Vice President
Vance has increased his visibility in recent days, including a Wednesday campaign stop in Michigan where he said he views the role of administration officials to support the president even if they personally disagree.
“It’s fine to disagree,” Vance said. “Once the president makes a decision, it’s up to everybody who serves in his administration to make it as successful as possible. That’s how I do my job. I think that’s how everybody in the administration should do their jobs.”
His predecessor, former Vice President Kamala Harris struggled to break with President Joe Biden as his popularity sagged amid inflation, an influx of illegal immigrants from Latin America and concerns about his fitness for the job. The Biden White House sought to link Harris and Biden closely to paint a picture of unity.
Then-Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said there was “no daylight” between Harris and Biden, and that the two were “aligned” for the entirety of their administration.
Harris only after the election later publicly criticized Biden for first running for reelection and said it ultimately put her in an uphill climb against Trump.
Vance has sought to avoid that fate.
The vice president has generally taken more populist, anti-interventionist positions on foreign affairs than Trump, including initial hesitation to strikes in Iran. And while his position has been known for years, he has kept a low profile since the war began rather than risk a public break and the ire of Trump and his base.
The caution comes as Vance, 41, is already laying the groundwork to succeed the term-limited Trump in 2028. He has mostly stayed away from Trump’s foreign policy agenda, which has been led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, another potential 2028 candidate.
There’s a long history of vice presidents eyeing future presidential runs feeling hemmed in by their bosses and then eventually breaking with them as they seek to oppose unpopular policies to appeal to voters.
For Vance, an open split is unlikely less than two years into his term.
Alex Jacques, a Democratic strategist who served in the Biden White House, said any public break vice presidents have with the president is “a huge deal,” which makes it hard for the second-in-command to offer personal views different from their boss.
“JD Vance knows this and has styled himself as a non-interventionist and more isolationist, domestic-focused person,” Jacques said. “I think he’s very smartly and strategically positioning himself against Marco Rubio, who is the antithesis of this.”
While Vance has not publicly broken with the White House on Iran, the vice president asserted a year ago he believed it was in the US interest not to go to war with Iran.
“It would be a huge distraction of resources, it would be massively expensive to our country,” Vance said on the Tim Dillon Show podcast last year.
More recently, Vance has said he trusted Trump with the operation and denied there was a “wedge” between the two on this issue. Vance’s office didn’t comment for this story.
The White House has defended against criticism that it hasn’t clearly laid out objectives in Iran, which the administration said is based off intelligence of an imminent strike against the US by Iran.
“We’re in a place right now where we’re ensuring that Iran can no longer threaten the United States of America and the United States military is doing a tremendous job at achieving these objectives,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week.
Public Doubts, MAGA Worries
Most recent polling has shown more Americans oppose the US operation in Iran than support the strikes. For example, a Quinnipiac poll found 53% of respondents opposed military action in Iran and 74% opposed troops on the ground.
Trump’s operation in Iran has already caused fractions within the broader conservative movement and among his “America First” allies.
Trump’s counterterrorism chief Joe Kent, a Green Beret Army special forces officer often aligned with conservative hardliners in Congress, resigned this week over his opposition to the US intervening in Iran.
In his resignation letter, Kent wrote that he believed Iran posed no imminent threat to the US and the war resulted from pressure by Israel and the country’s lobbyists.
The White House has refuted Kent’s resignation letter as having false claims. Trump also called him “weak on security.”
Steve Bannon, a Trump ally and prominent “America First” figure, called for an immediate investigation based off Kent’s claims of Israeli pressure to enter the conflict. Bannon added he’s had “many, many questions” about the threat Iran posed, as well as the war at large.
“These questions have to be answered and for a guy like Joe Kent to put it out, it’s not going to go away. It’s going to be very serious,” Bannon said Tuesday on his podcast.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a one-time Trump ally who fell out with the president in part because of her opposition to his foreign policy agenda, has called to “reorganize” the movement against foreign interests.
Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist, downplayed the rifts over Iran internally and said there is not a stark policy difference between Vance and Rubio.
“I don’t see it impacting it at all because whoever the president chooses to endorse will be the Republican nominee in 2028 and the most likely situation is, everybody’s been discussing is a ticket of Vance and Rubio,” O’Connell said.
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