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.]