The “new sheriff in town” swaggered into the Munich Security Conference a year ago and launched a shock and awe attack on his transatlantic allies that did so much damage that both Europe and the US are still reeling.
On his first official visit, Donald Trump’s new vice president JD Vance declared that “in Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat”. European governments, he claimed contemptuously, were “running in fear of their own voters” using “ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation” to suppress dissent while “opening the floodgates” to mass migration.
Vance’s antipathy was even blunter in the Signal chat accidentally sent to The Atlantic magazine’s editor. “I just hate bailing out Europe again,” he complained.
Offence was taken and Vance and the entire US executive branch still enjoy unprecedented levels of unpopularity in polls across most of Europe. Vance’s summer holiday in the Cotswolds, during which he and the UK’s then foreign secretary David Lammy broke fishing licensing regulations, did nothing to restore his image abroad.
Vance and his wife Usha were heartily booed by many in the crowd at the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina 2026 earlier this month and the spectacle of his 40-vehicle motorcade reportedly sparked fury in the Italian city of small, narrow streets.
Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, left, is leading the delegation to Germany this year (Photo: Aaron Schwartz/Getty)Following his European swing which took in the Winter Olympics, energy deals in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and included the White House deleting Vance’s social media post for going against the the US government’s stance on describing the massacres in Armenia as “genocide”, JD is staying back in the US of A rather than going to this year’s Munich Security Conference. Instead he is preparing his big speech to the friendly audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland next Friday.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the biggest delegation ever of officials, are doing the business in Germany. Rubio, who also holds the post of National Security Adviser, is a smoother figure. Rather than abusing allies, he prefers to say that this is a “defining moment”, with the “old world gone”, when we must all “re-examine what our goal is going to be”.
None of the figures at the top of the Trump administration however resile from the new National Security Strategy which warns Europe is in danger of “civilisational erasure” due to mass migration.
Sarah Rogers, Rubio’s under-secretary of state for public diplomacy, has recently been in Europe establishing ties with right-wing populist parties. But it is fair to say that Rubio has chosen not to emphasise this side of “America First” foreign policy. He sat mute on the Oval Office sofa last February as Vance led the effort to humiliate Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, for instance.
So far Vance remains the clear favourite of the Maga faithful to inherit Trump’s mantle and front-runner to be the Republican candidate in the 2028 presidential election.
He enjoys a higher approval rate among the Republican Party base (75 per cent) than Rubio (64 per cent). But among the electorate as a whole Vance has the biggest national unfavourability score, disliked by the majority, 52 per cent, in this week’s Pew Research Centre survey – compared to Robert F Kennedy Jr on 48 per cent and Rubio on 44 per cent.
With talk of Vance being sidelined in Washington, DC, Rubio remains very much in contention as the moderate of the big three contenders to take over from Trump. As Trump’s popularity fades, Rubio, who also has 14 years as US senator for Florida under his belt, may start to look like the solid option, compared to the maverick Kennedy and Vance, who only chalked up a couple of years as an Ohio senator in his shape-shifting career.
American diplomats are now on a mission to convince Europeans that the US is their “reliable ally” in contrast to any other partner. But Vance has done more than any other Trump official to shatter confidence in the US.
Trump is unpredictable – on the one hand there is the rapacious bully evidenced in his recent Davos speech, on the other he is a leader anxious to be flattered abroad, keen to do profitable deals wherever he can.
JD Vance was never Trump’s personal choice for vice president but was pushed into the job by his son, Don Junior. As one senior Republican donor commented to me drily this week: “Nobody likes Vance. Trump doesn’t even like Vance.” That is only becoming clearer.
Your next read
square USA AnalysisWalls are closing in on Trump from Minnesota to Maga
square WORLD AnalysisThe moment that showed how low Team Trump can go
square GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONSKey things to know as Trump revokes landmark climate change finding
square WORLD AnalysisTrump’s stranglehold on Cuba is growing. Its collapse could affect the world
Hence then, the article about the real reason trump is sidelining jd vance was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The real reason Trump is sidelining JD Vance )
Also on site :