JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
JD Vance is a unique vice president. He was once a vocal critic of President Trump and MAGA, but he spent only two years in elected office before becoming Trump's No. 2 and then Trump's second-term vice president. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben reports on how Vance is finding his niche under Trump and what it means for 2028.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: This week, JD Vance joined efforts to sell the Iran war to Americans. Speaking to Fox News' Jesse Watters, he compared this conflict to the prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This, Vance said, is not about nation-building; it's primarily about stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JD VANCE: What's so different about this, Jesse, is that the president has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish. And there's just no way - I said this before the conflict started. I'll repeat it again - there's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multiyear conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective.
KURTZLEBEN: Of course Trump's stated objectives have changed. He had originally talked about regime change. Vance, meanwhile, downplayed regime change as a goal. In this way, Vance took on a familiar job, smoothing over the president's messaging. Joel Goldstein is an emeritus law professor at St. Louis University who has studied the vice presidency.
JOEL GOLDSTEIN: Trump's explanations often go on for a long time but basically don't sort of drill down into rationales. Whereas Vance oftentimes gives a more lawyerly explanation where he states not only the position, but the rationale behind it.
KURTZLEBEN: This applies to anti-fraud efforts as well. In his State of the Union, President Trump referred to the people committing fraud in Minnesota as Somali pirates and added this...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA.
KURTZLEBEN: Trump announced that Vance would be leading the anti-fraud program, and Vance took what is, for this administration, a gentle tone in explaining the efforts last month - not that the policy is gentle. It includes holding back about $250 million in Minnesota's funding for Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income people, until the state comes up with a fraud-fighting plan the White House likes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VANCE: Part of the reason why we have these programs is we want to make sure that kids who grow up in families not all that different from the family that I grew up in, that they have access to the basic necessities - food, medical care, after-school services - when their family needs them but they're unable to pay.
KURTZLEBEN: The new role gives Vance a potentially much higher profile at the intersection of multiple priorities, even beyond the idea of saving taxpayer money - immigration, highlighting fraud in Minnesota after federal agents killed two U.S. citizens there and pushing states to do what the administration wants. When he's softening Trump's language, Vance resembles Trump's first vice president, Mike Pence. But there are, of course, fundamental differences - for example, pugilism. Vance is not merely the Yale Law grad who neatly articulates the president's policies. Vance is also Trump's anti-establishment deputy who's ready for a fight. He ripped into the White House press corps after a federal agent killed Renee Good in January.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VANCE: Everybody who has been repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis when a law enforcement officer shot at her, you should be ashamed of yourselves, every single one of you.
KURTZLEBEN: And especially after Mike Pence certified that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, leading to the January 6 riot, the conventional wisdom was that Trump was looking for, above all, loyalty, and that's what he got, according to Bill Kristol, who was chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle. He had this to say about Trump choosing Vance.
BILL KRISTOL: I thought it signaled that Trump was going to go all-in in his second term on a kind of authoritarian nativist, Trumpist (ph), let's call it, MAGA agenda. And I think I was right about that.
KURTZLEBEN: Being tied to an unpopular president could weigh on Vance if he aims to run for president in 2028, says Goldstein, the vice-presidential scholar. That's especially true if Vance wants to take on positions that differ from Trump's. But for now, Vance's role is that of a loyal deputy.
GOLDSTEIN: You're basically a No. 2, and you have to be able to pivot in the public's mind to being a No. 1, and that's a challenge for many vice presidents, particularly sitting vice presidents.
KURTZLEBEN: And it's perhaps an even bigger challenge after working in the shadow of a president who relishes the spotlight as much as Trump.
Danielle Kurtzleben, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
