Conservative anti-MAGA critic Charlie Sykes says President Donald Trump sidelined Vice President JD Vance on Iran, calling it a fresh humiliation for the office.
In his To the Contrary newsletter, Sykes writes that Trump on Thursday ordered Vance to stop working on Iran and turn his attention to corruption and crime in Democratic-run states and cities.
“We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”
Sykes calls the episode an “abrupt social media defenestration” of a “hapless” vice president. He says it outdoes even John Nance Garner’s famous remark that the job wasn’t worth a “bucket of warm spit.”
According to Sykes, the move came just days after Vance carefully tried to put distance between himself and the president by blaming the Iran war for Republicans’ midterm losses.
Sykes also points to the irony of the timing. He writes that the administration is “about to be swamped” by scandals ranging from crypto graft and ballroom payoffs to what he describes as a sell-out of U.S. national security to China, Russia and Gulf monarchies.
Vance led U.S. negotiations with Iran earlier this year and returned from talks in Islamabad in April without a ceasefire deal.