House Speaker Mike Johnson channeled his inner dad energy as he excitedly recorded Vice President JD Vance’s first time in the Oval Office. The speaker not only celebrated the moment, but he noted Vance’s background, saying his story is one that could happen “only in America.”
“As we gathered for our meeting at the White House yesterday, JD Vance mentioned to us that he had never before visited the Oval Office. I told him and President Trump that I HAD to capture the moment on video,” Johnson wrote in a post on X. “Only in America can a hardworking young man from Appalachia rise from his humble circumstances to enter the Oval for first time as VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. What a country!”
REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS MEET WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP, VP VANCE TO ADVANCE AGENDA
Vance’s background took center stage in the campaign as then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Min., made a joke about no one from his small town going to Yale, where Vance got his law degree.
“Now, I grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people. I had 24 kids in my high school class, and none of them went to Yale,” Walz said during his remarks at the Democratic National Convention.
The Trump campaign was quick to call out Walz’s remarks on social media, calling it a “weird flex.”
WHO IS TRUMP’S RUNNING MATE JD VANCE?
Before he was chosen as President Donald Trump’s running mate, Vance served as a senator from Ohio after winning the seat in 2022. However, the current vice president entered the public eye in 2016 when he published his book, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.” In the book, he details his challenging upbringing in Middletown, Ohio.
Surrounded by poverty, and grappling with his mother’s drug addiction, Vance worked his way into a position to make change.
In 2020, years after the memoir was published, it was turned into a Netflix movie, which was directed by Ron Howard and starred Glenn Close and Amy Adams. “Hillbilly Elegy” faced fierce criticism, which both Close and Adams rejected. Recently, while on “The View,” Close praised the vice president’s “very generous family.”
Vance’s mother, Beverly Aikins, has been sober for a decade. Aikins briefly addressed the crowd at the Ohio inaugural ball, which was held in Washington, D.C., on Sunday night. She informed the crowd that she officially hit 10 years of sobriety that day and that the next day was her birthday, in addition to it being her son’s inauguration, Cincinnati.com reported.
Vance returned to his hometown for a rally held at Middletown High School, from which he graduated in 2003. He told the crowd that the town was “so good to me,” and that he was “proud” to be from Middletown.
