You read it here first: President Trump picked Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance to be his vice presidential running mate.

Longtime AT contributor and veteran newsman Peter Barry Chowka made the revelation four days ago on July 11 here:

A reliable source who I have known for more than five years and who enjoys unique access to former president Donald Trump’s thinking told me in confidence on Tuesday that Mr. Trump has decided on J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate. Vance, 39, is in his first term as the junior senator from Ohio. He has been widely mentioned recently as one of three top possibilities for President Trump’s running mate this year.

... and ...

According to media reports, Trump’s choice for his VP running mate will be announced at the latest on Monday morning, July 15 – the opening day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

If the choice is in fact J.D. Vance, you can say that you heard it first here at American Thinker. If someone else is selected, well, mea culpa.

No mea culpas for Peter, whose source was good as gold.

Axios tried to claim credit, but they were a day late and a dollar short; the credit goes to Peter Chowka and American Thinker.

Besides that, the pick was a great, imaginative, choice on President Trump's part -- a youthful, 39-year-old, very smart, unusually talented, and articulate choice for the position, which in four years may well turn into the presidency itself. No bowing to DEI considerations, either, which is yet another gutsy aspect to this, just the guy who would help the ticket the most.

Imaginative it was, and in more than one way.

Vance, after all, has only been a senator for two years, which is unusual in a pick and makes Vance an automatic outsider, as Trump also is. And more unusual still, prior to his career in politics, he had been a man of literary merit, writing his 2016 award-winning Hillbilly Elegy bestseller about growing up in the rust belt, which had been made into a movie by Hollywood bigfoot director Ron Howard.

Vance's background here calls to mind what Eric Hoffer once wrote (can't remember where, likely one of his later books), which was that whenever you learn that someone has an artistic background in an unrelated field, it's likely you are going to find someone unique and impressive.

Most people are going to be interested in other things about him, such as how conservative he is, and whether he can govern, and everything there points to a winner. He had been one of the original #neverTrumps, but like many Republicans, came around when he saw Trump's performance as president, maybe a bit later than a lot of us, but onboard for sure. In some ways, he became more Trumpian than Trump, leading the charge about cutting off Ukraine aid when he later became a senator. He apologized for his earlier anti-Trump remarks which had gotten leaked from social media and President Trump seems to be perfectly comfortable with it.

His loathing for Washington-induced wars reportedly was influenced by his original career, which was Marine, having grown up poor in Ohio in its rust-belt wasteland of twenty or thirty years ago, and seeing this as the way out. Long permawars of his youth from the Bush era shaped his loathing of unwinnable wars that devolved into NGO and consultant rackets, had no end point, and never ended in victory. It seems reasonable that that would influence him and drive him towards Washington's advice of avoiding foreign entanglements. A neocon he is not.

The Marine career did him well though and got him into Yale law school, where he met his wife, Usha Chilukuri, 36, a daughter of Indian immigrants, who is from the upper middle class Rancho Penasquitos neighborhood of northern San Diego, albeit graduating from its-least-tony school, Mount Carmel High School, which is an older facility but still with good quality programs, known for its ace marching band and slogan, "It's great to be a Sundevil." Last time Rancho Penasquitos was in the national news was here, which gives you the flavor. It's kind of like Santa Clarita. Usha seems to be a hard-working meritocrat in her own right, and if I can guess, since I know this area, might have been motivated to work harder based on feeling a bit poorer than the other kids at the fancier schools.

After the Marines, Vance went to Silicon Valley to become a tech-finance executive, working for Peter Thiel, making friends with the Trumps, particularly Don Trump, Jr., before moving back to his roots in Ohio, where he then ran for the Senate with President Trump's endorsement, and won handily.

After that, he's been a fierce populist loyalist to Trump, his Midwestern rust-belt roots meshing well with Trump's own message and appeal to so many voters.

Obviously, Vance is extremely smart if he could go to Yale and then find himself in someone like Thiel's orbit. Yet he also can talk to a lot of people from a lot of walks of life, including the left-behinds who have seen the globalist era give them the short straw, along with the arrogant, entitled Olympians of Silicon Valley.

Both kinds of people would be useful to Trump, who already relates well to the Midwesterners, but would benefit hugely from alliances with at least some of the Silicon Valley baronies, particularly since giants such as Elon Musk and Bill Ackman have strikingly come out to endorse Trump after sitting on the fence for a long, long, time. Vance will bring a lot of that to the Trump party. Surely Vance must have characters like Mark Zuckerberg's number, know what he's about, and probably the dirt on the rest of them, too. And speaking of numbers, he must have Ron Howard's, too, probably in a friendly way.

He'll help by being a young, vigorous, fresh face with a fresh perspective to add heft to Trump's bid to take out the Washington swamp. His beard is kind of unique, and gives him the frontiersman look, a net positive with voters. He will probably draw independents based on his own history of #neverTrump orientation. He'll welcome these kinds of people aboard, and make the Trump tent even bigger.

I also like that he's from Ohio, the state that has given us so many great and warmly regarded presidents and other leaders -- from U.S. Grant to William McKinley to John Glenn. The state has kind of eclipsed in recent decades, despite reliably voting red, but with this pick, is back for an encore and has a good one.

And for the cherry on the sundae, Vance and his brainpower and literary eloquence will demolish Kamala Harris in whatever vice presidential debate comes along this summer or fall. People will get ready for a demolition derby, some pitying the wretched, giggling, word-salad mess that will become of Kamala after running into Vance's intellectual buzzsaw.

In all, he's going to add a lot, he stands to help unite the country, and it's likely he will be very popular. Bring it on -- the Trump train is already strong and Vance is the guy who can make it even stronger.

What an imaginitive choice from Trump indeed!

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0