3 things to watch in Vance’s convention speech

MILWAUKEE — Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) is set for the biggest moment in his young political life on Wednesday night when he addresses the Republican National Convention as former President Trump’s newly designated running mate.

Vance, who was officially tapped by Trump for the post on Monday, has been in elected office for barely a year and a half, but his impact on Republican politics has been widely felt. Since his emergence onto the political scene, he has become one of the leading voices on the former president’s “America First” agenda.

Here are three things to watch when the Ohio Republican takes the stage tonight:

Welcome to the Big Leagues

Vance has worn a number of hats in his professional life, including venture capitalist, best-selling author and, most recently, Ohio’s junior senator. But nothing will be as high-pressure as Wednesday’s address, which will include his first in-person remarks since becoming the VP selection. 

Ever since Trump made the move official, Vance has largely laid low, having appeared two nights in a row in the presidential suite at Fiserv Forum, with a walk around downtown Milwaukee alongside his children and his newly minted Secret Service detail in between. 

But the stakes for him become real tonight, and Republicans have high expectations for when he appears before delegates and attendees to deliver his speech.

Lawmakers in the days since he was picked have lauded him on multiple fronts, but none more so than his ability to be an effective messenger for Trump.

“He’s just been an incredible fighter since he saw that [Trump] was real,” said Donald Trump Jr., one of Vance’s top supporters. “That kind of energy for the movement, for the country, for jobs, for world peace — I couldn’t be happier.”

On Wednesday night, Vance will need to deliver on the hype.

What does he say about Ukraine?

For all of Vance’s talk on various issues, none stick out more than his steadfast opposition to providing aid to Ukraine for their ongoing war with Russia that has continued for more than two years — a topic that has sharply divided Republicans in the process. 

Vance has been one of the highest-profile Republicans to consistently oppose providing more aid for the war-torn nation. He has also argued that Kyiv should cede land in the east to Russia in order to bring the war to an end. 

According to Vance, the $60 billion in funds President Biden and Congress greenlighted in the spring merely maintains the status quo and is a bad decision no matter how you slice it. He has argued that the U.S. lacks the capacity to produce the requisite weaponry that Ukraine would need to win the war, adding that the aid represents a “fraction” of what the nation would need. This doesn’t even account for what he has claimed would be a gargantuan cost to rebuild the country. 

“By committing to a defensive strategy, Ukraine can preserve its precious military manpower, stop the bleeding and provide time for negotiations to commence. But this would require both the American and Ukrainian leadership to accept that Mr. Zelensky’s stated goal for the war — a return to 1991 boundaries — is fantastical,” Vance wrote in an April op-ed in The New York Times, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

“The White House has said time and again that it can’t negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd,” he continued. “The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.”

Whether Vance broaches this subject tonight will be interesting in itself. Whether or not he does, his nomination to become Trump’s deputy also raises the question of whether future aid can pass — and the answer is murky at best despite the strong vote Republicans saw in April.

“It’s hard to say,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), potentially the next Republican leader, told The Hill on Monday when asked what Vance’s nomination means for possibly passing another batch of aid.

Trump’s attack dog 

Ever since his election to the Senate, it has been hard to find someone more willing to defend the president on Capitol Hill with such ferocity and precision as Vance. 

A prime example came in December after Trump said that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country, a remark that infuriated Democrats and that most Republicans recoiled in response to, either declining to comment or denouncing them. 

Not so with Vance, who issued a passionate defense of the former president, decrying the idea that he was borrowing rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler and maintaining that he was talking about the drug epidemic. 

“First of all, he didn’t say immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country. He said illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country, which is objectively and obviously true to anybody who looks at the statistics about fentanyl overdoses,” Vance said. “This is ridiculous. If you watch the speech in context and look at what’s going on, it’s obvious that he was talking about the very clear fact that the blood of Americans is being poisoned by a drug epidemic.” 

“To take that comment and then to immediately assume that he’s talking about immigrants as Adolf Hitler was talking about Jews is preposterous,” he said. “You guys need to wake up … It’s an absurd question. It’s an absurd framing.”

The back-and-forth ricocheted across conservative media. 

Now, Vance has a second full-time job: to be Trump’s pit bull, and it’s a gig he is uniquely suited to take on.