By the time JD Vance decided to run for political office in 2021, he had found a platform on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show and had the backing of billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel.

Vance had also undergone a political evolution from someone who once described himself as a “Never Trump guy,” to someone who had begun to echo former President Donald Trump’s rhetorical style, making increasingly provocative comments on subjects ranging from immigration to transgender issues.

“You cannot be a part of MAGA, you cannot be a part of the ‘New Right,’ if you’re not an aggressive, pugilistic figure, if you’re not a provocative figure,” David French, a conservative columnist for The New York Times, says in the above excerpt from the upcoming FRONTLINE documentary The VP Choice: Vance vs. Walz.

As the excerpt explores, some of those who had known Vance earlier in his life were alarmed by what they were hearing from him: “We disagreed all the time, but there was never name-calling. There was never this mean-spirited cruelty,” Vance’s former friend from his time at Yale Law School, Sofia Nelson, says in the excerpt.

But Vance’s shift moved him closer to getting a key endorsement from a man he had once thought could be America’s Hitler.

Vance’s journey to becoming the Republican vice presidential candidate in the 2024 election is chronicled in The VP Choice: Vance vs. Walz, premiering on PBS and online on Oct. 8. The documentary traces pivotal moments in Vance and Gov. Tim Walz’s political lives as they run for vice president.

As the excerpt shows, while Vance pursued his Senate candidacy, Thiel brought him to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

“Trump is very well aware of all the nasty things that Vance has said about him in the past,” Wall Street Journal journalist Molly Ball says in the excerpt. “So he knows he needs to make nice with Trump in some way.”

As Vance hit the campaign trail, Ball says, he wanted, “to convince Donald Trump that he’s his own man, but also that he’s a true believer, that he’s come around to these positions that Trump speaks for.”

Vance adopted Trump-inspired messaging as part of his campaign. In one Senate campaign ad, he echoed Trump’s platform, with text on-screen labeling Vance an “America First Conservative.” He said, “Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racist for wanting to build Trump’s wall. They censor us, but it doesn’t change the truth. Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans.”

The approach worked: Vance earned Trump’s endorsement for his Senate candidacy in April 2022. While Trump said that Vance had said some “bad s*** about me,” he welcomed the Republican Senate candidate onto the stage and embraced him, shaking his hand during a rally in Delaware, Ohio.

“The president is right. I wasn’t always nice,” Vance said at the rally. “But the simple fact is, he’s the best president of my lifetime and he revealed the corruption in this country like nobody else.”

Vance won the Republican primary for Ohio’s Senate seat that May, and he would go on to win the general election.

For the full story, watch The VP Choice: Vance vs. Walz. The documentary will be available to watch in full at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS App on October 8, 2024. It will premiere on PBS stations (check local listings) and on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel that night at 10/9c and will also be available on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. The VP Choice: Vance vs. Walz is a FRONTLINE Production with Schonder Productions and Left/Right Docs. The director is Gabrielle Schonder. The producers are Anya Bourg and Laura Kuhn. The writers are Anya Bourg, Gabrielle Schonder and James Jacoby. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.

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