint, he was deployed to Iraq for six months in late 2005 writing articles and taking photographs. Vance got the corporal rank, with decorations including the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal.

In 2007, he attended Ohio State University, graduating summa cum laude two years later.

He then went to Yale Law School in 2010 and graduated in 2013. During his time as a law student, he became part of The Yale Law Journal to work with a group of editors whose primary job was to check citations, the New York Times reported.

He is also an author

Vance's Yale law professor Amy Chua convinced him to write a memoir. In 2016, his Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis was published. In the book, he talked about the Appalachian values of his family from Kentucky and the socioeconomic problems of his hometown Ohio.

Streaming giant Netflix adapted it into the movie Hillbilly Elegy in 2020, starring Glen Close, Amy Adams, and Gabriel Basso.

He has an anti-immigrant stance

The Times reported that Vance promoted baseless claims that Haitian migrants were eating pets in the city of Springfield. The town's mayor and state's governor, both fellow Republicans, refuted and condemned the claims, but Vance never apologized for his false attacks. Instead, he claimed that he was simply passing along complaints from concerned constituents.

In line with Trump, Vance also claimed without proof that violent gangs of migrants are overtaking apartment complexes and towns across the country.

Vance has called for mass deportations, promising to “ensure that American homes go to Americans.”

He has given misogynistic comments

Vance was also criticized for his misogynistic comments. During the campaign, he said the US was being run by Democrats, corporate oligarchs, and "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too."

The comment is seen as an attack on public officials without biological children, revealing a disregard for blended families or adoption.

During his Senate run, Vance suggested he didn't believe in exceptions to abortion restrictions in cases of rape or incest. He said he'd support a 15-week federal abortion ban that had been proposed by Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

But since being handpicked by Trump, Vance took a softer stance, echoing Trump’s belief that abortion decisions must be left to the states and that Republicans must soften their demands for abortion restrictions to win elections.

Though he said he favored policies “to give women more options” when it came to abortion, he didn't say that, for him, abortion isn't one of those options.

Vance made another misogynistic remark during the campaign trail.

In an Atlanta rally, Vance told supporters that they're "going to take out the trash," and "the trash's name is Kamala Harris."