'Needs to watch his back': Trump warned of surprising rival gunning for his job

Vice President JD Vance stands to benefit tremendously from President Donald Trump's botched response to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and he might have cause for concern.

The vice president was an odd choice as Trump's running mate from the start, and a Trump critic from way back, and USA Today columnist Rex Huppke said there was no one who had more to gain by the president's inability to move past questions surrounding his longtime relationship with the disgraced financier.

"Vance is an ideological contortionist backed by dodgy tech billionaires like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and David Sacks, whose money helped elevate him to become Trump’s unlikely vice presidential pick," Huppke wrote.

"So is it that hard to believe Vance is watching Trump digging his Epstein hole deeper and deeper and thanking his lucky stars for the president’s incompetence and history of loutish behavior?" Huppke added. "The vice president was already on a magical political ride buoyed by his own lack of principles. Now all he needs to do is sit back and let Trump self-immolate while occasionally furrowing his brow at liberals and feigning support for the president."

Vance behaves publicly like a Trump loyalist, saying the president has "nothing to hide," but he hasn't deleted old social media posts challenging journalists to keep tugging at threads related to Epstein's sex trafficking case, and those reporters who have been pursuing the story keep finding evidence linking Trump.

"That surely puts a sparkle in Vance’s eye. And in the event more damaging details about Trump’s connection to Epstein come out, the vice president can always say, 'Gosh, he told me he had nothing to hide. Who could’ve imagined?'" Huppke wrote. "Present-day Vance seems to be saying: 'Shhhhhhhh. Let’s hang back and see how this plays out.'"

Huppke stopped short of accusing Vance of engaging in a conspiracy to take down his boss, but the columnist noted that Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who helped convince Trump to select him as running mate, helped revive the Epstein scandal after his acrimonious departure from his perch in the White House.

"Trump built his political career on conspiracies, and now he’s knee-deep in one," Huppke wrote. "So I’m comfortable throwing a not-unreasonable conspiracy onto the fire."

"Vance would never make a move on Trump or publicly root against him," the columnist added. "But if you don’t think he’d gladly slide into the big boy chair, you haven’t been paying attention. Trump needs to focus on the massive Epstein scandal burning around him. But if you ask me, he also needs to watch his back."