Vance reveals himself, and it’s not pretty
It’s been clear for quite some time that Vance has been flirting with the Tucker Carlson wing of the anti-Israel right. He’s refused to separate himself from Carlson by criticizing him, no matter how egregiously anti-Israel Tucker becomes; how many lies he tells or liars he platforms; or how friendly he is towards Putin, Qatar, and towards Islam as a religion of supposed tolerance of Christianity. This has been worrisome and caused people to wonder just how far Vance’s alliance with Carlson goes. Has he just been trying to keep the Carlson wing under the shelter of the big tent, or is he in agreement with Tucker?
Yesterday Vance appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and said some things that indicate agreement with Carlson. Here’s a report:
JD Vance has claimed he is the target of an Israeli-funded propaganda campaign over his Iran peace push, and that Jeffrey Epstein had ties to the ‘highest levels’ of Mossad.
The vice president made the explosive allegations during a nearly three-hour sit-down with podcaster Joe Rogan.
Vance pointed to a Time magazine report he said proved American influencers were being paid to attack the Iran deal. The report notes that money has flowed through a former Trump campaign operative and is bankrolled by elements of the Israeli government.
‘My response to that is, well, go to hell,’ Vance said of those taking the cash to smear him. The vice president, who complained he has been branded an anti-Semite, declared that Israel is losing the public opinion battle in America.
He also said that ‘figures’ inside the Israeli government are manipulating American public opinion to keep the war going ‘indefinitely.’
Vance then shifted to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal, revealing that the disgraced financier ‘clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence.’
These are claims that have been aired by the Tucker wing for quite some time, and the evidence for them is extremely poor and mostly rumor and innuendo. The following is about Vance’s allegation about Israel sabotaging the peace negotiations, which he says he based on an article in Time:
… [T]here is apparently a “very discreet, extremely well-funded campaign” to derail negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, according to Vice President JD Vance on Joe Rogan’s show last night. Why is the Vice President perpetuating this dubious claim? The reason is simple: it benefits him too.
Much like other theories that find a home on Rogan’s podcast, this one is thinly sourced and vastly misinterpreted. The article Vance cites for this conspiracy does indeed point to an Israeli-funded influence operation—a FARA-registered, Israeli-government-funded campaign, run through political consultant Brad Parscale’s Clock Tower X, pushing pro-Israel content into the MAGA ecosystem, including through paid influencers who reportedly received suggested language via private group chats and compensation tied to engagement.
Where the article cuts against him is on the one point his whole story depends on: that this was a deliberate campaign built “to derail the negotiations” and keep the war going indefinitely. The Time magazine reporting establishes no such intent. Per the article, the contracted goal was preventing young conservatives from turning against Israel—a reputation campaign, not an anti-ceasefire operation. The sabotage motive is Vance’s attribution, not the reporting’s finding.
And the two people best positioned to know deny his version.
So, whatever you think of Vance’s using a Time story as support for his allegations, he’s not even citing it properly.
Vance was heavily involved in the negotiations with Iran. Now he’s indicating that he didn’t fail; Israel stabbed him in the back. I wonder if this sort of statement on Vance’s part represents a rift between Vance and Trump on this or whether Vance is doing this with Trump’s permission, to keep the Tuckeresque right in the GOP camp for the midterms.
Another statement of Vance’s is somewhat in the same vein:
Vance then shifted to the administration’s handling of the Epstein scandal, revealing that the disgraced financier ‘clearly had connections to the highest levels of American intelligence’ and ‘Israeli intelligence.’
When Rogan noted that most people believe Epstein was working for Mossad, the vice president did not dispute it. Vance noted that it was Mossad ‘or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country or both.’
Vance, who described himself as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ on Epstein, said that anything tying the pedophile to spy agencies was likely destroyed after 2006 – when the financier was first arrested.
Get it? Epstein was a Mossad agent but he conveniently destroyed the evidence, so we can never know.
Actually, Epstein had “connections” to a lot of people who had nothing to do with his pedophilia; he was a famous guy with a lot of money and influence. I would have hoped this sort of insinuation would be beneath Vance, but apparently not:
On Epstein, the vice president agreed with Rogan that the financier was running an operation to pressure or compromise powerful people.
‘I will go to my deathbed believing there’s a story there,’ Vance said, though he admitted he cannot prove it.
‘And I promise you there’s not some document, at least that I’m hiding, that allows us to prove exactly what was going on and how.’
There, Vance sounds like Candace Owens, who likes to say she doesn’t know-know but she knows.
More here:
Asked by Rogan how he was being attacked, Vance pointed to social media posts and leaks to reporters.
“They’re attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely,” he said.
Vance said critics had accused him of being influenced by Qatar and other foreign governments and of taking “marching orders from Tucker Carlson.” …
“When I open up the pages of Time Magazine and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and, oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways, you know, my response to that is, well, go to hell,” Vance said.
Boo hoo, those Israeli-funded meanies were attacking him and that’s why Iran didn’t just give in to his brilliant negotiations.
It’s also of relevance that Vance chose the Joe Rogan podcast to air these grievances against Israel and these excuses for himself. Rogan is not Israel-friendly, nor is his main audience. I doubt Vance would go on Tucker’s show – Vance is smart, and he knows better than that. But Rogan’s show is the next best thing without being especially controversial.
For quite some time I’ve hoped that Rubio is the GOP presidential candidate in 2028. I’m certainly open to other possibilities, but so far Vance is not one of them.
[NOTE: When Carlson decided to split from the Republican Party, I wondered who he’d be supporting for the presidency in 2028. For a while I considered that Tucker himself might want to run. But now it occurs to me that it’s possible that he’d be supporting Vance for the head of a third party. This would be disastrous, IMHO, and could easily cause a Democrat to win if enough people ended up supporting Vance.
I’m not saying this will happen. I still think Vance wants to be the GOP nominee. But if he doesn’t get the nomination, I can easily imagine a situation in which he goes third-party to ally with Tucker and Tucker’s followers.]
Sigh. Nuts. Because many hoped he would step up after Trump.
All the more reason to support Marco, who runs rings around JD.
There are all sorts of foreign-government-funded campaigns to influence American public opinion. At least this one, funded by Israel, is out in the open.
It is discouraging to see Vance taking TIME Magazine seriously.
Had never considered – ‘But if he doesn’t get the nomination, I can easily imagine a situation in which he goes third-party to ally with Tucker and Tucker’s followers’. Had thought 3rd party for Trump tho if he hadn’t been GOP nom.
Had stated my views here on J. D. “Bootlicker” Vance many times, and would vote for AOC before him – GOP has MANY MANY GREAT CANDIDATES and Vance is not one of them.
Geez…he’s even worse than I thought he was!?!
My impression: Vance went out on quite a limb to convince Trump that the new Iranian leadership had changed and were ready to rejoin the international community as responsible players, leading to the MOU. But then it turned out – shockingly – that the Iranians had, in fact, not changed a bit and had played Vance like a fiddle. Not good, and embarrassing for Trump. So what should an ambitious VP do in this predicament? Blame the Jews, of course!
Sadly, he has become Tucker Carlson lite.
I am now in full support of Marco Rubio in 2028–he has the gravitas and the wisdom that Vance lacks.
So Mossad was behind the Iranian attacks on tankers in Hormuz? Yeah, Vance stopped making sense to me a while ago.
I do wonder, like Road Warrior, if this is blame-casting for the failure of the MOU negotiations. Vance was the face of those negotiations. A serious black eye for him.
But then Vance has been overly friendly with the Tucker world before this.
Assuming he was assigned to do the negotiating, that was okay. If he actually believed, based on what we saw happening, that the negotiators were either in charge in Iran and that they were credible, then that’s another problem.
Side note: Karmi is back? Taking advantage of the new log-in regime, I guess.
Kate:
I let Karmi come back as a present for his 80th birthday. As long as he doesn’t turn troll-like, it’s okay.
Road Warrior has the right of it.
Vance is another Bush Sr. another Pence.
I wonder what Witcoff and Kushner think about this.
J D Vance is not ready or desirable as a successor to President Trump, the one term Senator is still wet behind the ears, but needs to wash the stench of anti-Semitism off the rest of himself.
He got suckered by Iran, after falling for Roosia?
And he just can’t quit Tucker?
Humble sorta hermit me doesn’t recall ever getting a better birthday present either. I had kept reading and doing some comments (even knowing they weren’t going thru…) then saw the announcement of a comment section change and thought I saw Birthday Ribbon around it.
Invited back into edges of the Dualistic World last year — humble me is again ‘Tasting‘ the “sweet and sour fruits of the tree of life” — sex at 80 for fun & Medical Marijuana for ‘Pain‘.
Old Age gets a bad rap IMHO …
Israel Foreign Ministry:
https://x.com/i/status/2077801892516626916
I have become more and more impressed with Secretary of State Rubio. I would happily vote for him in 2028.
I am becoming more and more appalled by Mr. Vance. We don’t need a Tuckerite in the White House.
Particularly absurd is the charge that Israel wants—and promotes—“forever wars” against its enemies.
Got that one totally arse-backward…which can happen if one get’s too Tucker-adjacent…
But I guess it sells to those whose minds have been hijacked by a certain viral narrative…
(To be fair, Israel’s enemies don’t want forever wars either. They just want to see Israel destroyed—and problem solved!—the problem being it’s been taking them way longer than they thought it would, or should, take. Um, a reminder: Israel can only lose once; its enemies can lose as many times as they wish.)
From the beginning, it looked like the MOU was the only way the President could get some breathing room to claim there could be a durable cease fire to change the narrative about oil prices, while at the same time helping oil traffic navigate out of the Strait. It looks like the recent spike in oil is more about the psychology of the renewed strikes by the US.
I really don’t think the President ever thought the talks were going to produce any results. It became apparent early on that the Iranians weren’t sincere and It was for show, but apparently no one told the Vice-President, since he seemed and continued to be so earnest that a negotiated settlement was going to produce something the US could live with.
Vance may not have been in the loop so his efforts were sincere, but privately you would think he would recognize they weren’t producing anything resembling two sides negotiating. The fact that he is still stuck on this narrative is concerning and should give supporters of the Vice-President pause that he has enough experience at this level.
Israel is in a very tough spot, with only less bad options. The best outcome, regime change, can’t be the US position since that would create a dynamic where the IRGC would fight to the last radical. By leaving that option off the table, we can functionally continue to degrade their ruling authority until hopefully the less radical Islamists turn on the radicals with sufficient force. I had always hoped that would be the Artesh.
Anyway, Vance’s position on Israel does need to be clarified– if he truly does think they not only have a right to exist, but should exist in their ancient homeland. Those two positions aren’t identical. That has become muddled for some time and Vance needs to clarify his position or risk losing the majority of conservatives that want the US to aid Israel so that its existence is never in doubt.
I also do think that while Vance is an incredibly intelligent man, he was rushed into the position of VP. He does need some accomplishments to demonstrate he can use that intelligence for some beneficial end.
Should the US support Israel? Of course. I have had occasionally heated discussions over this with a friend who spent decades in the ME working for Aramco who felt that Realpolitik demanded the US to oppose Israel on a multitude of issues. That said, it is instructive to remind everyone that US and Israeli interests are not always exactly congruent and that Israel will do things that we are not obligated to support.
In the comments here, I’ve detected a bit of “If only Uncle Joe Stalin knew what was happening” blindness. Given Trump’s neo-isolationist pacifism and his stated goal of a completely non-nuclear Iran, which does NOT require regime change to a Israel-friendly Iran, I think that it’s perfectly reasonable to think that Vance’s directions from Trump were to get the no-nuke goal done and get the US the hell out of the ME with no weight given to what Israel wants.
If this is true, an Israeli influence campaign attacking Vance makes sense, as in the sense of the Royal Whipping Boy.
This isn’t necessarily true, but the view that Vance is just a Tucker acolyte is not the slam dunk that I see expressed in these comments.
We’ll see in a couple of months.
…Unless the appearance of “putting daylight” between Trump and Israel is merely another ingeniously goofy act meant to fool the Iranians (and their pals—but also the Israelis??), with Vance, loyal soldier that he is, willing to be the fall guy…
How can anyone possibly know…?
(To the tune of, “Who could ask for anything more…”)
But, but Buddhaha, what if regime change is the ONLY way to achieve Trump’s (expressed) goal of “no Iranian nukes”?
(Might sound funny but I think this is what the Mullahs-ha have been trying to tell our indefatigable wheeler-dealer.)
Of course, it would be great if one could actually rely on the Mullahs-ha, but what are the chances that’s merely a hashish dream?
(Karmi, any ideas? BTW, happy birthday!)
I had high hopes for Vance as Trump’s successor but he has been a great disappointment. His attempts to appease the Jew-hating woke right are a deal breaker and he shouldn’t be the nominee. I don’t think he would have much success as being the leader of an America First party because of his marriage and his ties to Peter Thiel. A lot of the woke right hates him for those reasons.
I was hoping that he would change course and distance himself from Tucker but I think it’s too late for that. I think Trump realizes that JD is not the man he thought he was and is looking for ways to subtly undermine him. I think the party should get behind Rubio.
Maybe JD can go back to being just another Senator and leave his shameful foreign policy behind.
Vice Presidents can be replaced; calling Spiro.
“Trump’s neo-isolationist pacifism” – buddhaha
That’s pretty funny.
Wait a minute. Is Vance claiming the MOU fell apart because of “an Israeli influence campaign attacking Vance”? So, it wasn’t because the IRGC kept attacking shipping, the Bahrain and Israel (through Hezbollah) after the MOU was signed? Is there anything Israel can’t do?
Blaming Israel for something Iran did certainly is in the Tucker Carlson playbook.
Happy belated birthday Karmi. (Juneteenth – my birthday as well). I trust that in your old age you will, in future, be on your best behavior.
Barry M: “Israel’s enemies don’t want forever wars either. They just want to see Israel destroyed—and problem solved!”
The funny (or not-so funny) thing is that if Israel were destroyed it wouldn’t solve *any* problems for its enemies who would still be miserable corrupt oppressive backwards regimes. It is as much a problem for them that “Israel can only lose once” as it is for Israel. Ok not quite as much of a problem but still a problem, who is their next whipping boy to take their peoples’ minds off how bad they are?
Small point now since TIME magazine is far less relevant than it used to be but it has been anti-Zionist and antisemitic (but I repeat myself) for decades.
This is impeachment insurance.
Indeed, it is true that even without Israel around to (conveniently) be blamed/accused/shamed/abused, Arab/Moslem regimes will continue to attack enemies, both external and (particularly) internal…HOWEVER NO ONE WILL CARE; hence peace will be claimed to rule the Middle East AND the world forever and ever, Amen…
Just the way it is…
(Though, as you say, a new bogeyman will have to be found…but take heart! It is ALREADY HERE! The USA, of course, which is why the Democratic Party MUST be supported globally…by all the right people—cf. Starmer!—and media…so as to EXPEDITE that monstrous county’s destruction.)
File under: Make America Gormless Again…
So disappointing.
I watched it, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what people find objectionable. It wasn’t anti-Israel. When he said they are an ally, as France and Britain are (were?), I believe that’s true. And that didn’t mean we always backed them. Sometimes I think it was wrong of us not to do so (e.g., Suez).
People do seem to read a lot into Vance’s words, beyond what he actually says. They want to call him Tucker, but that seems unwarranted. Personally, I am opposed to this new attitude that others must denounce those one disagrees with, and the Two Minute Hate that follows. Just stop watching Carlson. Works for me.
Agree with Eeyore there. Already watching this clip…
https://youtu.be/igbXhEr3S_8?is=CLPWw3Qd3ursarfHv1Cw-F195HU a
Makes me question how accurate the DailyMail’s description was. No mention of Israel until the very end, but he spent far more time on Epstein’s taxes. The mossad thing was brought up Rogan and Vance mostly dismissed it. Right at the end he ends up exonerating Bibi.
“I watched it, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what people find objectionable.” -Eeyore (is Eum)
Here’s an example of something that is very concerning.
The Vice-President during his conversation with Rogan said:
We don’t share every objective toward Iran that Israel has. But to say that some in the Israeli government just want to keep the war going indefinitely without any objective is the sort of statement that the anti-Israel crowd will pick up and run with.
Israel has objectives, some of which aren’t our stated objectives (though the President has said would be a good outcome–such as a new regime not hostile to Israel).
I don’t know if VP Vance has an anti-Israel motive, or is just speaking sloppily, but I expect better from him. That’s one of the reasons why I think he is showing himself to not be ready to take on the job of President.
I’ve been dreaming of Rubio as president for nearly 12 years. You can’t argue with his credentials (he’s as qualified as Hillary Clinton was) and he’s a unifying figure. It will be very hard for Democrats to scare people out of voting for him by saying he’s too extreme.
Vance specifically ID’d the Israelis attacking the war as Bibi’s opponents. That’s not antisemitic or even anti-Israeli.
Eeyore (Is, Eum):
I discussed quotes from Vance in this post and my other post on the subject, and I described what is both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic about them. He mentions Israel a great deal, and he says there are people in the Israeli government who want war for no reason and want it to go on interminably.
There is no one like that. There are people who are more hawkish and people who are less hawkish, but no one fits that description, nor does he name anyone. He keeps it quite shadowy.
In fact, that would be a good characterization of Hamas and the vast majority of the Gazan people – they want to destroy and eradicate Israel and they are willing to wage war forever to do it. October 7 was an example of that, an unprovoked attack that was hoped not just to terrorize Israel but the original hope was to destroy it (one goal was to spark the Israeli Arabs to be inspired to attack from within, and for Hezbollah to join as well). And yet Vance characterizes the desire for this interminable war for war’s sake as being people on the Israeli side. Nor does he say who they are – if you can find a quote from Vance saying they specifically are Netanyahu’s opponents, please indicate what it is. I have not seen such a quote, and I’ve read the parts of the transcript that are related to Israel. Now, it’s possible I missed the part you’re talking about, but I don’t see it (the transcript can be found here).
Also, at present Israel is far more of an ally than present-day France or the UK. Vance also compares Israel to Qatar and Russia in his interview.
You are commenting on this thread, but you have also commented similarly on my other post on Vance’s Rogan interview. I don’t see how you could have read the Vance quotes there and not seen what is so wrong with what he said. I linked to and quoted the Lee Smith piece that explains, and I’ll quote that again here, too: