JD Vance goes on the offensive, and offends, for Trump
The word unprecedented has been thrown around in news coverage and podcasts to describe the dizzying first several weeks of Donald Trump’s second, non-consecutive term as U.S. president — from his approval of billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s seemingly indiscriminate slashing of the federal civil service, to an apparent American reset of relations with European allies.
Unprecedented would also seem to describe JD Vance’s vice-presidency thus far.
Vice-presidents have traditionally toiled in the shadows of the men who appointed them or have been given specific marching orders, as Vance predecessor Kamala Harris was in being tasked to address the root causes of migration to the U.S. The most impactful vice-presidential duty is breaking ties in Senate votes, which Vance has already done to confirm controversial nominee Pete Hegseth as defence secretary.
But after only six weeks on the job, Vance has been omnipresent at events and online, where he frequently responds to social media posts. The vice-president has managed to rankle politicians from Britain, France, Germany and Romania, as well as officials from the Catholic Church in the U.S.
An Australian premier has called Vance a “knob,” while Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong recently mocked Vance in a reworked lyric in Jesus of Suburbia from the American Idiot album.
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U.K., France take umbrage
Vance has also already inspired a protest, rare for a vice-president. That happened in Vermont on Saturday as demonstrators lined the main street in Waitsfield, where the Vance family was set to vacation.
“Ski Russia, because JD Vance has no friends in Vermont, but he’s got lots of them in Russia so he should go there for vacation,” demonstrator Tekla Van Hoven told The Associated Press.
Trump and Vance were accused in some quarters of making statements that would have pleased Russian officials, after they angrily confronted Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskyy on Friday at the end of a 40-minute meeting. The sitdown was meant to be a prelude for the signing of a framework of an economic deal between the two countries, with the hopes the increased co-operation on mineral extraction in Ukraine could help smooth the way for a ceasefire between the Eastern European country and Russia.
Vance questioned whether Zelenskyy had expressed gratitude for the U.S. military aid that has undoubtedly allowed Ukraine to at least deplete Russia’s military resources three years after President Vladimir Putin approved an invasion of Ukraine. Over the course of the war, and in Friday’s meeting, according to a transcript, the Ukraine leader thanked the U.S. more than once.
When Zelenskyy asked Vance if he’d come to Ukraine since the war, knowing full well the answer, the vice-president disparaged the visits by other world leaders to Kyiv as “propaganda tours.” Those visits have seen world leaders both liberal and conservative pay respect to a memorial to the war dead in Ukraine’s capital.
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The Oval Office implosion also brought to mind, for those who remembered, comments Vance made on a podcast in 2022 hosted by Steve Bannon, former White House adviser in Trump’s first term.
“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other,” he told Bannon.
Vance was less belligerent in comments to friendly Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview broadcast Monday, but he nevertheless added fuel to the fire with an offhanded comment that seemingly disparaged European peacekeeping efforts.
Vance said that the U.S. having an economic stake in the future of Ukraine was “a way better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”
Vance denied that his comments were about Britain or France, but only they have publicly committed to a European peacekeeping force in a post-war Ukraine.
Officials from both countries were offended.
“The French and British soldiers who died fighting terrorism, who fought and sometimes died alongside American soldiers, deserve better than the disdain of the American vice-president,” French President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party on X said.
James Cartlidge, the British opposition Conservative Party’s spokesperson on defence, said Vance’s comments were “deeply disrespectful,” while Johnny Mercer, a British veteran and former junior defence minister, called Vance a “clown.”
VP as attack dog
U.S. vice-presidents have served an attack dog role before. Spiro Agnew set his sights on critics of president Richard Nixon, referring to the media in a speech as “effete core of impudent snobs” and to congressional opponents of Nixon administration plans as “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
But most of Vance’s controversial statements so far have involved foreign policy, as he has questioned or even lectured leaders to their faces.
At the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance berated European allies for allegedly suppressing free speech, a threat he called bigger than Russia or China. Vance also accused host country Germany of silencing right-wing political voices.
Britain was already on the receiving end of a Vance jab, but the vice-president earned a rebuke in the Oval Office Thursday from Prime Minister Keir Starmer after offering unsolicited opinions about the state of free speech in the U.K.
In Germany last month, Vance bypassed officials from the coalition government and instead met with the leader of the far-right AfD.
Despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and credible reports that Putin critics have been maimed or killed in European cities, Vance said Russia was not the continent’s biggest issue. Instead, he spoke of a “threat within,” running down critics of policies and laws concerning speech, freedom of assembly and immigration.
Striking contrast with Trump’s 1st VP
Vance’s comments can be compared to those of Mike Pence, who eight years earlier appeared at the same summit as Trump’s vice-president.
Pence told the gathered that European countries needed to spend more on their own defence, he also assured them that the U.S. would “stand with Europe today and every day” and that the Trump administration would “continue to hold Russia accountable, even as we search for new common ground.”
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Pence, of course, ended his vice-presidency defying Trump’s wishes to go along with his fraudulent claims of an unjust election loss in the 2020 presidential election. A mob of Trump supporters descended the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with some chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”
When Vance was chosen by Trump to be his running mate last year, Tucker Carlson told Axios that one of the reasons was that “he doesn’t secretly hate Trump, as all the rest of them do,” referring to other vice-presidential candidates.
That steadfast support was only a few years old at the time. In 2016, Vance wrote in an USA Today op-ed that Trump’s policies “such as they are, range from immoral to absurd,” and he also criticized the real estate mogul-turned-candidate in interviews with CBC News.
Vance has since said that Trump, through his campaigning and first term in office, opened his eyes to corruption in Washington.
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Ex-White House adviser Bruce Reed, speaking to journalist Kate Andersen Bower for her 2018 book First in Line: Presidents, Vice-Presidents, and the Pursuit of Power, said history has shown that relationships between presidents and vice-presidents can evolve, or sour over time.
“The vice-president’s real power derives from his relationship with the president,” said Reed, the former former chief of staff to then-vice-president Joe Biden. “In the end, the leash is only as long as the president chooses to make it.”
At present, Vance appears to have a very long leash, and his comments might indicate — to the chagrin of Western allies — that Trumpism in some form won’t go away whenever its originator departs the political arena.
