BREAKING: Trump’s VP pick JD Vance speaks up for forgotten Americans in stirring RNC speech

Vance's mother was in the audience, and he gave her a shout out during the speech, like any hometown hero would do, saying "I love you mom." He spoke with pride about her sobriety, ten years strong, saying "And I am proud to say that tonight my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober."

In accepting the nomination of the Republican Party to be Donald Trump's running mate, Vance leaned into the beauty of the American people and the need to vouchsafe the nation for our collective children and grandchildren.

He spoke about the assassination attempt on Saturday, and how differently this political convention week, the election, and the future of the country could have been. But then he spoke about what really matters to him, the reasons he got into politics.

"It’s about the energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio," Vance said, "who doesn’t understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tinpot dictators but not hard-working Americans right here at home."

"And, it’s about single moms like mine, who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up," he went on.

"For the last eight years, President Trump has given everything he has to fight for the people of our country. He didn’t need politics, but the country needed him," he said.

"Prior to running for president, he was one of the most successful businessmen in the world. He had everything anyone could ever want in a life. And yet, instead of choosing the easy path, he chose to endure abuse, slander, and persecution.

"But don’t take my word for it, go and watch the video of a would-be assassin coming a quarter of an inch from taking his life. Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump. And then look at the photo of him defiant – fist in the air. When Donald J. Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field – all of America stood with him," he said.

"Even in his most perilous moment we were on his mind. His instinct was for us. To call us to something higher. To something greater. To once again be citizens who ask what our country needs of us," Vance said of the iconic moment in which Trump raised his fist, in the midst of being ushered off stage after surviving a hale of bullets, and told the crowd, and the nation, to "fight, fight, fight!"

"He called for national unity, for calm. He remembered the victims of the terrible attack, especially the brave Corey Comperatore, who gave his life to protect his family. And then President Trump flew to Milwaukee and got back to work."

Vance spoke to Trump's call for unity in these times of national crisis, saying that his message, his primary question is "shouldn’t we be governed by a party that is unafraid to debate ideas and come to the best solution?"

The new GOP is truly a big tent party, "united in our love for America, and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas," Vance said.

In accepting the nomination of the party for vice president, he said that this was something he never could have imagined happening. His home town, as he wrote about in his bestselling "Hillbilly Elegy," was "cast aside and forgotten by America's ruling class in Washington."

He slammed Joe Biden's record on trade, the loss of American manufacturing that affected towns like his own, the decline of middle class jobs, and the "disastrous invasion of Iraq," which saw so many small town men and women shipped off to war in foreign lands. Vance was one of those men who served in that war.

"Somehow," he concluded, "a real estate developer from New York by the name of Donald Trump was right on all of these issues while Joe Biden was wrong. Donald Trump knew, even then, that we needed leaders who would put America first."