J. D. Vance
James David 'J. D.' Vance (born James Donald Bowman) is an American politician and lawyer and US senator from Ohio since 2023. He was announced and nominated as Donald Trump's running mate on the Republican ticket for the 2024 United States presidential election, and became Vice President of the United States in January 2025.
With a political image as a "social conservative", he seems in reality to be a front man for Peter Thiel and the Paypal Mafia.
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Background
After graduating from Middletown High School, Vance joined the US Marine Corps, where he became a corporal and served from 2003 to 2007 as a combat correspondent, with six months in Iraq. He attended Ohio State University afterward, graduating in 2009, then graduated in 2013 from Yale Law School, where he was an editor of The Yale Law Journal.
Activities
Vance worked as principal at Peter Thiel's firm, Mithril Capital, between 2016 and 2017.[1][2]
In 2019, Vance co-founded Narya Capital in Cincinnati with financial backing from Thiel, Eric Schmidt, and Marc Andreessen.[3] With Thiel and former Trump adviser Darren Blanton, Vance has invested in the online video platform Rumble.[4]
Vance received a record-breaking amount of money from deep state actor Peter Thiel to win the seat as Senator from Ohio. Thiel had already donated support J.D. Vance in the Ohio Republican Senate primary, in total investing $15 million to bolster Vance — the largest amount ever given to boost a single Senate candidate.[5]
Vance is a strong supporter of U.S. support for Israel amid the Israel–Hamas war.[6]
Publication
In 2016, Vance published his memoir "Hillbilly Elegy", which was given considerable attention by the commercially-controlled media during the 2016 US election. In 2020, it was adapted into a Netflix film starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close.[7]
Related Quotation
| Page | Quote | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donald Trump/Second presidency | “My opinion generally is that some figures in the Trump administration were kind of chosen as a PR move and that they're not actually in charge of what they're nominally in charge of.
"So, like Pete Hegseth, head of the Pentagon, he's kind of a Fox and Friends, you know, he's a TV show host. And the The Deputy Director of the Pentagon, Steve Feinberg of Cerberus Capital, is most likely the person actually running the Pentagon, not Hegseth, in my opinion. "And I think that's true also for, RFK Junior in charge of HHS. I don't really think he's running. He's just kind of this figure that connected with Trump's base, particularly during the Covid era, and made them think reforms would come. And those reforms haven't really come, but he's kind of there to give the impression that things have changed. But the person behind him, the deputy secretary, is Jim O'Neill, who's a career affiliate of Peter Thiel who's also the power behind J.D. Vance and, you know, the man that made Palantir what it is. "And so, you know, I think it's just a way of sort of masking the people that are actually running stuff. And I think that's probably true, too, of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. They were making the rounds on podcasts and were making these connections and building trust and relationships with the public in Trump's base. But it seems like they're not actually, running anything, in my opinion. They're kind of figureheads in a way, and they're willing figureheads. I would say."” | Whitney Webb | 28 July 2025 |
Events Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donald Trump/Second presidency | 20 January 2025 | 20 January 2029 | The Donald Trump 2.0 administration. | |
| Munich Security Conference/2024 | 16 February 2024 | 18 February 2024 | Germany Munich Bavaria | Annual conference of mid-level functionaries from the military-industrial complex - politicians, propagandists and lobbyists - in their own bubble, far from the concerns of their subjects |
| Munich Security Conference/2025 | 14 February 2025 | 16 February 2025 | Germany Munich Bavaria | Annual conference of mid-level functionaries from the military-industrial complex - politicians, propagandists and lobbyists - in their own bubble, far from the concerns of their subjects |
| National Conservative Conference | 15 May 2023 | 17 May 2023 | London UK | A 2023 conference on Conservativism |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:JD Vance has some weird influences | Article | 17 July 2024 | Gavin Haynes | "I think Trump is going to run again in 2024", JD Vance once said. "I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people." |
| Document:Why Trump Can't Shake Jeffrey Epstein | interview | 17 July 2025 | Ezra Klein | "When Jeffrey Epstein was indicted and then later found dead, that made it just explode because this was a case where you didn’t come off like a crazy person if you said:
|
References
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20210506175430/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-20/peter-thiel-s-mithril-capital-raises-850-million-vc-fund
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20240325024811/https://www.businessinsider.com/jd-vance-venture-capital-opioid-nonprofit-tech-record-ohio-senate-2021-8
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20201213021024/https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/inno/stories/inno-insights/2020/02/16/jd-vance-s-new-cincinnati-based-vc-firm-excites.html
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20220207182452/https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-j-d-vance-invest-in-rumble-video-platform-popular-on-political-right-11621447661
- ↑ https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/03/jd-vance-win-ohio-primary-00029881
- ↑ https://thehill.com/policy/international/4773538-jd-vance-foreign-policy/
- ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/movies/hillbilly-elegy-jd-vance.html
