By Jim Geraghty
Thursday, April 23, 2026
There was a minor kerfuffle earlier this week when
President Trump told the New York Post’s Caitlin Doornbos and Ronny
Reyes that Vice President JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s
son-in-law Jared Kushner were on their way to Islamabad, Pakistan, for another
high-stakes negotiation with the Iranian regime.
“They’re heading over now,” Trump told the Post.
But, as you probably noticed, Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner
were still in Washington at that point and never left for Pakistan. The trip
was postponed indefinitely after A) the Iranians, according to
the state-run Tasnim News Agency, told the Pakistanis that attending the talks
was a waste of time because of the unrealistic demands of the U.S.; and B)
shortly thereafter, Trump announced on Truth Social that the cease-fire would
be extended because the Iranian government was too
divided to come to an agreement:
Based on the fact that the
Government of Iran is seriously fractured, not unexpectedly so and, upon the
request of Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of
Pakistan, we have been asked to hold our Attack on the Country of Iran until
such time as their leaders and representatives can come up with a unified
proposal. I have therefore directed our Military to continue the Blockade and,
in all other respects, remain ready and able, and will therefore extend the
Ceasefire until such time as their proposal is submitted, and discussions are
concluded, one way or the other.
(As noted earlier this week, the “cease-fire” is
one-sided, as the Iranians are still shooting at ships in the Persian Gulf.)
You must wonder how the vice president is feeling these
days. Negotiating with Iran is a sucker’s game; as I keep pointing out, the regime has broken every treaty it ever signed. There are
only two plausible outcomes to negotiating with Iran: Either they refuse to
make concessions and storm away from the table, or they promise to make
concessions and then break their word later. There’s no way for Vance to come
out of any negotiations looking good.
Earlier this month, I wrote, “The Americans could have sent
an all-star team of George Kennan, Allen Dulles, George
Marshall, and Dwight Eisenhower and it was unlikely the Iranian
negotiators would have agreed to give up their nuclear weapons program.”
The irony is that according to an April 7 in-depth report by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman
of the New York Times, Vance was the administration official most wary
of starting a war against Iran:
Nobody in Mr. Trump’s inner
circle was more worried about the prospect of war with Iran, or did more to try
to stop it, than the vice president.
Mr. Vance had built his political
career opposing precisely the kind of military adventurism that was now under
serious consideration. He had described a war with Iran as “a huge distraction
of resources” and “massively expensive.”
He was not, however, a dove
across the board. In January, when Mr. Trump publicly warned Iran to stop
killing protesters and promised that help was on its way, Mr. Vance had
privately encouraged the president to enforce his red line. But what the vice
president pushed for was a limited, punitive strike, something closer to the
model of Mr. Trump’s missile attack against Syria in 2017 over the use of
chemical weapons against civilians.
The vice president thought a
regime-change war with Iran would be a disaster. His preference was for no
strikes at all. But knowing that Mr. Trump was likely to intervene in some
fashion, he tried to steer toward more limited action. Later, when it seemed
certain that the president was set on a large-scale campaign, Mr. Vance argued
that he should do so with overwhelming force, in the hope of achieving his
objectives quickly.
In front of his colleagues, Mr.
Vance warned Mr. Trump that a war against Iran could cause regional chaos and
untold numbers of casualties. It could also break apart Mr. Trump’s political
coalition and would be seen as a betrayal by many voters who had bought into
the promise of no new wars.
Now, we don’t know who Swan’s and Haberman’s sources were
. . . but I get the feeling those sources think highly of Vance and think he
was prescient and want to make sure he gets credit for foreseeing the problems
and avoids getting any of the blame for the war’s negative consequences.
You also must wonder how Vance feels about President Trump asking friends
and advisers to “rank” the performance of his vice president and his
Secretary of State Marco Rubio. (Back in August, when asked, “Do you agree that
the heir apparent to MAGA is JD Vance?” Trump answered, “Well, I think most likely, in all
fairness, he’s the vice president. I think Marco is also somebody that maybe
would get together with JD in some form.”)
Then there was this . . . presumably joking comment back on April 1, at a White House
luncheon:
Donald Trump: But the
White House including Vice President JD Vance. I think JD is — JD here. Where
is JD? JD, he’s lost weight. He got a little thinner and I’m looking for — I’m
looking — [Laughter] — for a heavyset gentleman and now I find a perfect — a
perfect looking specimen and he’s doing a great job and he’s working on the —
the deal, right? How’s that moving, is it okay? The big deal.
JD Vance: [Inaudible]
Trump: You see it
happening?
Vance: [Inaudible]
Trump: So, if it doesn’t
happen, I’m blaming JD Vance. [Laughter] If it does happen, I’m taking full
credit. [Laughter]
Now, that comment is (mostly?) a joke, but add it all up,
and this all sounds like a really rotten deal for Vance. He never wanted to go
to war with Iran, he’s on-and-off expected to reach some sort of acceptable
deal with a grade-A treacherous and malevolent regime, and the president keeps
joking about how he’ll blame Vance if things don’t work out.
Vance is still the odds-on favorite to be the 2028
Republican presidential nominee. And if he is the nominee, he could well win
the 2028 election; there’s a good chance that Democrats will have a
good-to-great midterm election and conclude that everything with their public image is fixed —
a dubious assumption. The public is deeply frustrated with the Trump
administration right now, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re itching for
four years of Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pete Buttigieg, or Kamala
Harris. (At this early moment, those
people are the four highest-polling options.)
But you know Vance would rather be seen as the heir
apparent to a president with a solid job approval rating, not one hanging around 40 percent. And he’d rather not have to
campaign for president defending a decision to go to war that he never liked in
the first place.
Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego, Night Owl
Monday’s edition of the Morning Jolt discussed Eric
Swalwell’s effect on the presidential ambitions of his close friend, Arizona
Senator Ruben Gallego. (One reader insisted there was no way Gallego would run
for president. Folks, he’s in the pre-campaign campaign stage, where you
insist you’re too busy to think about running for president. You know what an
elected official says when he’s not running for president? “No, I am not
running for president.”)
I believe that somebody out there is trying to halt
Gallego’s presidential campaign before it starts, with leaks like this one to NOTUS:
While on an official trip to
Bogotá last summer, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego stayed out until the wee
hours of the morning partying at a club and asked multiple embassy staffers to
join him, despite warnings from the U.S. Embassy in Colombia that they had
identified a credible threat to his life, four sources with knowledge of the
incident told NOTUS.
Not the worst scandal in the world, but somebody out
there wants to tie Gallego’s image to Swalwell’s, the irresponsible overgrown
frat-boy party animal.
The Laws the Southern Poverty Law Center Allegedly
Broke
I offered most of my thoughts about the indictment of the
Southern Poverty Law Center on the Corner yesterday. But I was deeply frustrated to see
this wildly inaccurate summary of the case from USA Today:
“The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted for paying sources to infiltrate
hate groups, a tactic [that] federal agencies have used for decades.”
No. The SPLC was not indicted for paying sources
to infiltrate hate groups. The SPLC was indicted on eleven counts.
Six counts were for wire fraud, contending that the SPLC
collected donations without disclosing to donors that the money was going to be
used to pay informants who were, in some cases, high-ranking members of hate
groups (and the payments were substantial: six-figure sums in some cases, and a
seven-figure sum over nine years in one case). Four counts were for making
false statements to a federally insured bank; the SPLC opened bank accounts for
businesses that only existed on paper — “Center Investigative Agency, Fox
Photography, North West Tech, and Tech Writers.” These nonexistent businesses
were used to funnel money to their informants.
18 U.S.C. § 1014 makes it a federal crime to knowingly make
false statements, report, or overvalue property to influence the action of
FDIC-insured banks, federal credit unions, and various other government
agencies regarding loan, credit, or insurance applications. I suspect that the
SPLC’s defense will be, “Yes, we broke the law, but we did it for a good
reason.”
The government also contends that this scheme violated federal
laws about money laundering, the eleventh count.
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