The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump wants the American senator J D Vance to become the USA's next vice president. But the two men's relationship has a shaky history.
In 2016, Vance was very critical of Trump, he thought Trump was a charlatan, says US expert Dag Blanck.
J D Vance is a senator who grew up in Ohio. Previously, he has been a successful businessman who has worked in the tech industry in San Francisco, among other things.
Vance is also an author and has written the book "Hillbilly - a family and culture in crisis".
He received a lot of attention with that book, an attempt to understand Trump voters. He meant that the east coast and west coast elites did not understand, says Dag Blanck, professor of North American Studies at Uppsala University.
After previously calling Trump an "idiot", Vance has changed his opinion of the former president and is now a strong supporter of Trump.
He thinks Trump became a good president and has regretted what he said earlier, and he has apologized. He is very loyal to Donald Trump.
When Trump was president, between 2017-2021, it was Mike Pence who was his running mate. Pence remained one of the employees who were most loyal to Trump, but after the 2020 election, the relationship between them soured. After the 2020 election loss, Trump publicly pressured Pence to invalidate the election results, but the vice president resisted the demand. During the storming of the Capitol, the crowd chanted "hang Mike Pence".
Pence has condemned Trump's actions during the storming.
Now that Trump is choosing a vice presidential candidate again, loyalty is the absolute most important thing. He doesn't want a repetition of what happened with Mike Pence, says Dag Blanck.
