First Draft: JD Vance Can't Stop Losing
Over the weekend, Trump's VP became the face of the failed Iran negotiations. Then, Hungary's Orbán, whom Vance campaigned for, lost in a landslide. Next, will an unpopular Vance face AOC in 2028?
On this day in 1873, an estimated 150 people were killed in Colfax, Louisiana, in the deadliest act of violence in the Reconstruction era. All but three of the dead were Black. The state made no arrests, and though 97 white men were arrested by federal authorities, the US Supreme Court ultimately set them free.
Hi, all, it’s Swin here. Last week, on the same night President Donald Trump announced he would deign not to commit genocide just yet against Iran, I was on Zeteo’s livestream relaying a warning we were receiving in real time from sources inside the Trump-Vance administration: This isn’t over – not by a long shot. Trump’s supposed ceasefire was built on sand, if that, and the chances of the war escalating soon anyways were still high. It’s been less than a week since that night… and it looks like we are starting this week in the shadow of the weekend’s failed peace negotiations.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Trump screws over JD Vance; disgraced California congressman Eric Swalwell ends his gubernatorial campaign; AOC is “hustling,” and Graham Platner thinks Chuck Schumer will come around. Plus, we have the latest from the Middle East.
‘Imploding’ Trump Screws Over Vance
In late 2024, in the weeks directly following Donald Trump’s reelection, I had numerous conversations with incoming Trump administration officials and political operatives close to JD Vance, during which I used the same two-word phrase over and over: “Boy Kamala.”
My point (or, prediction, in some cases) was simple: There was little reason to believe Team Trump actually had a credible plan to bring down prices or inflation by any meaningful degree. Americans would continue to feel, and vote, like the US economy is a disaster, and they’d predictably go from blaming Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Democrats to punishing Trump, Vance, and the conservative ruling party. Vance’s future political, or presidential, aspirations were tied inextricably to how voters were going to feel about Trump, and Trumpism, by 2027.
There were multiple Vance compatriots who got weirdly mad or snitty at me for saying what I thought was a commonsensical point. Biden’s presidency sank Harris 2024. Unless Trump had an economic miracle shoved in his back pocket, it stood to reason that a similar fate would befall MAGA’s crown prince.
That was almost a year and a half ago… and even I could not have predicted then how utterly catastrophic things would get for Vance before 2026 was even half over.
To get the standard throat-clearing out of the way: Anything could happen between now and 2028. Nobody should count Vance out of any possible presidential contest. But as things currently stand, it is hard to imagine things going worse for the man President Trump has called his “handsome son of a bitch.” And it’s almost entirely because Trump forced Vance into this position.
“Trump is imploding, and he’s probably going to take JD down with him unless there’s a course correction,” one source close to Trump told me.
This weekend, the vice president and Trump-hater-turned-MAGA-diehard returned to Washington from Islamabad empty-handed. Trump sent Vance on a mission to secure a deal that would end Trump’s disastrous, illegal war in Iran – a war that Vance was reportedly squeamish about from the jump and that numerous members of Team Trump believe is tearing apart the administration in harrowing fashion.
The Iranians sent him packing.