On the first day of the Republican National Convention earlier this month, former President Donald Trump announced that he'd picked Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate and vice presidential nominee.

Since that time, the Democrat-aligned media have gone on the attack against Trump's choice, in particular by highlighting purported criticisms of Vance from unnamed Republican members of Congress, with one prime example coming from The Hill.

Yet, if the supposed anonymous GOP complaints were intended to cause doubts and compel Trump to make a change to the Republican ticket, that effort has failed as the former president has defended his decision and insisted that Vance was the proper choice.

Anonymous GOP complaints about Vance

The Hill reported this week that more than half a dozen anonymous Republicans in Congress -- admittedly mostly moderates aligned with the GOP establishment -- have expressed their misgivings about Sen. Vance being former President Trump's running mate.

One member told the outlet that Vance was "the worst choice of all the options" Trump had been considering for VP, while another worried that the senator could do "serious damage" to Trump's chances of victory and a third preemptively blamed Vance for a possible loss for the GOP ticket in November.

A series of common complaints about Vance -- echoed in a similar article published by Politico -- is a disagreement with Vance's populist-leaning stance on many issues, including foreign policy and trade, and that he is too similar to Trump in his views to expand the party's base beyond the former president's devoted core of support.

Other criticisms involved his relative lack of experience and concerns over the impact of prior controversial statements, including Vance's own past critiques of Trump that were expressed before they got to know each other.

Vance's poor polling numbers

Another reported problem with former President Trump's pick of Sen. Vance, according to Newsweek, are favorability polls that suggest the Ohio senator isn't particularly well-known or broadly popular among the electorate.

In fact, as was highlighted this week by a CNN data analyst, Vance is the first non-incumbent VP pick to have a net-negative favorability rating since at least 1980.

Indeed, of the handful of surveys that have asked about Vance, it was found that while a plurality of Americans typically didn't know enough about Vance to form an opinion about him, of those who did have an opinion, there were more who disliked than favored him.

Trump doesn't regret choice of Vance

However, the media's opened floodgate of hit pieces on Sen. Vance, particularly those that purport to cite Republican backlash to the choice, appear to have failed to convince former President Trump to second-guess his decision.

According to Mediaite, Trump called in to "Fox & Friends" on Thursday and was asked directly if he was "still 100% behind JD Vance" as his running mate, in light of the criticism and the sudden candidacy swap of President Joe Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris.

"He’s fantastic," Trump said of Vance and noted of Harris, "Yeah. No, it wouldn’t have mattered. And I thought she was probably going to happen anyway, because I know. I knew there was a palace coup going on, and I assumed that she’d be probably getting it."

Trump highlighted Vance's strong focus on helping working-class Americans and added of his VP pick, "No. He’s great. He’s doing a great job. And he’s been very well-received."