Can Trump replace JD Vance as his running mate?

Donald Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his running mate “may be one of the best things he ever did for Democrats,” according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Seemingly every day, the Republican senator from Ohio has made headlines for resurfaced misogynistic comments, awkward campaign appearances and fringe policy positions on issues that the former president’s campaign has desperately been trying to avoid.

Vance stepped off the stage of the Republican National Convention with the worst favorability ratio of any non-incumbent vice presidential candidate in nearly 45 years, while presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris erased Trump’s leads in crucial swing states and saw a surge in donations within just weeks of her candidacy.

He later was revealed as a close collaborator with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 authors and a natalist evangelist with a history of supporting extreme ideas about abortion care and IVF.

Trump has defended his running mate, who he sees as a bridge to a new generation of far-right populists reshaping a Republican Party made in his MAGA image.

But Vance’s campaign trail debut has left some speculating whether Trump could end up kicking him off. There isn’t a dedicated Trump-Vance campaign website, and the former president’s campaign page doesn’t include Vance at all.

It is still technically possible, but a decision would likely have to come very soon.

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Republican and Democratic parties have separate rules for deciding who ends up on the ticket, but states will begin printing and mailing out absentee ballots as early as September.

Most states require parties to submit their presidential candidates within 60 to 75 days before Election Day, which falls on November 5 this year. That means most deadlines will fall around mid-August. States with earlier deadlines — such as Ohio, which initially determined that names be finalized by August 7 — have extended those to accommodate later submissions.

Ohio’s initial deadline prompted Democratic National Committee officials to start a virtual nomination process before the party’s convention on August 19. But Ohio’s secretary of state moved the deadline to September 1.

Republican National Committee rules explain how to fill a vice presidential vacancy that “may occur as the result of death, declination, or otherwise” after the nominating convention. The Republican National Convention ended on July 18.

Under party rules, members can reconvene or hold a vote among a smaller group that could determine Vance’s replacement. A replacement would need a majority of votes to be selected.

A similar process would follow if Vance voluntarily stepped aside.

It’s extremely unlikely, and it would be unusual, but it has happened before.

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Weeks after the Democratic National Convention in 1972, George McGovern’s running mate Tom Eagleton revealed that he had endured electroshock therapy for severe depression in the 1960s.

McGovern initially said he was backing Eagleton “1,000 percent” but Eaglelon withdrew at McGovern’s request — roughly 19 days after he was nominated, triggering a new search for a running mate with roughly three months left to Election Day.

In 1912, Vice President James Sherman died six days before Election Day as President William Howard Taft was running for re-election. Taft, with newly selected vice presidential candidate Nicholas Butler, was defeated in that year’s election by Woodrow Wilson.

Despite rules that would allow him to swap out a running mate, doing so would likely ignite a scandal that would create an immense unwanted distraction for Republicans and potential voters at a vulnerable moment in the crucial weeks before Election Day.

And then there are the influential pro-Vance figures whose endorsements likely got him on the ticket in the first place — people like Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr, Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk, who have hoped to channel their extremely online far-right agendas into a Trump-Vance administration.

Silicon Valley figureheads with ties to Vance from his venture capitalist days have also been prepared to inject enormous sums of cash into the Trump campaign.

But Trump himself even seemed to acknowledge that whoever ends up as his running mate doesn’t matter all too much.

“I will say this, and I think this is well documented: Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact,” Trump said during a 34-minute panel at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago on July 31.

He also has repeatedly defended Vance, even against the one-word tidal wave of “weird” to describe Trump and the GOP’s agenda.

“They’re the weird ones,” Trump said of Democrats during a radio interview on August 1. “I’m a lot of things, but weird I’m not, and I’m up front, and he’s not either. I will tell you, JD is not at all. They are.”

“He has a choice: Does he keep Vance on the ticket — where he … already has a whole lot of baggage, he’s probably going to be more baggage over the weeks because we’ll hear more things about him — or does he pick someone new?” Schumer told CBS on July 28. “What’s his choice?”