President Donald Trump might have declared Vice President JD Vance did a \u201cgood job\u201d in weekend talks that did not produce a peace pact with Iran, but there are scant signs his recent high-profile international setbacks improved his political prospects to be the next commander-in-chief.<\/p>\n
The lack of a deal with the Islamic Republic government officials came before Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n on Sunday conceded defeat in that country\u2019s election. Vance had campaigned with Orb\u00e1n last week, appearing behind a podium ordained with the vice presidential seal.<\/p>\n
As Trump\u2019s No. 2 addressed reporters in Islamabad after the 21-hour negotiations with senior Iranian officials, another former senator and possible front-runner for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was at an ultimate fighting event alongside the president in Miami.<\/p>\n
On Capitol Hill, House and Senate Democrats already have tried using the Islamabad talks to tie Vance to Trump\u2019s escalating conflict, mentioning him by name in connection with the failed talks as they seek war powers votes that could curtail Trump\u2019s war-making powers.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublicans were calling for hearings on a peace agreement that JD Vance failed to deliver but are now silent on holding hearings on this costly and extended conflict,\u201d California Democratic Sen. Adam B. Schiff said in a Monday statement.<\/p>\n
Trump did not directly address a question Monday about deploying Vance, a former Ohio GOP senator with no track record of brokering major deals, if another round of talks is scheduled.<\/p>\n
Republican strategist Ford O\u2019Connell said Vance\u2019s role in the talks were \u201cquality exposure\u201d for Vance. And Democratic attacks could backfire because \u201cseeing Vance on the world stage gave him some gravitas.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe person who\u2019s going to be the Republican Party\u2019s nominee is going to be Donald Trump\u2019s pick. And whether it\u2019s the war or this or that, Vance is doing what President Trump wants him to do,\u201d O\u2019Connell said. \u201cThe 21-hour talks were good for Vance, overall, because he\u2019s out there on the world stage and everyone knew the Iranians would move the goalposts and we\u2019d have more discussions later on.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Republican strategist Rick Tyler compared the negotiations to more successful foreign policy summits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it came time to prove he could deliver, Vance gave us a mere 21 hours of drive-by diplomacy that produced no agreement,\u201d Tyler said. \u201cBy the standards of Dayton, Camp David, Good Friday, or Oslo, it was a reminder that visibility is not the same as results.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Vance is \u201cbeginning to look like a neo-convert from his earlier no-more-dumb-wars, \u2018America First\u2019 persona,\u201d Tyler said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vice president came home with three losses: Orb\u00e1n\u2019s defeat, no Iran deal and his own ability to stand on the world stage and be taken seriously lessened \u2014 including among Republicans who once saw him as a corrective to the GOP\u2019s old foreign-policy failures,\u201d Tyler said.<\/p>\n
There also is the Trump factor. The president still has high poll numbers among GOP voters, including a 95 percent approval rating<\/a> from respondents to a YouGov-The Economist poll conducted April 10-13 identifying as part of the \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d movement. The MAGA base will play a major role in selecting the party\u2019s 2028 nominee.<\/p>\n A YouGov survey of Republicans and independents who lean right conducted April 8-13 found 63 percent<\/a> would prefer Vance as the party\u2019s nominee, with 42 percent picking Rubio. The secretary of State gained 3 percentage points since a January incarnation of the same survey, when Vance garnered 66 percent<\/a> and the former Florida senator got 39 percent.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump realizes what he wants is the ticket of these two, with Vance on the top of the ticket and Rubio as his running mate. And this is still the era of Donald Trump,\u201d O\u2019Connell said.<\/p>\n Recent polling has shown Vance losing ground with GOP voters. For instance, the VP won last month\u2019s straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference, with 53 percent of respondents fingering him as their preferred 2028 nominee. But that was down from the 61 percent Vance secured in winning the same survey last year.<\/p>\n Rubio garnered 35 percent of respondents in the same straw poll last month, up significantly from the 3 percent he garnered in 2025.<\/p>\n Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia\u2019s Center for Politics, said he didn\u2019t know if Vance\u2019s stock is falling, \u201cbut anyone who works for Trump is inherently in an unstable position.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re in his good graces up until the point you are not,\u201d Kondik said.<\/p>\n GOP strategist Doug Heye said in a Monday email that \u201cthere\u2019s too much \u2018JD vs. Marco\u2019 speculation, especially before the primary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOn Iran, we just have to wait and see,\u201d Heye added. \u201cOn Hungary, it doesn\u2019t matter one ounce. No Republican voter is going to care or think Vance had anything to do with Orb\u00e1n\u2019s lopsided loss.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Done a good job\u2019<\/p>\n So far, the U.S. commander in chief has not issued any public criticism over how Vance handled the Saturday negotiations, in which he was backed up by White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, he\u2019s done a good job, and Steve and Jared. They\u2019ve all done a very good job,\u201d Trump said during an unplanned exchange with reporters Monday at the White House. \u201cAnd I can tell you that we\u2019ve been called by the other side. They\u2019d like to make a deal very badly, very badly.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump suggested some progress was made during the lengthy session, saying, \u201cwe agreed to a lot of things.\u201d But when pressed on the biggest sticking point, he replied: \u201cIt was over nuclear. \u2026 If they don\u2019t agree, there\u2019s no deal.\u201d<\/p>\n For his part, Vance emerged from the talks for a brief press conference \u2014 about three-and-a-half minutes \u2014 in which he looked and sounded the part.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians. That\u2019s the good news,\u201d the vice president said. \u201cThe bad news is that we have not reached an agreement \u2014 and I think that\u2019s bad news for Iran much more than it\u2019s bad news for the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n Vance also disclosed Iran\u2019s desire to obtain some of its frozen assets and said issues \u201cbeyond that\u201d also were discussed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon, and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump might have declared Vice President JD Vance did a \u201cgood job\u201d in weekend talks that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[25224,25225,1272,5564,9421,25226,1275,989,160,38,14150,1303,1277,1278,159,1280,18904,25227,34,196,393,210,49,8122,650,10122,8741,81,1287,1288,17432,25228,1289,795],"class_list":{"0":"post-67559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-25224","9":"tag-adam-b-schiff","10":"tag-brand-safety","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-campaigns","13":"tag-conservatives","14":"tag-democrats","15":"tag-diplomacy","16":"tag-donald-j-trump","17":"tag-donald-trump","18":"tag-election","19":"tag-elections","20":"tag-executive-branch","21":"tag-florida","22":"tag-foreign-policy","23":"tag-house","24":"tag-house-intelligence-committee","25":"tag-independents","26":"tag-iran","27":"tag-iran-war","28":"tag-islamic-republic","29":"tag-marco-rubio","30":"tag-middle-east","31":"tag-ohio","32":"tag-pakistan","33":"tag-peace-talks","34":"tag-policy","35":"tag-politics","36":"tag-polling","37":"tag-republicans","38":"tag-secretary-of-state-marco-rubio","39":"tag-sen-adam-schiff","40":"tag-senate","41":"tag-stock-market"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}