‘More Trump than Trump’: JD Vance becomes effective Maga messenger

After an inauspicious start, the Ohio senator has become a tribune for Trump's biggest issues: immigration and the economy

When Donald Trump tapped JD Vance, the US senator and never-Trumper turned Maga superstar, as his vice-presidential pick, the Rust belt populist was in for a rude awakening.

In a viral video, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz called Vance and the Maga movement just weird", an insult that quickly became a meme. The reintroduction of his past remarks on the impropriety of childless cat ladies" being involved in government spread almost as fast as an online joke about the Ohioan having intimate relations with a couch.