JD Vance's anti-war leaks backfire as Trump makes VP scapegoat for Iran fiasco: analysis
President Donald Trump has weaponized Vice President JD Vance to absorb blame over failed negotiations with Iran, an analyst reported on Monday.
Salon's Amanda Marcotte described how Trump has forced Vance into a situation he didn't want to be in and by doing so, has put his political future in question.
"The vice president didn’t even want to be there, a feeling he has apparently made clear through anonymous leaks from either himself or his associates to journalists, which haver [SIC] resulted in flattering stories alleging that the vice president tried to talk Trump out of launching a war on Iran," Marcotte wrote. "These accounts are likely true enough, but not because Vance has some noble objection to needless killing. At 41, the vice president has enough wits about him to see what was very obvious, something the [SIC] Trump has refused to see: that this war would be a political debacle for the administration — and for Vance’s future plans to run for president."
Although Vance publicly claims support for the war, his private efforts tell a different story, according to Marcotte.
"Vance’s efforts to discreetly paint himself as opposed to the war, though, are backfiring," Marcotte wrote. "The more the Iran war drags on, the more the vice president finds himself getting sucked into the quagmire at the risk of becoming as much the face of the fiasco as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or even Trump himself."
But Vance will continue to face this predicament.
"Perhaps the dam will break, but right now, it seems like the vice president could be stuck for a long time in the hellhole of trying to negotiate the end of a war he didn’t want with very few cards to play, and a boss who won’t admit that they have been defeated," Marcotte added. "All of which means that, while Trump hits the links at Mar-a-Lago or rests behind his desk while answering reporters’ questions in the Oval Office, it will be Vance whose face is out front on coverage of the war. It will be Vance striding toward planes in photographs and Vance standing behind podiums to explain why negotiations aren’t working."