J. D. Vance’s Bumpy Ride
As recently as a week or two ago, Vice-President J. D. Vance was talking like a man who felt that the odds were in his favor. He’d flown to Hungary to attend a campaign rally for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the most Trumpian of European leaders, and, before leaving, he told reporters at the airport how kind the Hungarian people had been to him. Asked about the war in Iran—the day before, Donald Trump had threatened to destroy the country’s “whole civilization”—Vance suggested that Iran’s insistence on its “right” to enrich uranium might actually represent an opening for a deal. As he put it, “I thought to myself, you know what? My wife has the right to skydive, but she doesn’t jump out of an airplane, because she and I have an agreement that she’s not going to do that, because I don’t want my wife jumping out of an airplane.”
The days that followed were a bleak reminder that whatever rights Vance may think he has—to his dignity, to his faith, or to his position as the MAGA heir apparent—are contingent on the agreement he made to subordinate himself to Trump. And the President doesn’t seem to mind if Vance humiliates himself running errands. Indeed, Trump has treated a new ballroom as more important to his legacy than his Vice-President is.
Vance had barely wrapped up in Hungary before Trump dispatched him to Pakistan to negotiate with the Iranians. Vance, an Iraq veteran, had reportedly opposed the war, and Trump had not been subtle about wanting to implicate him in its progress. That round of talks fell apart after twenty-one hours, an event that was followed, in quick succession, by Orbán’s defeat; Trump’s attack on Pope Leo XIV, who had condemned civilization-destroying (“WEAK on Crime”); and the President’s posting of a now notorious A.I.-generated image of himself as a robed Christ figure.
Trump deleted that post, claiming that he’d thought the image showed him as a doctor. Vance told Fox News that the President had taken it down because “a lot of people weren’t understanding his humor.” Was an element of the President’s humor insulting the Pope right after Vance had announced that his new book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” would be out in June? Vance converted to Catholicism in 2019, after the success of his first book, “Hillbilly Elegy”; in that period, he was pursuing a venture-capital career, backed by Peter Thiel. (In 2022, Vance was elected to the Senate, from Ohio.) Vance has said that his faith was inspired by St. Augustine, but, again, his pact is with Trump. He was promptly put to work telling Leo to stay out of Trump’s way and to be careful when he spoke about “matters of theology.”
Vance, whose wife, Usha, is expecting their fourth child, might have seen this coming. The plight of Vice-Presidents, with their ill-defined role, is well known, and it is not the first time that Trump has debased someone who serves him. It’s not even the first time that Vance has been deployed to downplay a blasphemy-themed A.I. image. Last May, soon after Pope Francis died, Trump posted a portrait of himself as an enthroned Pope. At the time, Vance said, “As a general rule, I’m fine with people telling jokes and not fine with people starting stupid wars that kill thousands of my countrymen”—a reminder of how the Administration’s goals have morphed. Trump, who once demanded a Nobel Peace Prize, started a war of choice in Iran, inflicting damage that a deal can’t undo.
The American right, too, is in a shifting, querulous state. Last week, at an event in Athens, Georgia, for Turning Point USA, the organization that Charlie Kirk led before his assassination last September, Vance acknowledged that “this Iran thing” had been divisive. Republican opponents of the war, still a minority in their party, according to polls, are a heterogeneous group. Some regret Trump’s bypassing Congress. Many working-class red-state voters—for whom Vance’s right-populist brand is designed—seem dismayed by the spike in gas prices and the neglect of problems at home. There are manosphere anti-interventionists (Joe Rogan, Theo Von). Meanwhile, in a very loud corner of MAGA world, inhabited by Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the pressing question is how the “Epstein class” managed to corrupt Trump, bending him to its will and Israel’s. And there is talk, apparently in earnest, about the Antichrist. The situation is one of ideological ferment, rather than a reversion to some Romneyite center.
The Turning Point event was meant to feature Vance and Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow. She cancelled at the last minute, citing unspecified threats to her safety. Onstage, Vance spent ten minutes complaining that certain people doubted Erika’s grief; he decried them as “full of shit” and insufficiently focussed on “left-wing networks of violence and terrorism.” Many in the audience would have guessed that he was referring to Candace Owens, a podcaster with nearly six million YouTube subscribers, who was once a key figure at Turning Point. She has been pushing cartoonish claims groundlessly linking Erika to a supposed vast conspiracy related to her husband’s murder. For what it’s worth, Owens is against the Iran war. (She has also raised doubts about Vance, in part because of his ties to Thiel.)
Trump reportedly enjoys asking associates whom they see as his heir: Vance or the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio? But, if Vance’s bumpy ride is any indication, the G.O.P. field may get both wider and weirder, with a primary that puts the Party’s internal resentments on full display. Still, it would be wrong to view Vance as simply an object of scorn or even pity—devout J.D., an ideas man who just wanted peace and maybe a promotion. He is the same opportunistically malleable demagogic provocateur who, during the campaign, got Trump worked up about migrants allegedly eating cats and dogs. He hasn’t shed his affinity for the Viktor Orbáns of the world. Trump recently named Vance “fraud czar,” with a focus on “CROOKED DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS.” He is building a network of big donors. He may yet be President.
Vance does have a noteworthy power as Vice-President: only he can initiate the process, under the Twenty-fifth Amendment, for removing a President deemed unable to discharge his duties. (The Cabinet and Congress also play a role.) The idea that he might do so is, for now, a fantasy. But another aspect of his constitutional role is that the President can’t fire him. So Trump will still have Vance to kick around, whether either of them likes it or not. ♦