I already wrote a post on Vance’s Joe Rogan appearance, but it turns out I have more to say. The more I think about Vance, the more uneasy I become.

It’s been cumulative, but the Rogan interview is somewhat of a turning point for me. Initially, I was – if not a Vance fan, exactly – of the opinion that he might gain the sort of experience as VP that would make him a good presidential candidate in 2028. He’s clearly a smart guy, and he’s had a way with words when talking to the regular press and pointing out their illogic and lies. In his debate against Tim Walz he was excellent, and he used a delicate and deft touch. Among his other assets, he has a wife who seems as though she would make a wonderful First Lady.

But in recent months, Vance’s refusal to say something about Tucker Carlson’s horrendous viewpoints has been very disquieting. Carlson isn’t just anti-Israel and a spreader of classic lies about Jews, but he’s a historical revisionist, a Qatar and Putin shill, and has become a platform for some of the worst ideas around these days. For a while, Carlson’s son worked for Vance (although he’s quit now), and it’s long been known that it was Carlson who promoted to Trump the idea of Vance as VP. So in a very real way Vance owes his present job to Carlson.

That meant that there was a simple explanation for Vance not speaking out against Carlson as Trump had. That reason was loyalty. Blind and unwavering loyalty is not necessarily a good thing, but as long as Vance kept neutral on the subject of Carlson, I was willing to give him a pass and to wait and see. And then Vance decided to go on Rogan’s podcast, and he began to sound somewhat like Tucker himself. Not just that, but the interview was an exercise in buck-passing, which is not a good look.

This article by Lee Smith describes it quite well:

During his grievance-fueled performance on Rogan’s podcast, Vance lashed out once again at the Jews, alleging, among other things, that there’s an Israeli-funded plot to undermine his negotiations with Iran; some Israelis want war indefinitely for the sake of endless war; and the U.S. government has probably destroyed evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad operative. …

Now that the Iran deal that Vance favored has blown up and he’s taking heat for it, he’s showing that no one puts baby in a corner. So, he resurrects Epsteingate, predictably inspiring the dumbest people in America, and around the world, to flood social media with details from an information operation targeting Trump.

Epsteingate is a reboot of Russiagate, a conspiracy-theory template holding that Trump is controlled by a foreign power. During Trump’s first term, that power was Russia. Now, in the second term, it’s Israel. Epstein became crucial to the narrative because his supposed role in running a pedophile blackmail ring at the behest of the Mossad provided a mechanism by which Israel could extort Trump and other high American officials into doing its bidding.

Smith goes on to explain why this is preposterous, but I think it’s of great interest that Vance was willing to hint at this route despite – as he himself admitted – having zero evidence of it. Vance even explicitly said that there was no evidence Trump was involved in sex with minors. But Vance has to know – unless he’s stupid, which I submit he is not – that Vance’s wink and nod about Epstein and the Mossad, and Israeli influence on the US, not only appeals mightily to the Jew-hating Tucker wing but is an indirect way of saying Trump is controlled by Israel.

I very much doubt Trump is happy about that.

More from Smith, on the origins of the story Vance is pushing or at least nodding along when Rogan mentions it:

The rumor that Epstein was a high-level global intelligence asset—as opposed to a rich pervert and con man—seems to have started with Steve Bannon, who left the first Trump White House in disgrace after leaking to the press. Bannon has ignored calls to release the 15 hours of interviews he reportedly taped with Epstein, presumably because they show Epstein was not a spy—or, at the very least, because Bannon failed to press the late sex offender to address a rumor he continues to popularize. The idea the Jewish financier pimped out underage American girls to compromise liberal elites for the purpose of advancing Israeli interests was most ardently promoted by Vance’s political patron, Tucker Carlson.

This is the Jew-hating Tucker wing. They have their own agenda, and I believe it is somewhat parallel to the DSA agenda for the Democrat Party. The goal is to take over the Republican Party. I don’t think they’ll succeed, but it won’t be for lack of trying. And now I strongly believe that Vance has hitched his wagon to him.

Vance is pragmatic, and may back off from this. It’s a long way to 2028 and a lot can happen. But he has shown, at the very least, that he’s willing to go very low in his own pursuit of power and need to excuse himself from responsibility for the failure of the negotiations with Iran.

It gets worse [emphasis in original]:

And to explain why his memorandum of understanding failed, Vance sourced the reading at a supermarket checkout counter. “There’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing,” said Vance, pointing to a recent article in Time magazine. In fact, the story is about a former Trump deputy paid by Israel to pay pro-Israel influencers to post pro-Israel content, to combat the rising tide of campaigners on the right targeting Israel and paid for by Qatar.

Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the media he is “not aware of any intelligence about a secret information operation to try to change American public opinion on negotiating under the memorandum of understanding.” Also, no one prevented Vance from negotiating the MOU, because it got signed. Yes, there was plenty of criticism on social media, but as Cotton said, it was the Iranians who blew up Vance’s deal by continuing to blow up ships in the Strait of Hormuz, which they declared to be their own private waterway—contrary to long-standing treaties that guarantee freedom of the seas.

But Vance insists it’s on Israel. “There are some people within their system, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely,” he told Rogan. “Not toward any objective, but just indefinitely.”

Vance challenges anyone to show how he’s antisemitic. But claiming that Israelis want war for the sake of war, indefinitely, toward no specific objective, is a pretty good place to start. Vance’s denials are part of the act: I didn’t say something recognizably antisemitic; it’s on you to prove that the classic antisemitic conceit I used is antisemitic, you paranoid freak. My point is clearly just that Israelis simply kill people for no reason or purpose because they enjoy spilling blood, and they will continue doing so forever, to satisfy their perverted, inhuman lusts.

That is the part that seems to me to be the most revealing of Vance’s actual position.

Rubio, on the other hand, seems to actually have some integrity, and to have thought more deeply on these sorts of issues. Not only that, but he has a great deal of experience in government and in particular in foreign policy. He’s the child of Cuban refugees, and knows a lot about Communism and its effects. Plus, he’s quite expert on Latin America and has been active in dealing with that part of the world.

Rubio recently gave a much-praised speech on left-wing violence (you can find the text here). And he also gave a speech in Germany against 3rd-world migration that got a standing ovation [ADDENDUM: The video at that link, of the ovation, might be of an earlier speech; hard to say, but I’ve seen some statements to that effect].

The contrast between the two men is stark.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson recently said this about J. D. Vance [emphasis mine]:

I think if JD Vance were president, of course he would not be at war with Iran.

It’s impossible for me to imagine JD Vance standing up and saying we need to have two wars to defeat a phantom nuclear program.

It’s too insane. I think he has too much self-respect to say something like that.

I wish he had been elected president in 2024, but that didn’t happen. I love JD.

I don’t agree with him on everything, of course, but I think he’s an honest, very smart, decent person. That puts him above almost all politicians I’ve ever met.

That’s an endorsement.