J.D. Vance Stumbles Through a Weekend From Hell

J.D. Vance in Pakistan on what might have been a fool’s errand.
Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AFP/Getty Images

When he was running for the vice-presidency in 1976, Bob Dole was asked why he wanted the gig, and he quipped, “It’s inside work and no heavy lifting.” Tell that to current veep J.D. Vance, who just endured a very difficult weekend.

On Friday he was abruptly dispatched to Islamabad, Pakistan, to head up the U.S. team negotiating with Iran toward an end to a war that had become a big liability for the Trump administration (and that Vance himself had reportedly opposed). On Sunday, he left Pakistan without anything like a deal in hand, as the BBC reported:

After 21 hours of back and forth in the Pakistani capital, Washington and Tehran remain far apart on key sticking points, including Iran’s nuclear programme.

The two sides did not reach an agreement on what to do with the regime’s enriched uranium, said a US official, who offered new details on the talks on the condition of anonymity.

Other unresolved issues include reopening the Strait of Hormuz without toll charges, a top priority for President Donald Trump, and securing a commitment from Iran to stop funding proxy groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, the US official said.

As Vance headed back home, votes were being counted in Hungary, where just prior to his Pakistan misadventure the vice-president had been personally campaigning for authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, a MAGA idol. Orbán conceded defeat in a call to his successor, Peter Magyar, with surprising speed. This made sense once it became apparent that Orbán’s party had lost in an immense landslide (Vance had confidently predicted an Orbán win).

And then, as Politico Playbook put it: “J.D. Vance must have been just about ready to hit the hay last night after a difficult weekend when … his boss started attacking the pope on social media.”

Vance is the administration’s highest-ranking Catholic and has penned a memoir about his conversion to the faith as an adult, which is set to publish in June. Trump’s decision to reignite his war of words with the Vatican, which now Vance will constantly be asked about, is bad enough. Trump made it worse by posting and (after a global, pan-Christian backlash) taking down an AI image of himself posed as Jesus healing a dead or dying man, surrounded by angels and signs of miraculous power. (Trump’s efforts to pretend the image showed him as a “doctor” haven’t fooled anyone, even those as religiously illiterate as he sometimes seems to be.)

All these incidents are ominous for J.D. Vance. Cynics are already wondering if Trump will make him the scapegoat for failed negotiations if they continue to go off course. His dismally unsuccessful championing of Orbán has damaged his credibility as a putative leader of a global “populist” movement with which MAGA is aligned, an important supplement to his slim résumé in U.S. politics and government. And he’s increasingly caught in a vise between two unconditional loyalties: to Trump, the man to whom he owes his current position “a heartbeat from the presidency” and as front-runner for the 2028 GOP nomination, and to the supernatural kingdom headquartered in Rome, where Trump is often regarded as a heathen warlord.

Vance must long for the inconspicuous status of past veeps whose main chores were to attend the funerals of minor heads of state, to smite the president’s enemies now and then, and to gaze reverently at the president during joint public appearances, as the very model of submissive adoration. A quiet weekend at home might be out of the question, but a few days in the deep shadows might be just what Vance needs.

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