JD Vance Could Doom the Post-Trump Right

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Vice President JD Vance is having a moment.

On Saturday, 61% of the Republican activist class in attendance at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference indicated that they hope Vance succeeds Trump on top of the GOP ticket in 2028. Steve Bannon, the next highest finisher, came in at 12%. Right now, overseas bookmakers have Vance an overwhelming 2-1 favorite to win the 2028 election. Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), the second choice in the odds, comes in at 16-1.

Everything’s coming up JD; but is that anything for conservatives to celebrate? Based on the vice president’s recent rhetoric, the answer is absolutely not.

Last week, President Donald Trump finally joined Vance in denouncing the Ukrainian cause and its champion, Volodymyr Zelensky. The charges Trump has leveled at Zelensky in recent days are familiar. They’re of the same character as the ones Vance and his allies on the isolationist right have been articulating for the better part of three years. Still a senator in December 2023, Vance accused some unknown number of his peers of wanting “to cut Social Security” and “throw our grandparents into poverty” so “one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht.”

If there’s a connection between the provision of aid to Ukraine and the sentencing of America’s elderly to destitution, it’s yet to be discovered. For Vance, the ends – stopping the flow of aid – justified any and every means of persuasion available to him, regardless of their underlying truth. Indeed, the best that can be said for such a heavy-handed line is that it wasn’t nakedly bigoted, as it was when Tucker Carlson, the far-right commentator who reportedly played a key role in getting Vance his job, described Zelensky as being “sweaty,” rat-like,” and “a persecutor of Christians.”

Vance’s arguments – however hollow they may be – have nevertheless resonated with Trump. And the former celebrated the latter’s declaration that Zelensky was a “dictator” who had “started” the conflict between his nation and Vladimir Putin’s by impishly musing that he “just wanted to make sure no one missed it.”

The vice president was more long-winded in a post deeming conservative historian Niall Ferguson’s criticism of Trump’s newfound antipathy for Ukraine “moralistic garbage,” which he called “the rhetorical currency of the globalists.”

“We must pursue peace, and we must pursue it now,” continued Vance. “President Trump ran on this, he won on this, and he is right about this. It is lazy, ahistorical nonsense to attack as ‘appeasement’ every acknowledgment that America’s interest must account for the realities of the conflict.”

If there’s a through-line with Vance, it’s his reliance on sophistry to make a point.

It could be a habit borne out of necessity. While Vance has been credited for his performances in showdowns with the likes of Margaret Brennan and Tim Walz, he’s hardly a proven political talent. Just weeks before his 2022 Senate primary, Vance was languishing in a distant third behind two other less-than-impressive candidates. It was only Trump’s endorsement, paid for by the demonstration and promise of continued blind allegiance, that ultimately propelled his uninspiring campaign to victory.

Vance continues to fall back on rhetorical tricks in the present. After Ferguson wondered at the difference between Trump’s recent statements and George H.W. Bush’s remarks after the invasion of Kuwait, Vance laid out several “facts” to explain the former.

Among them, that “Russians have a massive numerical advantage in manpower and weapons in Ukraine,” “the United States retains substantial leverage over both parties to the conflict,” and “ending the conflict requires talking to the people involved in starting it and maintaining it.“

These, he argued, were why “we must pursue peace, and we must pursue it now.”

Yet none of these observations or professed objectives comports with the Trump-Vance administration’s actions. If what Trump and Vance seek is a lasting peace favorable to American interests, why are they so intent on depriving the Ukrainians of even a morsel of leverage at the bargaining table? How do the propagation of outright lies minted by Putin’s propaganda machine and assassination of Zelensky’s character move the ball forward?

For that Vance has no answer; which is why he has resorted to the same deceptive tactics he leans on so often.

In another galling moment this week, Vance expressed his outrage over a Ukrainian-American man who accused him of “trying to abandon” his country:

During my senate campaign in 2022, I met a Ukrainian-American man in NE Ohio. He was very angry about my views on the conflict, and my desire to bring it to a rapid close.

“You are trying to abandon my country, and I don’t like it.”

“Sir, I replied, “your country is the United States of America, and so is mine.”

I always found it offensive that a new immigrant to our country would be willing to use the power and influence of their new nation to settle the ethnic rivalries of the old.

One of the most important parts of assimilation is seeing *your* country as the USA. It’s part of the bargain: if you’re welcomed into our national family, you ought to look out for the interests of the United States. I know many immigrants who have the right perspective, and I’m grateful to them. For example, I met many Ukrainian Americans during that campaign (and since) who agreed with my views, or at the very least, asked the right question: what is in the best interests of the United States?

Yet again, Vance the sophist shows his face. Instead of addressing the layman’s legitimate concerns, he seized on his word choice to elide the substantive argument. We’re meant to take this story –about a man pleading with his would-be representative to do what is best for both his ancestral and current homelands — as an indictment of the supposedly unpatriotic supporters of the Ukrainian cause? The discerning reader should see that Vance has hoisted himself by his own petard.

At the moment, it is Trump who holds the fate of Ukraine – and the American-led world order – in his hand. Clear-eyed observers can only hope he turns back from the dangerous course he is pursuing.

Republicans, meanwhile, must reckon with the fact that Trump’s heir apparent has not only steered him on to that course, but lacks the ability to make an honest, coherent case for it — and decide if they truly hope to be led next by a man so deficient in character and capacity.

The graveyard of American presidential politics is littered with such failures.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.