With a shaky ceasefire in place, Vice President JD Vance is heading up the efforts to broker a more lasting agreement with Iran — but those talks concluded without any deal.
No matter whether he eventually secures a deal or not, though, it's going to be a black stain on his career to the GOP base as he considers pursuing the presidency himself, longtime Republican strategist Mark McKinnon told MS NOW's Katy Tur on Monday.
"J.D. Vance went out to Islamabad to negotiate a peace deal with Iran on a war that he did not support," said Tur. "How did it go? How does this go for him politically?"
"It's such a great irony, the war that he did not support," said McKinnon. "I mean, you start off by saying his biggest assignment yet, his biggest assignment and the worst assignment."
"He — Trump — likes to talk about having all the cards," McKinnon continued. "Well, J.D. Vance went into that negotiation with no cards or, you know, Texas Hold'em, they'd be called a 2/7 offsuit. Not great. It reminds me of John McCain's, you know, reflections on being vice president, which is, he said, if you're vice president, it's like being a prisoner of war. You get tortured, kept in the dark and fed all the leftover scraps."
"So the problem for Vance is that people who are opposed to this conflict in the coalition will say, even though he was quietly opposed, we know from reporting, will say he didn't do enough, and that people are for it say he did too much," he added.