Gage Skidmore.
Vice President JD Vance told the grieving husband of a soldier killed in the Iran war that he was hearing about the man’s concerns for the first time. Critics, including at least one former fan, are now calling it a career-ending moment.
At a CBS News town hall that aired Saturday, Joey Amor confronted Vance. His wife, Master Sgt. Nicole Amor, was one of six people killed March 1 in an Iranian strike in Kuwait, a day after President Donald Trump launched the war.
“There’s a failure in the leadership,” Amor said. “And I want to know how this administration is gonna start holding those leaders accountable for the actions and the deaths of the soldiers that we honor and that we love.”
Vance called Nicole Amor a “precious human being who served her country honorably” and promised to find out what went wrong.
“Because if there were failures, and I don’t doubt there were, I just … literally the first time I’ve heard of this is this conversation, and I want to fix that stuff,” Vance said. “You live in a bit of a bubble [as vice president and] sometimes information doesn’t filter up to me.”
Conservative national security author Brandon Weichert said that answer ended Vance’s future.
“He’s done. Disqualified. The dude doesn’t know what time it is. Gone,” Weichert wrote on X. “Too bad. I liked him.”
Brandon Wolf, a Pulse nightclub shooting survivor and bestselling author, called it “a truly horrific response to a grieving widower.”
“May it haunt Vance for his career,” he wrote.
Jared Holt, a senior researcher at Open Measures and co-host of the podcast “Posting Through It,” said the moment answered a question about the GOP’s future.
“I don’t know what the future of the Republican Party will be after Trump but I can tell you with near 100% certainty that this is not the guy,” Holt wrote in response.
Democratic strategist Michelle Kinney, co-founder of the Mayday Network, called Vance an “absolute soulless, craven, psychopath.”
Left-wing streamer Hasan Piker shared the clip with a two-word reaction: “holy s---.”
Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone, predicted someone else would take the fall. He wrote that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “will probably be fired after the midterms” as “the likely fall guy for Trump,” and said Vance “did nothing at all to stop the drive to war on Iran.”
The administration faced scrutiny after the strike, with reports that the facility in Kuwait wasn’t prepared for an attack.
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