The VP is considered a MAGA successor, but he claims he is “not entitled to it.”
Over the last six months, Vice President JD Vance has demonstrated how important he has become in the Trump administration, functioning as the president’s most visible supporter and pushing his agenda.
This week, Vance helped drive President Donald Trump’s enormous tax and spending measure through Congress.
Last Saturday, Vance met with conservative and moderate holdouts, as well as Senate leadership, to discuss ways to advance the bill. According to a source with direct knowledge, Vance was instrumental in negotiating with Senate holdouts throughout the bill before casting many tie-breaking votes as Senate president to pass the budget package to the House.
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who had been skeptical of the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (the food assistance program), met with Vance, who congratulated her for being a team player despite her reservations about the plan, immediately before she voted for it.
During the rush to pass the measure, Vance was chastised for his social media post on concerns about the bill’s impact on Medicaid, saying that “the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
Throughout this, Vance was making phone calls to Trump, and the two were keeping each other updated on their conversations with senators ahead of the bill’s passing.
The vice president attended Wednesday’s meeting at the White House between Trump and numerous House holdouts, as the president increased pressure to vote for the plan.
North Carolina Republican Rep. Greg Murphy, who had told reporters Wednesday night that he was still hesitant about some of the health-care provisions, said Thursday that after consulting with Vance and the president on the phone, he decided to support the bill.
“I needed assurances,” he explained.
A source close to Vance claimed that he continued to work the phones before the rule’s floor vote, calling many House GOP holdouts to make the administration’s case for supporting the bill.
However, Vance’s influence extends beyond domestic policy. He has also been vocal in support of Trump’s foreign policy.
While Trump was considering striking Iran’s nuclear installations, Vance came to his defense after supporters such as Tucker Carlson and those in the MAGA camp cried out against the United States becoming involved in the confrontation between Israel and Iran.
“He may conclude that he needs to take additional steps to end Iranian enrichment.”That decision is ultimately up to the president,” Vance wrote on X. “People are reasonable to be concerned about foreign entanglements after 25 years of foolish foreign policy. But I believe the president has gained some trust in this matter. And, having witnessed this myself, I can guarantee you that he is only concerned with employing the American military to achieve the aims of the American people. Whatever he accomplishes, it is his priority.”
Vance’s comments were a shift from his previous statements that the United States should not become involved in foreign conflicts.
A classic example is the vice president’s resistance to the United States providing additional aid to Ukraine.
“I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” Vance stated in February 2022, amid an outpouring of bipartisan support for the country in the aftermath of the Russian invasion.
Vance most recently raised concern over the president’s plan to strike the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal group chat with other high administration officials.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance said during the discussion. “There is an additional possibility of a moderate to severe increase in oil prices.
I am willing to support the team’s consensus while keeping my reservations to myself. But there is a good case for delaying this for a month, doing the messaging work on why this is important, assessing where the economy is, and so on.”
In the run-up to the strikes, Trump attempted to engage the MAGA base with Vance to gauge their reaction if he ordered the bombing.
Prior to the strikes, Trump informed reporters on Air Force One while returning from the G7 summit in Canada that he could send Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with Iranian negotiators.
Vance’s aggressive role in advancing Trump’s agenda was always planned.
In November, following the election, a source close to the vice president told ABC News that Vance had been tasked with ensuring that all of the Trump administration’s priorities were carried out and that he would work on any issues that Trump needed him to, implying that the vice president would not be assigned a single issue to work on but would be involved in several policy issues.
Vance was also expected to serve as Trump’s “eyes and ears” in the Senate, ensuring that his agenda gets forward, according to the source. It is familiar turf for Vance, who was elected to the Senate in 2022.
All of this comes as some see Vance as the apparent MAGA successor to Trump ahead of the 2028 election. At the same time, he is aiming to collect as much money as possible for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm elections as chair of the Republican National Committee, which is the first time a vice president has held the position.
Joel Goldstein, a vice-presidential researcher and former professor at Saint Louis University Law School, told ABC News that Vance is operating on a different timeline than his predecessors because he would only serve one term as vice president under Trump.
“Every vice presidency is different, and one of the things that is unique about Vance’s is that every other vice president, you know, with the possible exception of Harris, entered office with the expectation that the president was going to run for reelection,” commented Goldstein.
“I think he’s in a very unique position in that his first term as vice president is his last, and so his presidential ambitions—the time for reckoning—come up, you know, much quicker than is normally the case.”
Following his tie-breaking votes in the Senate, numerous Democrats who may square off in the 2028 presidential election pushed to make Vance the face of Trump’s funding measure.
In a post on X, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg chastised Vance for providing the tie-breaking vote that allowed the bill to proceed.
“VP Vance has cast the deciding vote in the Senate to cut Medicaid, take away food assistance, blow up the deficit, and add tax breaks for the wealthiest,” she said. “This bill is unpopular because it is wrong,” he explained.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom advised Americans on X to “bookmark” this event, saying that “JD Vance is the ultimate reason why 17 million Americans will lose their healthcare.”
In an interview with NBC News, Trump mentioned Vance, Secretary of State, and interim national security adviser Marco Rubio as potential successors, and when asked if his MAGA movement could thrive without him, he answered yes.
When asked about the president’s words, Vance responded that if he runs for president, he is “not entitled to it.”