“He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” Trump said of Vance on Iran. “I think he was, maybe, less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic.”
Trump faces MAGA division over decision to strike Iran
USA TODAY’s Zac Anderson explains the criticism Trump faces from key MAGA voices over the war in Iran.
DORAL, Fla. – When it came to launching a war against Iran, President Donald Trump said his top deputy and heir apparent Vice President JD Vance had a “different” view than his boss and was “less enthusiastic” in the lead up.
He did not say why that was, nor has Vance, who rose to prominence as a leading voice on the right warning against dragging the United States into more messy, extended conflicts overseas.
“He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me,” Trump said of Vance during a March 9 news conference. “I think he was, maybe, less enthusiastic about going, but he was quite enthusiastic.”
The president downplayed any disagreement between the two, but the comments suggested he and Vance weren’t perfectly in sync on a war that has generated MAGA backlash and accusations of betrayal from prominent Trump-aligned voices.
Vance now finds himself in a precarious political position as he tries to navigate an open-ended conflict that Trump had vacillated between calling a “little excursion” and an operation that could take weeks to complete.
The vice president has had limited public appearances, one primetime media interview and less online activity during the war, while he balances pressure from MAGA and his duty to a demanding president whose support, or lack thereof, is likely to determine his political future.
Vance’s advocacy for a non-interventionist foreign policy helped endear him to MAGA, a movement whose backing he will also need to win a 2028 presidential campaign. Now his credibility as a politician could be tested by Iran.
Curt Mills, executive director of the MAGA-aligned magazine The American Conservative, told USA TODAY that Iran is “probably one of the greatest campaign betrayals in American history” and could fall on Vance to defend long term as the man Trump has said he considers his “most likely” political heir.
“This is a problem for him, and I believe he knows that,” Mills added of Vance.
Trump is known to have a vindictive streak and turned on his first vice president, Mike Pence, after he broke with him on the 2020 election results. Pence’s presidential bid four years later barely took off.
Conservatives are watching now to see how Vance approaches the Iran war in what could be a critical moment for his future.
Asked about Trump’s comments during a March 13 trip to North Carolina, Vance gave an indirect response that emphasized the free exchange of ideas among and trust between the president’s top advisers.
“I think it’s important for the president of the United States to be able to have a conversation with his team without his team then running their mouth to the American media,” Vance told reporters.
‘On the sidelines’
Vance’s relatively low-profile in the first weeks of the Iran war hasn’t gone unnoticed.
On LindellTV, a conservative outlet run by Trump ally and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, fill-in host Brandon Weichert said Vance was “supposed to be the herald of the noninterventionist wing of the MAGA movement but he’s sort of … been on the sidelines.”
“If I were Vance, I would not care anymore about keeping my powder dry for 2028. He needs to build RIGHT NOW an alternative power center within the administration and start vocalizing his vision for a non-interventionist foreign policy,” Weichert wrote in a social media post. “Anything less is cowardly.”
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who broke with Trump and resigned from Congress after once being one of his top allies, also called out Vance in a pair of social media posts.
“We said ‘No More Foreign Wars, No More Regime Change!’ We said it on rally stage after rally stage, speech after speech,” Greene wrote. “Trump, Vance, basically the entire admin campaigned on it.”
After serving in Iraq as a Marine, Vance called the U.S. invasion of that country “disastrous” in his speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention. That same year he said war with Iran is not in America’s interest.
Vance, 41, lauded Trump in a 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed for not starting any wars during his first term, saying his foreign policy is “perhaps” his greatest legacy from those first four years in the White House. He has criticized previous “foreign misadventures.”
In Trump’s second term, some of the vice president’s biggest moments have come during pugnacious appearances with foreign leaders that reinforced the view he was a torchbearer for conservatives, many of them younger like Vance, who are skeptical of America’s longtime role as the leading force establishing international order and checking undemocratic forces.
“He is the face of the new right… he is the young vanguard incarnate and to the extent that that brand is threatened, that’s a problem for him,” Mills said.
Vance has taken a harder line on Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, though, saying the U.S. must be prepared to take strong measures to prevent it.
“I think we have to be aggressive with this and I come at this from a position of some restraint in foreign policy,” Vance said in 2024 on the Morgan Ortagus Show. “I think war often leads to unintended consequences but preventing Iran from getting a bomb – really, really, really important.”
Vance stays quiet as MAGA erupts
Nearly three days after the initial Iran strike, Vance went on “Jesse Watters Primetime” and addressed concerns about an extended military operation, saying on the Fox News program, “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.”
Vance also attended two dignified transfer ceremonies for the remains of killed U.S. soldiers and spoke to a firefighters group, touching briefly on Iran in asking for prayers for the fallen military service members.
Yet it has been other administration figures such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as national security adviser, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who have taken the lead with Trump in communicating about the war. That’s not surprising, given their responsibilities. But some questioned why Vance has not been as active.
Rubio was with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida as the first Iran strikes unfolded, while Vance was in Washington, D.C. Vance was “at the kid’s table,” Weichert said during a LindellTV interview with Andrew Day, senior editor at The American Conservative magazine.
“Maybe Vance is hoping that that allows him to kind of distance himself from the war, but I think it’s kind of the worst of all possible worlds for him,” Day said.
“I agree,” Weichert interjected.
“Because he seems attached to this war, it’s going to drag him down if it becomes very unpopular, but at the same time he’s not exactly demonstrating his leadership skills,” Day added.
A Vance spokesperson disputed that the vice president had been “keeping a low profile” and dismissed reporting since the strikes on the counsel he gave the president.
“The Vice President, a proud member of the President’s national security team, keeps his counsel to the president private,” Vance press secretary Taylor Van Kirk said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Vance’s office also said the vice president was in Florida, and discussed the Venezuela operation with Trump at his golf club in West Palm Beach on Jan. 2, but was not at Mar-A-Lago when the strike took place, because the national security team was concerned a late-night motorcade movement could tip off Nicolás Maduro’s government. Vance joined via secure video conference.
He was part of the planning process for the Iran strikes, Vance’s office added, and monitored that attack from the White House Situation Room while Trump and other top aides were in Palm Beach in order to maintain operational security. The Trump administration says it has aimed to limit the frequency and duration of the president and vice president being away from the White House in the same location over security concerns.
“Efforts to drive a wedge between President Trump and Vice President Vance are totally misguided. The President listens to a host of opinions from his talented national security team and ultimately makes decisions based on what is best for our country and national security. Vice President Vance is a tremendous asset to the President and the entire administration,” White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement.A senior White House official separately said that the entire national security team was focused on executing the Iran operation and deliberately let the president’s two pre-taped video addresses stand on their own as the operation unfolded.
While administration officials worked behind the scenes, prominent Trump-aligned voices were blasting the war. Conservative media figure Tucker Carlson, a Vance ally who advocated for him to become Trump’s running mate, called the war “evil” in an ABC News interview.
Joe Rogan, an influential podcaster who had Trump on his show and endorsed him before the 2024 election, said on March 10 that “people feel betrayed” by the war after a campaign message of “no more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars.”
‘A real problem’
Whatever philosophical differences Vance may have shared with Trump, he has been supportive in his public comments in the two weeks since the U.S. launched its military campaign on Feb. 28.
The president will expect more from him going forward, former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton told USA TODAY in an interview.
Bolton, a frequent critic of the president who has lauded his actions in Iran, said Trump will expect Vance “to step up,” noting the vice president will be tasked with hitting the road to sell Trump’s agenda ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“It’s going to be day by day as this thing goes on what Vance is going to do. I think each day is a real problem for him,” Bolton said.
‘MAGA’s intellectual’
Vance’s approach to Iran could impact his political career for years to come.
“Vance was very much on the side of sort of no more forever wars … but if Trump sort of drags them off into Iran here and manages to paint him with this view, he’s going to find it very hard to come back and say ‘I never believed in that all along,’” said Emma Ashford, who advocates for a more restrained U.S. foreign policy as a senior fellow with the Stimson Center, a nonprofit think tank.
Trump has been malleable and doesn’t have a “consistent vision of what he means by America First,” Ashford told USA TODAY. Vance, meanwhile, has been more engaged in philosophical debates around MAGA principles. Mills described Vance, a Yale Law School graduate, as “MAGA’s intellectual.”
“He’s in a stressful position by dint of having at least part of his reputation revolve around true convictions that are sort of well-articulated and thought through about major changes in the direction of domestic and foreign policy,” said Sam Rosenfeld, who leads Colgate University’s Public Affairs & Policy Research Initiative.
“If that’s part of your identity it’s risky to” be tethered to Trump, who is “going to play it as it goes,” Rosenfeld told USA TODAY.
The GOP base has gone along for the ride with Trump, continuing to rally behind the president. An NBC News poll released March 4 found that 77% of Republicans favor striking Iran, and support is even higher among those who identify as MAGA.
But that could change based on how the U.S. involvement in Iran unfolds. And whether Vance has as much goodwill within the party base and ability to shape GOP opinion remains to be seen.
A short conflict likely wouldn’t impact Vance much, some believe. It would’ve been better, though, for him if the war never happened, Mills said.
“(To) the core MAGA, the people that believed in the promise of remaking the party and remaking the movement, this is just an enormous disappointment,” Mills said. “And there’s no way of polishing that.”