Trump v Biden latest: JD Vance makes first primetime speech at convention after being chosen by Trump as running mate

Trump’s running mate goes on to tell Trump he “officially accepts his nomination to be vice president of the US”.

He says “never in his wildest imagination” would he have believed that he could be standing there tonight.

“I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, family, community, and country with their whole hearts,” he says.

“But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.

“When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good American manufacturing jobs to Mexico.

“When I was a sophomore in high school, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good middle class jobs.

“And when I was a senior in high school, Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.”

He says “Trump was right on all of these issues while Biden was wrong”.

“Donald Trump knew, even then, that we needed leaders who would put America first,” he says.

“Thanks to these policies that Biden and other out-of-touch politicians in Washington gave us, our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods and cheap foreign labour. And in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl.

“Joe Biden screwed up, and my community paid the price.”

He says despite the closing factories and the growing addiction in towns like his he “had a guardian angel by my side”. 

“She was an old woman who could barely walk but was tough as nails. I called her Mamaw, the name we hillbillies gave to our grandmothers,” he says.

“Mamaw raised me as my own mother struggled with addiction. She was a woman of many contradictions: she loved the Lord, she was a woman of very deep Christian faith, but she also loved the f-word.

“I’m not kidding, she could make a sailor blush. She once told me, when she found out that I was spending too much time with a local kid known for dealing drugs, that if I ever saw that kid again, she’d run him over with her car.”