President Donald Trump is degrading his own vice president, JD Vance, over the latter’s opposition to the former’s Iran war — and it is painfully obvious to White House observers.
“Nobody in Mr. Trump’s inner circle was more worried about the prospect of war with Iran, or did more to try to stop it, than the vice president,” reported The New York Times’ Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman on Tuesday. “Mr. Vance had built his political career opposing precisely the kind of military adventurism that was now under serious consideration. He had described a war with Iran as ‘a huge distraction of resources’ and massively expensive.’”
The Times elaborated that, although Vance is not a dove, he privately expressed the belief that a regime-change war in Iran would end badly for the United States. Because Trump wished to engage in some military action against Iran, Vance urged limited action rather than a large-scale campaign, even advocating for Trump to use “overwhelming force, in the hope of achieving his objectives quickly.”
Yet the president has reportedly noticed Vance’s reticence to declare war against Iran and is politically penalizing his own vice president accordingly, including through public displays of how he is out of the loop.
“The White House’s plans to completely annihilate Iran are so haphazard that even the vice president can’t keep up with them,” reported The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling on Tuesday. “JD Vance was apparently caught off guard Tuesday when a journalist informed him that Donald Trump had threatened to obliterate the entire Iranian civilization by 8 p.m. Vance was onstage in Budapest at the time, feet away from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.”
Even though Vance was at an event with a powerful foreign leader and Trump ally, he was forced to acknowledge that he was not part of the president’s policymaking inner circle.
“Wouldn’t you like to know the subject of this message?” Vance said at one point. “But no, uh, I need to read it first before I talk about it. But here’s, here’s … uh, what time is it in the United States right now?”
Overall, as the Times noted, Trump has emerged as a foreign policy hawk who does not want participation from those who question his judgment.
“In the end, even the more skeptical members of Mr. Trump’s war Cabinet — with the stark exception of Mr. Vance, the figure inside the White House most opposed to a full-scale war — deferred to the president’s instincts, including his abundant confidence that the war would be quick and decisive,” the Times reported. “The White House declined to comment.”
Further emphasizing how Trump does not Vance, the Times noted that the president prioritized secrecy for the meeting.
"'The gathering had been kept deliberately small to guard against leaks," the Times reported. "Other top Cabinet secretaries had no idea it was happening. Also absent was the vice president."
By contrast, the Times reported that the biggest supporter of the Iran war in Trump’s Cabinet was Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
“Within the Cabinet, Mr. Hegseth was the biggest proponent of a military campaign against Iran,” the Times reported, contrasting his attitude with that of Trump’s Secretary of State. “Mr. Rubio indicated to colleagues that he was much more ambivalent. He did not believe the Iranians would agree to a negotiated deal, but his preference was to continue a campaign of maximum pressure rather than start a full-scale war. Mr. Rubio, however, did not try to talk Mr. Trump out of the operation, and after the war began he delivered the administration’s justification with full conviction.”
Writing for USA Today in March, conservative columnist Dace Potas observed that Trump’s war against Iran is hurting Vance’s chances to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2028.
“I don’t have any serious issue with the Trump administration’s actions in Iran,” Potas wrote last month. “Immediately following our initial strikes, I wrote that the actions should have gone through Congress, but that I generally support military action against Iran, and I stand by my view.”
Despite his personal support for the war, though, Potas anticipated bad things politically for Vance as a result of it.
“Trump invoked the rhetoric of isolationism on the reelection campaign trail, promising no new wars to MAGA voters who rallied around that aspect of the ‘America First’ brand,” Potas wrote, adding that this is politically inconvenient for the more isolationist Vance.
“Vance is a more talented candidate than [2028 Democratic frontrunner former Vice President Kamala] Harris, but I’m not sure that’s enough to overcome his involvement in an unpopular administration,” Potas wrote. “Nor is it all that clear how he reconciles his intellectual opposition to interventionist foreign policy with his involvement in an administration active in that arena.”