At 3:04 PM ET yesterday, in a posting on his Truth Social media platform, former president Donald Trump finally announced his choice for a vice presidential running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. Recent speculation had centered on three finalists: Vance, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Last Thursday I reported in an exclusive at American Thinker, based on information from a high level anonymous source, that Vance would be Trump’s VP choice. Yesterday, AT deputy editor and prolific contributor Monica Showalter generously credited me with breaking a world exclusive in that article.

Less than three hours after Sen. Vance’s elevation to the #2 spot on the 2024 GOP national ticket, the candidate appeared with Sean Hannity for an uninterrupted 34-minute live interview on Hannity’s 6 PM ET program on FOX News. The venue was FOX News’s studios above the Republican Convention floor in the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. Music and noise from the convention goings-on below was a prominent part of the soundtrack.

The interview, Vance’s first since his nomination as the 2024 Republican Vice Presidential candidate, was a casual one on one affair skillfully conducted by Hannity. The Q&A ranged from the personal to the political.

Highlights and excerpts from the transcript provided by FOX News Media follow. A video of the entire interview can be accessed here.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Joining us now, marine, Senator, author of the massive big hit, both in a book form and movie, ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ is the Republican vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance.

Sir, how are you?

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:  Good, man. . .

HANNITY:  I’m sure you have had a very slow day today.

VANCE:  Yes, that’s right. Nothing happened. Pretty boring. . .

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY:  Let’s talk about the process. . .

What was it like? Because the last couple of days, well, it’s down to two, you and Senator Rubio. What was that like for you?

VANCE:  You know, I just tried to enjoy the ride. What an honor to be considered. If it had been Senator Rubio, obviously, Marco is a good guy, he’s a good friend. So I tried to just have a good attitude about it.

My family’s very excited, obviously asking a lot of questions. I will say, Sean, I hope I’m not betraying too many confidences here, but when the president called me today to actually formally offer me to become the vice presidential nominee, which just sounds crazy, my son, my 7-year-old son was sort of making noise in the background.

I’m getting so embarrassed. It’s like, oh, my God, Donald Trump’s asking me to be his vice president.

HANNITY:  So the phone rings, and he calls you and you’re like, OK, this is the call or maybe not the call?

VANCE:  Or maybe it’s a bad call, right?

HANNITY:  Right.

VANCE:  It’s the call. Who knows whether it’s good or bad.

But then he actually has me put my 7-year-old son on the phone. You think about this. Everything that’s happened, the guy just got shot at a couple of days ago, and he takes the time to talk to my 7-year-old. It’s a moment I will never forget.

HANNITY:  . . . And what did he actually say?

VANCE:  Yes, he just said, look, I think we have got to go save this country. I think you’re the guy who can help me in the best way. You can help me govern. You can help me win. You can help me in some of these Midwestern states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and so forth.

And he said, rightfully, that we have been very, very close for a long time, ‘but especially since I endorsed you in 2022.’ And I would not have won that race without Donald Trump’s endorsement. And the president’s trust then and his partnership since then has been something I value a great deal. . .

Sen. J.D. Vance and Sean Hannity, live on FOX News July 15, 2024 (Screenshot of video courtesy and used with permission of FOX News Media)

Hannity next asked Vance several questions about some issues that might emerge as significant in the coming campaign. The first one involved Vance’s positions on abortion.

HANNITY:  Here’s a guy -- this was -- came out of Ohio -- ‘His [Vance’s] support for a national abortion ban and his twisted belief that women should stay in violent marriages for the benefit of their children exemplifies his dangerous extreme extremism. He’s not just wrong for Ohio. He’s wrong for the country.’ . . .

HANNITY:  How do you address that?

VANCE:  Well, look, Sean, first of all, Democrats have completely twisted my words here.

And, as you know, both me and my mom actually were victims of domestic violence. When they say that Vance has supported women staying in violent marriages, I think it’s shameful for them to take a guy with my history and my background and say that that’s what I believe. It’s not what I believe. It’s not what I said.

And I think, Sean, it’s evidence of the Democrats’ complete inability to talk about the future. What are Republicans running on? Delivering the peace and prosperity that Donald Trump already delivered in his four years. What are Democrats running on? Lies and complete distortions of people’s records.

That is something I think the American people want to reject. They’re too smart for it.

Hannity then asked Vance if the Democrats’ playbook of attacking Trump as an enemy of democracy would present a problem.

HANNITY: The Democrats are going to try to make this election about, quote, ‘democracy in peril.’ How often have we heard that? Meanwhile, they might want to disenfranchise every primary voter that they had. And they wanted to get Donald Trump off the ticket in some states, another example.

It’d be about January 6. It would be about abortion and we hate Donald Trump.

VANCE:  Exactly right.

HANNITY:  Can they run on the issue, is the country better off than it was four years ago?

VANCE:  Of course they can’t, Sean. They can’t run on that at all.

And they can’t run on the issue of, is the world more peaceful than it was four years ago? Remember, when Donald Trump left office, you had real growing peace movements all over the world, the Abraham Accords that showed real promise of uniting the Israelis with some of the Sunni Arab states. There was no war in Europe.

Asia looked like it was under pretty good control. And three years later, it seems like we have a conflict in every corner of the world, and Americans are poorer, Sean.

You know a little about my background. I grew up in a poor family. I remember when my grandmother, who raised me, she used to negotiate with the Meals on Wheels people to give her additional food so that she could feed me.

How does a family like that deal with Joe Biden’s grocery price inflation? How does a family like that deal with gasoline and energy price inflation? It’s gotten more expensive just to live a good life in this country.

Donald Trump and I want to make that better. And we have policies to make it better. Democrats have lies and distortions. And, again, I don’t think the American people are going to reward that.

Sen. J.D. Vance at the start of his July 15th interview with Sean Hannity (Screenshot of video courtesy and used with permission of FOX News Media)

Vance has already started receiving scrutiny and criticism for comments he made in 2016 that were anti-Trump. CNN, for example, has been showing clips of a clean shaven, slightly heavier 31 year old Vance in October 2016, suddenly in the limelight because of the tremendous success of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy published in June of that year, disparaging the Republican presidential nominee.

HANNITY: I knew this question would come up. . . And that was past comments that you had made about him [Donald Trump]. And when I -- I will tell you after what his response was.

(LAUGHTER)

VANCE:  Sure.

HANNITY:  But you weren't -- didn't have the nicest things to say about him back in 2016 --

VANCE:  Yes.

HANNITY:  -- which seems like a long time ago now.

You literally said -- you texted a friend that Trump is a cynical a-hole like Nixon, who wouldn’t be that bad and might even prove useful, and that he’s America’s Hitler. And you compared him to a cultural heroin in The Atlantic Monthly.

And I will tell you Trump’s response. But you said that then. What do you say to people that say, well, wait a minute, what did he mean?

VANCE:  Well, Sean, I don’t hide from that. I was certainly skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016.

But President Trump was a great president, and he changed my mind. I think he changed the minds of a lot of Americans, because, again, he delivered that peace and prosperity. If you go back to what I thought in 2016, another thing that was going on, Sean, is, I bought into the media’s lies and distortions.

I bought into this idea that somehow he was going to be so different, a terrible threat to democracy. It was a joke. Joe Biden is the one who’s trying to throw his political opposition in jail. Joe Biden is the one who’s trying to undermine American law and order.

President Trump did a really good job. And I actually think it’s a good thing. When you see somebody, you were wrong about him, you ought to admit the mistake and admit that you were wrong.

HANNITY:  When I brought it up to him, he said --

VANCE:  I can’t wait for this.

HANNITY:  OK.

(LAUGHTER)

HANNITY:  When I brought it up to him, he said, ‘Yes,’ he goes, ‘but he doesn’t think that way now, does he?’

So he actually had a very good sense of humor about it. It also says a lot about him, and he understands. Were you as political back then?

VANCE:  Not really, Sean. I mean, my book came out in 2016, Hillbilly Elegy. It’s really sort of the story of growing up in poverty, achieving the American dream, starting out in business. And I really didn’t care that much about politics. I certainly had views. I was a Republican, but I was not as nearly as involved, obviously, as I am today.

And, again, something that really changed for me, and I think for a lot of Americans, is, we saw the results of the Trump presidency compared to the obsessive, deranged media reaction in ‘20 and 2020. Like, what’s going on? What’s so bad about this guy that he’s delivered rising wages for American workers and peace in the world? Why is the media so obsessed with him?

I think a lot of Americans actually have had a similar awakening over the last few years, because you compare the results with the reaction, and, clearly, the people with the reaction to the problem, that’s not President Trump’s problem.

HANNITY:  You know, a lot of people forget too, back in the first debate, I believe it was, and Kamala Harris was on the stage with Joe Biden at the time, and she said, ‘I was that girl,’ if you remember that moment.

VANCE:  Yes.

HANNITY:  It was a very hard-hitting moment.

And what she was referring to is the fact that Joe Biden had partnered with a former Klansman and tried to stop the integration of public schools. Joe Biden’s words, he didn’t want those schools to become ‘racial jungles’ and --

VANCE:  Sean, Kamala Harris basically said Joe Biden wouldn’t want a little black girl like me to live in her neighborhood. He also palled around with Klansmen.

She said this months before she joined his ticket, Sean. I said some bad things about Donald Trump 10 years ago, but I think it’s actually important to be able, again, to admit that you’re wrong, and I think I can make a good case to the American people, people who may have been skeptical of the president back in 2016. Who can be skeptical now that we have seen the results?

Next up was a question about Biden’s open border and Trump’s assertion that he would deport millions of illegal immigrants.

HANNITY:  All right, let’s talk about a little bit -- and I think these are important times and consequential times. . . And we see what’s happening with the border, for example. I think it’s now become the number one national security threat.

VANCE:  Oh, absolutely.

HANNITY:  And we have nearly 11 million unvetted Joe Biden illegal immigrants in this country. What should we do with them?

VANCE:  Well, Sean, we have to deport people. We have to deport people who broke our laws, who came in here.

And I think we start with the violent criminals. And President Trump has been very, very effective at communicating on this, so to the point where now a majority of Americans believe that we need to deport a large number of people who have come here illegally. That’s a major political victory for him.

And I think it’s going to lead to a policy victory for the American people. But, Sean, we have to talk about the fentanyl problem, because this is something that I know extremely personally. And we have close to 100,000 Americans dying of drug overdoses every single year. Most of it is brought in by Mexican drug cartels, manufactured in China, then brought in by these cartels.

To get a little personal, my mom struggled with addiction for a big chunk of my early life. That’s why my grandmother, who I call Mamaw, raised me.

But the coolest thing, maybe the greatest blessing of my life, is that my mom is about to celebrate 10 years sober. And she is able to celebrate 10 years sober, frankly, because the poison that’s coming across the border now wasn’t coming across in such large numbers 15 years ago.

We are depriving Americans of a second chance with their loved ones. You cannot keep on doing this. You’re orphaning an entire generation of kids. Go to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Sean, you have thousands of grandparents raising grandchildren that they weren’t expecting to raise because of the poison. Joe Biden let it come across the border.

President Trump is the guy to stop this. And if we don’t stop it, we’re going to lose a generation of young kids. . .

HANNITY: What do we do with the nearly 11 million unvetted illegal immigrants, and I might add, many coming from countries with terror ties like Syria and Iran and Afghanistan and people from Venezuela and Egypt and tens of thousands from China and Russia?

VANCE:  Yes, absolutely.

HANNITY:  What do we -- what should happen? Is there an orderly way to say, if you didn’t come in legally, we will escort you home?

VANCE:  Yes, there is, Sean.

First of all, we have got to stop the flow to begin with. Joe Biden has thrown open the southern border. President Trump had it under control. We have got to stop the flow to begin with. Now, what do you do with the 11 million people -- I actually think it’s probably more than 11 million people who are here right now.

Number one, you start with the most violent people, the people who have criminal records, and you have got to be willing to deport them. Number two --

HANNITY:  How do we find them?

VANCE:  Well, I think, a lot of them, we actually know where they are, Sean. That’s what the crazy thing about the Biden administration is they let people in, they give them asylum, and we actually know that these people are sort of out there in our country.

Some will be hard to find, sure, but a lot of them, you actually can find just because -- just if you actually try to look, which is what the Biden administration hasn’t done.

The second thing, Sean, is, we have got to make it hard for illegal aliens to work in our country. It undercuts the wages of American workers. It invites more people to come in illegally. And if you make it hard for people to work, a lot of them are going to go back anyway. And you do those two things, I think you can go a long way to solving a problem, but you have got to stop the flow. That’s the most important thing. . .

Hannity’s interview with Vance took up the first 34 minutes, without commercial interruption, of the FOX News host’s one hour program. There was more substantive Q&A that in the interests of space could not be reproduced here. The video of the interview, however, can be viewed in its entirety here.

Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran journalist who has covered national politics and other topics for over five decades. His most recent interview on BBC Radio in the U.K. can be listened to here. His web page with links to his work and a bio is http://peter.media. Peter’s extensive American Thinker archive: http://tinyurl.com/pcathinker. His Twitter account is @pchowka.