On Wednesday, Veterans Day, the President and Vice President walked almost alongside each other at Arlington National Cemetery. The First Lady and Second Lady also strolled out for the somber occasion. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance both saluted the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and gave speeches expressing their gratitude and respect for those who have served in uniform. It all looked and sounded statesmanlike.
Behind the scenes, however, not everything is quite so decorous. Yesterday, Donald Trump announced via social media that he has ordered his Vice President to “focus his complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime” in blue states such as Minnesota, California and Illinois, among others.
“We don’t need to deal with Iran,” the President added. “Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait.”
In other words, back off the foreign policy beat, J.D., and get back in your domestic box.
Vance is known to be a skeptic of the Iran war, even if he publicly supported Operation Epic Fury back in March. He has repeatedly tried to lead efforts to negotiate a peace deal, and in recent weeks has reportedly been taking charge of indirect talks with Iran through intermediaries.
He also, as discussed in our last newsletter, fired off that bold tweet last week, squarely blaming the Iran war for the Republicans’ humiliation in the midterms. He has positioned himself, then, as the man who is more loyal to anti-war, America First principles than the boss. And while Trump said publicly that he agreed with the substance of Vance’s post, he did add that his Veep should have acknowledged that he was right to stop Iran having a nuclear weapon: “He should’ve made one other statement – one statement that I think is very important: if you had to do it again, would you do it again? The answer is yes.”
“My answer is an emphatic yes because you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. I think, historically, this will be a very good decision.”
Trump is a difficult man to read. Yet it seems obvious that the more hawkish factions of his administration are furious at Vance for what they see as a betrayal, and Trump himself now wants Vance moved away from the Iran issue.
Over at UnHerd, the insightful and Vance-supportive Sohrab Ahmari writes today that, “It’s almost as if the President wants to dash his most likely successor’s chances.”
Vance’s role in the peace negotiations has long been a source of intrigue. There was that day back in April, when a US team – led by Vance and accompanied by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff – flew to Pakistan to do diplomacy with the Iranians, only to return home within a day empty-handed. At a hasty and awkward press conference in Islamabad, Kushner and Witkoff almost seemed to be smirking at each other as Vance stood fuming at the podium. Something bad went down there.
Vance then, in June, took credit for the so-called Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran, a flawed preamble to peace that failed almost as soon as it was signed. Trump joked at the time that if the MoU didn’t work out, he’d “blame J.D..”
But J.D. largely managed to escape blame. That’s because, in trying to stop the war, he was at least attempting to do what Trump voters wanted.
The Iran war supporters in Trump’s camp like to insinuate that Vance and his anti-war allies are in fact only emboldening Tehran by showing weakness. That argument will have been used as justification for redeploying Vance back on to his fraud and corruption tsar bear.
But what’s increasingly evident is that the administration is at war with itself over the war.
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