Speaking during a funny and, at times, heartwarming interview on the Full Send Podcast, Senator and Trump 2024 Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance spoke about getting the call from former President Donald Trump about being the VP pick, and how Trump had a conversation with his son after telling Vance the good news.
The story came up because Vance was joking about how, when the former President called, he missed the first call with the good news and then nearly missed the second because his young son was trying to show him Pokémon cards, distracting him from the call and leading him to miss it during the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Telling that part of the story, Sen. Vance set the scene by describing getting off the plane for the convention and being bombarded with messages. “We fly to Milwaukee, and I have no idea what’s going on. And the plane doesn’t have Wi-Fi on it, so it’s about an hour flight and I land and I’ve got about 350 messages,” he explained.
Continuing, he noted that he was warned a call would be coming and not to miss it, saying, “One of them is from somebody on the Trump campaign and says ‘hey, check your phone, make sure you don’t miss a call because a really important call is coming.’ So I’m like ‘oh shit,’ right — either a good call or a bad call but it’s an important call.”
He missed it, and got another call about how he missed it and noting that the call he hadn’t picked up was an extremely important matter, though he still didn’t know what. Vance said, “About an hour later I get another message from the same person who says ‘hey, you just missed a really important call.’”
He got back on the phone with Trump, who then proceeded to mess with him in a hilarious way: “I’m like ‘oh no.’ So I call Trump and I’m like ‘hey, sir, what’s going on.’ And he’s like ‘JD, you missed a very important phone call, and now I’m gonna have to pick someone else.’ And I tense up and almost have a heart attack,” Sen. Vance added.
That’s when the cards came up. Describing that aspect of the funny situation, Sen. Vance said, “The crazy thing about it is my son, who’s seven, is in the hotel room with me, and he’s really into Pokémon cards right now.” He continued, “So he’s trying to talk to me about Pikachu, and I’m on the phone with Donald Trump. And I’m like ‘son … shut the hell up for 30 seconds about Pikachu. This is the most important phone call of my life.’”
That’s when the heartwarming part of the story came up: Trump talked to his son about the good news after telling Sen. Vance. He said, describing that, “He asked my son, ‘what do you think about that?’ And my son’s like ‘oh, it sounds pretty good.’ And he goes ‘ok, fine’ and he hangs up the phone and the statement goes out five minutes later. And then my whole life changed. And that’s how it happened.”
Watch him here:
