A casualty of the MAGA civil war that has erupted over neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes and former Fox News fixture Tucker Carlson is an unlikely victim—Vice President JD Vance—who has been 'shivved' by President Donald Trump, according to Greg Sargent on The New Republic's Daily Blast podcast.
Sargent says that as Vance has his eyes on taking the reins of MAGA in a post-Trump world and poll numbers point to the veep as the likely heir, it's not a lock, and the president may not be helping him secure that lock either.
"It occurs to me that Trump really, whether intentionally or not, shivved Vance in the back in a way here," Sargent says. "So Vance has an Indian American wife. He’s gonna want a free hand to do his anti-immigrant appeals while also presenting himself as non-bigoted."
Vance, Sargent says, has to straddle a very difficult line.
"Vance wants to get away with what you might call a soft or veiled white nationalism," he says, adding that "Fuentes actually mocks Vance and makes racist comments about his wife. He makes the white nationalism extremely explicit."
Sargent says he believes "Vance would have preferred it if Trump sidelined Fuentes, but Trump basically dumped Fuentes on Vance to have to deal with later."
Vox's Zack Beauchamp says that Trump hasn't been that interested in his succession.
"I’ve got a personal theory that Trump has mostly checked out of the succession fight at this particular moment in time. There’s a lot going on with him, a lot of things to wrangle," he says.
"And the question of, like, how to deal with someone like Nick Fuentes is just not at the top of his agenda. He’s just answering it the way he would any other question. I don’t know him. I’m not involved in this, I don’t know, Tucker’s business is Tucker’s business." he adds.
Fuentes aside, Beauchamp says that Trump's apparent disinterest in his succession puts Vance in a precarious place.
"That abdication, though, does put Vance in this position because he wants to—as you say, it’s very clear—be the Republican standard bearer in 2028. He wants to create a sort of very ideological version of MAGA."
But Vance, Beauchamp says, "is trying to turn it into a disciplined ideological cadre. But then you have to answer questions, right? Questions: if you really stand for something, what do you do about this guy who’s gaining popularity? Who hates you, right? Who will demean you in the grossest of possible terms—and your family—and you’re supposed to have honor, and you’re supposed to stand there and say, look, I can be a leader, and you’re gonna let this guy take pot shots and be a platform by your friend, like Carlson."
Vance has a connection to Carlson, he adds, saying, "And Vance and Carlson are friends. But, like, Carlson pushed very hard to get Vance nominated and was reportedly instrumental in securing that role."
That friendship, Beauchamp says, makes Vance's role in this MAGA civil war awkward.
"Vance doesn’t want to condemn Tucker because he sees him as an essential ally going forward for the nomination," he says. "And if he goes too hard on Fuentes, that can be seen as going after Carlson. So he’s stuck."
Beauchamp says if he could, Vance would probably like to kick Fuentes out of "the coalition," and the veep's silence "is de facto an endorsement of what Tucker is doing."
"And that’s where he’s stuck at this moment. And that’s bad for him. That’s not where he wants to be in a world where he’s trying to sort of consolidate across the conservative movement core support ahead of people who are going to try to outflank him on the we-don’t-like-Nazis side, which is still popular even among some mainstream conservatives who have MAGAfied themselves," Beauchamp says.
For now, Vance is "trying to ride it out," Beauchamp says.
"Vance is in a position where his own allies are at risk if he shoots at Fuentes. So my guess is he wants to take that shot but wants to do it at a better time. Not right now, because right now in doing so he’d be stabbing people who he’s close to personally, and who he needs politically, in the back," he adds.