Veep Vance's Troubling Texts

Gleaned from the Atlantic article, these are Vance’s statements. In part they’re insightful, but in other parts troubling:

The account labeled “JD Vance” responded at 8:16: “Team, I am out for the day doing an economic event in Michigan. But I think we are making a mistake.” (Vance was indeed in Michigan that day.) The Vance account goes on to state, “3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”

The Vance account then goes on to make a noteworthy statement, considering that the vice president has not deviated publicly from Trump’s position on virtually any issue. “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

The account identified as “JD Vance” addressed a message at 8:45 to @Pete Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.”

“I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance wrote.

William Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, said that despite the impression created by the texts, the vice president is fully aligned with the president. “The Vice President’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations,” he said. “Vice President Vance unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy. The President and the Vice President have had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”

Hegseth’s counter to Vance’s concern that the American public won’t understand why were bombing the shit out of another faraway country is this:

"Nobody [in America] knows who the Houthis are, so [we can just say] Biden failed and Iran funded them."

I don’t believe that was addressed directly to Vance, but it’s a counter to Vance’s line of thinking. The basic idea is, Out of sight, out of mind, we can get away with it by blaming Zhou and Iran. That mentality isn’t very reassuring, especially considering that Trump 2.0 is still in its early days.

Vance’s forthright “I think we’re making a mistake” is encouraging in a general sense. However, his reasoning isn’t at all humanitarian or morally based. Basically he’s arguing, Hey, POTUS is telling the Euros they need to learn to take care of themselves, but actually they’re the ones who have most at stake, by far, in keeping the Red Sea open. In other words, as Vance texts, we’re really just bailing the Euros out—again. That’s the only real mistake he appears to see.

On the one hand that sounds like a somewhat sensible reflection, but on the other hand Vance also seems to be out of touch with the whole anti-Iran trend of Trump 2.0 policy—leaving one wondering just how much in the loop he actually is. After all, the public statements by Trump about the attack on Iran are all about linkage to Iran and forcing Iran to submit to his demands—Trump’s social media posts are quite explicit on that linkage. How could Vance have missed that?

Lastly, there’s this troubling text passage:

The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.

America has been bombing the world for decades, almost always to send one message or another. That’s a significant part of how we got ourselves into a fiscal mess with a run down military. And yet Vance thinks “sending messages” by more bombing is somehow a good idea. It hasn’t worked in the past—we wouldn’t be resorting to messaging now if it had worked in the past—so why does he consider this a strong reason to try it again? And is this really Trump’s own reasoning? He sold himself as the guy who would bring fresh, reality based, perspectives to foreign policy, and now we’re back to “sending messages” with bombs?

I see this confused thinking as simply evidence that US foreign policy has been hijacked, and that even within this inner circle of advisers nobody feels free—if they even understand this—to speak out frankly.

That’s the real message from this messaging. It doesn’t inspire confidence going forward. What’s the next mess we’ll wind up in? Whatever it is, it’s not what We the People thought we were bargaining for, and that should be the real concern of Trump and these hapless texters.