Former US president Donald Trump picked Ohio Senator JD Vance, a once-fierce critic turned loyal ally, as his Republican running mate on Monday.
The Republican National Convention kicked off the first of four days in Milwaukee when Mr Trump made the announcement via his social media channel Truth Social.
Mr Trump is due to formally accept the party's nomination in a prime-time address on Thursday and will challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 5 election.
Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social: “After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person best suited to assume position of Vice President of the United States is senator JD Vance of the Great State of Ohio.”
He added that Mr Vance has served “honourably” in the Marines and he would be “strongly focused” on helping farmers and American workers if he were to once again be elected president. Mr Trump added that Mr Vance would do everything “to help me Make America Great Again”. Vance’s name has already been put on Trump’s campaign plane next to the former president’s.
It comes as a new Times poll suggests Mr Trump is on course to win the 2024 presidential election, and just days after he was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The former president was left shocked and bloodied after a bullet grazed his ear in an assassination attempt on Saturday.
Mr Vance, 39, has rallied support for Mr Trump in recent months.
The Yale-educated entrepreneur is behind the best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir that followed his blue-collar upbringing in the "rust-belt" Midwest.
Also a veteran of the marines, he ran for the Senate in 2022 with Mr Trump's crucial endorsement.
The senator, who is anti abortion, said recently: "I want to help him (Mr Trump) however I can.”
Mr Vance, who has opposed US aid for Ukraine’s war against Russia, beat candidates tipped for the vice presidency including Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
He has introduced bills to hold back federal funds for universities where students have protested over the Gaza war or that employ undocumented immigrants. He has also criticised China over the way it carries out trade with the US.
Mr Trump’s announcement of his running mate came on a frenetic day following the assassination attempt at the weekend.
An investigation into how a shooter was able to fire at the former President from a roof top is underway. US Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle has said the organisation will “participate fully” in a review order by President Joe Biden.
Mr Trump said he was saved by either “luck or God” as he suffered only a minor injury and has been able to jump back on the campaign trail.
Meanwhile a federal judge in Florida dismissed the classified documents case against Mr Trump on Monday, siding with defence lawyers who said the special counsel who filed the charges was illegally appointed by the Justice Department.
The decision by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, which is expected to be appealed and may eventually be overturned by a higher court, brings a conclusion to a criminal case that at the time it was filed was widely regarded as the most perilous of all the legal threats the Republican former president confronted.
The judge’s order, over accusations Mr Trump hoarded classified documents, has been considered in the US as a significant legal and political victory for Mr Trump.
He was convicted in May in his New York hush money trial, but the sentencing has been postponed after a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents.
That opinion will cause major delays in a separate case charging Mr Trump with plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Mr Biden.
Another election subversion case filed in Atlanta has been delayed by revelations of a romantic relationship between the district attorney and a special prosecutor she hired for the case.
In a statement on Truth Social Mr Trump said that the dismissal “should be just the first step” and that the three other cases, which he called “Witch Hunts” should also be thrown out.
