JD Vance’s less than impressive performance as vice president, combined with Donald Trump needling him in his comments to the press, led longtime Financial Times columnist Ed Luce to claim the veep’s star has faded to the point where he is becoming irrelevant.
And because of that, he no longer can be considered Trump’s successor.
In a brutally frank column Tuesday morning, headlined, “The ever-shrinking JD Vance,” Luce made the case that the president has diminished his running mate by sending him out to defend the indefensible and putting him in positions where failure is guaranteed.
“Pity JD Vance,” it began. “Having advised against Donald Trump’s Iran war, he was sent to Islamabad to fix it. En route to that doomed cause, the US vice-president stopped off in Hungary to endorse another — Viktor Orbán’s re-election campaign. The Iran talks failed and Orbán lost in a landslide. By the end of that tour from hell, Vance’s approval rating was the lowest ever for a vice-president at this point in a term.”
According to Luce, diminishing Vance seems to be a favorite Trump pastime.
Noting that Vance’s job was never designed to be “fun,” he added that the former senator from Ohio is nonetheless “flailing” and the president has taken notice.
“He is thus no longer Trump’s obvious successor," Luce asserted before pointing out, “The president now makes a habit of lightly teasing Vance at public events. Gentle can quickly turn to savage if Trump loses respect. While Vance was in Pakistan, Trump was living it up in Miami with his chief rival, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state. Forget that America’s chief diplomat was absent from the most important bilateral talks of Trump’s presidency. The very moment Vance was announcing their collapse, Rubio was socializing with Trump at the ringside of an Ultimate Fighting Championship bout.”
Luce went on to note that Vance lacks the unshakeable base Trump has with his MAGA adherents, making it difficult to turn things around.
“Even were Vance to regain his place in the Trumpian firmament, there is no such thing as a Vance base. His standing relies solely on Trump. This presents Vance with two steep disabilities. The first is that he lacks standalone political charisma. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, calls Vance ‘The Cooler' after a movie about a charmless casino employee who brings misfortune to those around him,” he wrote before adding, “Vance would also suffer from the same handicap as Kamala Harris had with Joe Biden in 2024 — his record would be tied to that of his boss.”
“Which would leave Vance, and probably Rubio, with a poisoned chalice. History shows that people who get close to Trump pay a price. Trump’s number two is unlikely to buck that record,” he concluded.