Vice President JD Vance has seemingly been out of the loop in the White House, and one analyst suggests it may be intentional.
Political commentator Jamelle Bouie argued in a recent column for The New York Times that Vance appears to be absent from President Donald Trump's cabinet because he has effectively become the president's "cheer captain" for the MAGA base. That helps explain why Vance has been spending more time posting on social media than doing other work related to running the country, Bouie argued.
"In fairness to the vice president, his online presence speaks to the main role he does seem to have in the White House, something akin to the president’s official fanboy," Bouie wrote.
"And in addition to acting as cheer captain for his boss, Vance also works to give the administration a veneer of intellectualism to cover its cruelty, corruption, and incompetence — a spokesman for the president’s brand of national populism," the column continued.
Trump's political brand has taken a significant hit over the last couple of weeks because of the Jeffrey Epstein files saga. About two weeks ago, the president's Justice Department issued a memo contradicting the story the president told his MAGA base about the Epstein case for more than two years.
Since then, the president has tried to distract his base with different excuses about why the administration can't release the files. He's even gone so far as to blame Democrats for creating the files and threatened to arrest former Obama administration officials.
Vance has been given the role of "cheer captain" because he's especially skilled at repackaging some of Trump's most odious messages, like his immigration policies, Bouie noted.