It was a mystery to everyone but former President Donald Trump up until the last few minutes before the announcement. Donald Trump, Jr. told podcaster Benny Johnson Monday night that he didn’t have a clue whom his father would pick as his potential vice president. 

But hours before the Republican National Convention began, Trump announced that Ohio Sen. JD Vance was it. 

Just as Saturday’s near-fatal assassination attempt had ultimately provided Trump with a moment of visceral political courage and bravura, so this decision signaled that the former president intends to act and govern as a principled conservative populist who really says what he means and means what he says. 

For millions of Republicans who feared that Trump would select an establishment GOP name to “balance” the ticket, Trump’s decision was not only a joyous affirmation that he intends to be the president his supporters long him to be but it was a grand repudiation of the RINOs and Uniparty that seek to contain the cosmic energy surrounding Trump and ensure that it will be business as usual.

Trump wrote on Truth Social, "After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator J.D. Vance of the Great State of Ohio. J.D. honorably served our Country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, Summa Cum Laude, and is a Yale Law School Graduate, where he was Editor of The Yale Law Journal, and President of the Yale Law Veterans Association."

Can you imagine if Trump decided “that the person suited” for the job was former Ambassador to UN Nikki Haley? 

Now, don’t laugh; even some stalwart conservatives were suggesting that Haley might be good compromise for Trump, allowing him to be magnanimous about a woman who had opposed him in the primaries and attempted to hijack the Republican Party from the MAGA faithful to the Uniparty. As a side note, Haley spoke Tuesday night, prompting some mild boos from the audience. In her speech she urged Republicans to adopt a big tent approach to voters. Apparently, she is unaware that this is precisely what Trump has already done.

Needless to say, picking her would have been a political disaster.

And, in so many ways, Trump is demonstrating his magnanimity and his trust by nominating Vance. 

Vance has become so much the embodiment of MAGA conviction that it is easy to forget that eight years ago he was a dedicated critic of Trump, a never Trumper in the same lane as people like George Conway or David Frum. Vance even privately compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, the ultimate stage of Trump Derangement Syndrome. 

But Vance has experienced the sort of political transformation and ideological epiphany that his critics are quick to dismiss but which is entirely normal in the political lives of perspicacious individuals who are capable of critical thinking and applying the lessons of that evaluation to their own lives.

The late, great President Ronald Reagan is another fine example of political evolution. Here was a life-long Democrat who realized his party was not on the right side of freedom and he demonstrated his political conversion at the 1964 RNC that nominated avowed conservative Barry Goldwater as its presidential candidate. Reagan’s keynote address defined the conservative movement for decades and his words and vision survived both the crushing defeat to President Lyndon Johnston and the tragically unfulfilled promise of President Richard NIxon’s landslide victory of 1972. 

So in nominating Vance, Trump is issuing a pledge of allegiance to Republican voters that he intends to stay the course. He will not be held captive by the Deep State and run a White House that is beholden to the same special interests that the current administration is indentured to. 

Vance is America First in both domestic and foreign policy. That might be termed as populist and isolationist but it means he recognizes that what President Joe Biden has done to America through his criminal open border program is not just wrong-headed but suicidal.

But you won’t find many Republicans sitting in Congress supporting the flood of illegals into the United States. 

They haven’t done much to stop it either. 

But what Vance represents even more is that Trump is going to rediscover his commitment to ending America’s endless foreign wars – and that must start with Ukraine. 

Trump has been somewhat two-faced on Biden’s support to Ukraine. He supported the last massive infusion of cash and in the first and probably last 2024 presidential debate he was a bit vague about whether the hundreds of billions of dollars should continue to flow to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

This year’s RNC will feature about 100 speakers from Trump to the average American victims of Biden’s fiscal policies.

There have been a plethora of senators and representatives on the stage thus far and by the time this convention is over, there will be some who aren’t happy in the least that Vance has been selected as the VP.

The Congress is replete with Republicans who have been bought and sold to the Military-Industrial Complex and who, like Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), fervently believe in the perpetuation of conflict around the world because he and the merchants of death are benefitting from it. 

The pro-war Republicans, along with their Democratic allies, have ignored the reality that Ukraine is a shell of a country, run by a dictator and corrupt politicians who are pocketing American aid and literally running out of men and women to deploy to the battlefield.

They are also completely delusional about the potential for a nuclear Third World War that is not just on the horizon but just across the river.

The mainstream media is already lamenting the possibility that this war in Ukraine – already effectively over anyway – will not continue for another two years and will not persist in being the raison d’etre of American foreign policy. 

As I write this the morning after day one of the convention, I predict that not one senator, congressman or congresswoman will take to the stage and deliver a passionate plea to continue to secure Ukraine’s borders when the US cannot protect its own southern border. 

The choice of Vance means that Trump – increasingly certain to regain the presidency  – has also chosen to move forward with a true America First policy that is not obsessed with European security but more concerned with sovereignty at home.

It means a federal government that believes in borders that will stem not just the illegal immigration but the lethal fentanyl that has infected the homeland.

This selection will make Trump more enemies within the fading Republican establishment but make him more friends among patriotic Americans who have long known they have been held hostage by administrations who think and act exactly alike.

The game of political charade has ended.

We begin the next era of Donald Trump.