I’m sure you’ve heard the news: Donald Trump has selected Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his Vice Presidential running mate.

When he made that choice, he was surely thinking about the veteran population—16 million strong in the United States.
J.D. was an enlisted man in the Marines—serving our nation in the Iraq War. He deployed—he knows what that means.

The “veteran vote” matters—and it matters enormously in the five key swing states that will be instrumental to the result in the 2024 contest—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona and Nevada.

Donald Trump won 61 percent of the veteran vote in 2016, but only 54 percent of that vote in 2020. That seven-point drop mattered—especially given the narrow margins of our recent elections, especially in the swing states.

Trump has often said “I will be your voice” to rural America and the hollowed-out manufacturing heartland. J.D. Vance extends and deepens that message, especially to the veteran and military communities. Add the Yale law degree and the skill set it signifies to a natural fluency in the language of the working class and the lower-middle class.  

Donald Trump has added a tribune of the people to his already populist campaign.