A Reasonable Moderate

By Nick Catoggio

Thursday, July 16, 2026

 

Not every member of the current administration is a lowbrow populist s--tposter. But every member of the current administration is required to genuflect before the hobby horses of lowbrow populist sh-tposters.

 

Yesterday brought three examples within a few hours. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came first, releasing a new video announcing that service members age 30 and older will be screened for testosterone deficiency going forward. (Yes, women too.) Title: “The High-T Department of War.”

 

Whether the new policy was contrived to justify his habit of blocking qualified female officers from promotions is unclear. But “Mr. Hegseth’s focus on testosterone levels at a moment when U.S. forces are ramping up attacks in Iran is unorthodox,” in the dryly understated words of the New York Times.

 

Later Jay Clayton, the president’s nominee to become director of national intelligence, sat for questions during a Senate hearing. Clayton is an Ivy League law graduate, federal prosecutor, and former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, so you might think he would have had an easy time when Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff tossed him a softball: “Who won the 2020 election?”

 

He refused to answer. For two full minutes, he filibustered as Ossoff pressed him. “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions?” the senator asked at one point, trying to shame him into an uncomfortable admission. But Clayton wouldn’t budge, rightly calculating that maintaining a cowardly silence would get him confirmed whereas telling the truth would see his nomination withdrawn before the day was out.

 

Finally there was J.D. Vance, who entered the belly of the beast of lowbrow populism by appearing on The Joe Rogan Show. Rogan’s podcast is a sort of Meet the Press for postliterate America, in which it’s taken almost for granted that shadowy forces are surreptitiously controlling the government. The vice president, “a conspiracy theorist for a decade” in the words of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, was expected to flatter those suspicions. He didn’t disappoint.

 

The topic of Jeffrey Epstein, the central hub of every paranoiac’s evidence board, naturally came up. “He clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels of American intelligence,” Vance alleged. “He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.” Has the VP seen evidence? Well, no, he admitted—but only because it’s been destroyed, in all probability. “If that sh-t existed, it wouldn’t exist in 2026,” he reassured Rogan.

 

That wasn’t the only time the Jewish state was mentioned. The peace deal that Vance helped broker between the U.S. and Iran lasted less than a month before collapsing in a heap, which required an explanation. Among the reasons suggested by the vice president for its failure: Israeli sabotage.

 

“There are some people within their system, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely,” Vance said in a three-hour conversation with the podcaster Joe Rogan this week. “Not toward any objective, but just indefinitely.”

 

…

 

“When I open up the pages of Time magazine and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and, oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways. You know, my response to that is, ‘Well, go to hell,’” Vance said.

 

He went on to describe himself as “a reasonable moderate” in America’s “massive pro-Israel, anti-Israel debate.”

 

This was all predictable. I know because I predicted it.

 

Triangulation.

 

“Vance will seek to separate himself from the war by finding ways to position himself as a skeptic of Israel going forward,” I wrote in March, long before the peace talks in which the VP was involved gained momentum. It was obvious even at the time how he’d try to wriggle out of the political jam in which the war had placed him. In a word: triangulation.

 

Vance is a postliberal isolationist who aspires to lead a party still dominated by pro-Israel evangelicals. The Iran conflict risks making him unpalatable to both constituencies. The young-chud Tucker Carlson faction whom he’s trusting to be his foot soldiers in the 2028 Republican primary was let down by his failure to prevent a war they despise, and he needs to atone to them for it. Taking the lead in peace negotiations was an obvious way; getting noisier about the supposedly malign influence of the Jewish state is another.

 

But it’s not that simple. The weak deal he brokered with Iran makes him suspect to right-wing hawks, and he can’t afford to get so noisy in his criticism of Israel that he begins to alienate the GOP’s Zionist majority. Doing so could create an opening in the primary for someone like Ted Cruz or depress Republican turnout for Vance in the general election.

 

He needs to position himself as, well, a reasonable moderate, skeptical enough of Israeli motives to make groypers happy yet supportive enough of Israeli prerogatives to satisfy the broader Republican base. Per yesterday’s interview, in America 2026, reasonable moderation seems to lie somewhere in the broooooad middle ground between “Israel has an absolute right to defend itself” and “the Jews are the source of all wars.”

 

Vance threw right-wing Zionists several bones on Rogan. He told his host that Israel didn’t pressure the president into striking Iran and claimed that some Israeli officials support Trump’s peace efforts. He also took care to say that he doesn’t fault Israelis for the American influence campaign they’re reportedly conducting. Countries like Qatar and Russia do it too, he noted—interesting company for him to place a close longtime U.S. ally in.

 

Why, even Viktor Orbán’s Hungary did it, as the vice president’s well-compensated postliberal influencer pals might attest. Vance neglected to mention that, oddly.

 

You don’t need to squint to see how Vance was also trying to pander to Tuckerites in yesterday’s interview, though. Endorsing the deathless “Epstein had ties to Mossad” theory without evidence speaks for itself. But the vice president also allegedly distorted Israel’s online influence operation, which is being conducted by former Trump adviser Brad Parscale. According to Parscale, the goal of the effort is to boost the nation’s flagging image among young right-wingers, not to “tank the very deal that I was pursuing,” as Vance claimed. “I have never funded, organized, or participated in any effort to undermine President Trump—ever—including his [memorandum of understanding with Iran] or ceasefire proposal,” Parscale promised the magazine.

 

In Time’s telling, the belief that Israel has been quietly drumming up American opposition to the deal rests on a “senior White House official” (whose name may or may not be “J.D. Vance”) who noticed a surprising number of right-wing online influencers criticizing the terms “with similarities in language and tone.” That wasn’t supposed to happen: “President Donald Trump’s aides had expected his supporters to celebrate the agreement,” the magazine claimed.

 

But it was a silly expectation. The deal was indefensible, dangling a $300 billion bonanza at the Iranians if they complied with it. And some of the influencers who attacked it, like Larry Elder and Pamela Geller, are longtime admirers of Israel who wouldn’t need to be bribed to say so. Essentially, the White House simply assumed that the Trump cult would behave like its usual culty self by uniformly applauding a humiliating capitulation to a terrorist regime that Americans have spent almost 50 years despising.

 

It wasn’t a crazy assumption given how the right has behaved for the last 10 years. But in this case, given the mainstream right’s hawkish DNA and the deal’s embarrassing terms, mindless loyalty was a bridge too far.

 

Far worse than that, though, was Vance’s inane claim to Rogan that elements inside the Israeli government are agitating for endless war—“not toward any objective, but just indefinitely.” Indefinitely? As in, they don’t want to win? They just want us to keep bombing ad infinitum?

 

It’s fair (more than fair) to say that Benjamin Netanyahu’s goals in the conflict were recklessly, foolishly ambitious, but there were goals. Framing Israeli opposition to the peace deal as driven instead by bloodlust devoid of strategy is conveniently self-serving for someone who’s desperate to spin the deal he negotiated as the most reasonable option that was on offer. But it’s also a none-too-subtle dog whistle to groypers and other conspiracy theorists who yearn to believe that Israel’s motives are diabolical. The Jews love war for war’s sake, above and beyond their desire to get anything out of it.

 

Israel is subverting America’s peace efforts from within to sustain its dream of “forever war,” but also lots of countries do it, and there are some sensible Israelis: That’s the sort of “reasonable moderation” Vance hopes will deliver him safely through a Republican primary and into the White House in 2028.

 

Sabotage.

 

The vice president has also staked out a “reasonable moderate” position on right-wing bigotry, not coincidentally.

 

You won’t catch him saying anything racist (well, not overtly), but you won’t catch him taking offense at racists either. To the contrary, he reliably goes out of his way to excuse or minimize prejudice among his postliberal flank, in some cases even when it’s aimed at his own wife.

 

It happened again yesterday. Joe Rogan brought up last month’s UFC event at the White House—no, I still can’t believe that actually happened either—and how one of the fighters shouted “Michelle Obama is a man!” during an interview after his match. People say crazy things all the time, Vance shrugged, before launching into a whine about the hosts of The View being unable to take a joke.

 

It fell to Rogan to note that it was “not the best thing to say,” particularly in a forum like the White House. “Fair,” Vance conceded, “but … dude, people say stuff all the time.”

 

People say stuff all the time is the safe stance on bigotry in a coalition like the modern GOP. Some sizable share of Republicans still blanches at prejudice; another sizable share embraces it; and a third regards any attempt to police for it as unacceptably “woke” and redolent of leftism. Vance needs all three of those contingents in his corner in 2028. So he’s landed on a position designed to satisfy each: He won’t endorse racism, but neither will he make any effort to discourage it.

 

He’s a “reasonable moderate,” building a tent in which the moral and grossly immoral should each feel welcome. In J.D. Vance’s GOP, you’re free to support Israel or believe that a hidden Jewish hand is tossing around shekels to sabotage peace and sustain war “indefinitely.” There’s room for debate.

 

It reminds me of the bargain that the late Lindsey Graham struck with Trumpism. The most favorable interpretation of Graham’s conduct after 2016 is that he was a hard-nosed realist, someone who secretly disliked the president’s influence on politics but made peace with it in order to maintain influence over policy and steer it in a more virtuous direction. J.D. Vance, one of the few right-wingers to navigate the Trump era more successfully than Graham, might be understood the same way. He doesn’t like the racists in his ranks, perhaps, but they’re a fact of political life and must be appeased to win their votes and advance to a position of presidential influence.

 

It’s not a perfect analogy, though, is it? Graham was a stranger to Trumpism, a hawkish traditional conservative forced by circumstance to reconcile himself to populist nationalism. It was easy to believe that he privately disdained the president’s worst tendencies. Vance, however, is a postliberal himself, the Tuckerites’ choice for vice president in 2024. He’s not trying to protect traditional politics from a chud insurgency. He’s part of that insurgency, having joined it before he first ran for office. If he’s pandering disingenuously to anyone with his “reasonable moderate” shtick on bigotry and Israel, it’s the traditionalists.

 

It’s remarkably cynical. But not necessarily ineffective.

 

While Vance was busy chatting yesterday with Joe Rogan, House Democrats were crossing a sort of policy Rubicon with respect to the Jewish state. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced a bill that would cut all aid to Israel, and I do mean all—offensive weapons, defensive weapons, funding for humanitarian programs, the whole shebang. It was a gut-check vote to test whether opinion in the House, particularly on the left, has turned so sour toward Jerusalem that members of Congress would rather sever support for Israel entirely than maintain the status quo.

 

Two years ago, 37 Democrats voted to kill all funding when a similar bill was proposed. Yesterday 103 did, the first time in recent memory that more members of one of the two parties supported cutting all aid than opposed it. Even House Minority Whip Katherine Clark backed the measure, placing her at odds with caucus leader Hakeem Jeffries. “Nothing will be the same on this issue ever again,” Progressive Caucus chairman Greg Casar declared afterward, not a little triumphantly.

 

He’s right, though. The polling doesn’t lie. For Israel, the realistic best-case scenario for American politics circa 2028 is a Democratic Party that’s solidly against it versus a Republican Party that’s still supportive—although less so than it used to be.

 

But that’s also a best-case scenario for Vance. The more strident and monolithic the left’s opposition to Israel becomes, the more tolerable his “reasonable moderate” act on the subject will be to evangelicals and other Zionist right-wing hawks. Sure, the VP might occasionally babble about shadowy influence campaigns, but at least he’s not questioning Israel’s right to exist. He might grumble about the Israelis’ penchant for “indefinite” warmongering, but he wasn’t celebrating on October 7.

 

Modern American politics is an endless cycle of having to choose between the lesser of two evils as the evils on both sides relentlessly metastasize. I find it hard to imagine J.D. Vance as the lesser evil in any political contest. But given the pace of national decline, I also wouldn’t want to bet serious money against it.