According to one White House insider, President Donald Trump was not made aware that Vice President JD Vance was going to make a long social media post explaining away the GOP losses in the midterm election.
The post, roughly 600 words long and published Wednesday morning, laid the blame for the Republican rout on one thing: the Iran war.
“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote. He came close to faulting Trump directly but stopped short.
According to the Daily Mail, people familiar with Vance’s thinking saw the post as "a deliberate bid to separate himself from a war" most Americans blame for their rising costs. By framing it that way, they said, Vance also put the spotlight on the administration’s hawks, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while laying groundwork for 2028.
If Trump was irritated, he didn’t show it publicly, the Mail reported. Asked about the post while visiting his White House ballroom construction site, Trump said Vance’s take was “largely true” because the war had pushed gas prices up in “the short term.” But he insisted “you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
Behind the scenes, accounts differ sharply on whether Trump knew what was coming.
“The President was blindsided by the tweet,” a White House official told the outlet, adding that Trump never approved it.
Another official told a different story: “Yes the White House was aware before the post went out. POTUS was briefed beforehand as well and did not have any issues with it. Which is why he backed it up when asked by reporters.” A third source agreed that the post had been run by the White House and cleared.
Donald Trump Jr., a key Vance ally, quickly signaled his support, endorsing the post on X within hours, the report added.