Vice President JD Vance is a busy man. For the better part of a week now, almost every major American news channel has had a near-permanent box tucked away in its lower right-hand corner, teasing a forthcoming appearance from the architect of the Trump administration’s Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. This media blitz has had a Twilight Zone-like feel. The signing of Vance’s accord with the Islamic Republic coincided with the release of “Communion,” the VP’s narrative about his journey into the Catholic Church. For those counting at home, that’s two items to sell: a book about his faith and a high-stakes international agreement with the rogue, theocratic regime whose hands are coated in American blood. It goes without saying that the wannabe heir to President Donald Trump’s political movement – who opposed Operation Epic Fury at its outset and now must extol its virtues while also celebrating its conclusion – finds himself in an exceedingly difficult, and indeed pivotal, position. Still, the president saw fit to say it. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD!” declared Trump at his G7 conference presser on Wednesday. “You better be careful, JD!” Half-joke, half-warning — one wonders if Vance cracked a smile or a knuckle. With about a year until the 2028 election cycle kicks off in earnest, his performance could prove to be either the shot in the arm his prospective presidential campaign needs or the shot in the head that stops it in its tracks. The results so far have been mixed at best. First, the good. JD Vance is at his best in enemy territory. Remember, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author was widely regarded as a disastrous vice-presidential nominee right up until the moment he killed Governor Tim Walz with a devastating combination of kindness and Yale Law School-honed polish during the pair’s lone debate in October 2024. Vance was similarly impressive during his appearance on Tuesday’s edition of “The View,” where he amiably handled a barrage of questions from not one, not two, not three, but six antagonistic women. With the tone of a particularly patient parent, Vance muddled his way through unfriendly questions about Epstein, race, inflation, immigration policy, and his faith. He quickly disarmed his interlocutors with a joke about their differences. He presented his transformation from Hitler-crying Chicken Little to right-hand man on the not-insignificant subject of Donald J. Trump as an act of humility. He aptly made the case that decency demands the enforcement, not the neglect, of immigration law. Joy Behar came away from the experience so thoroughly charmed that she later revealed she had urged him to run for president during a commercial break. ”I don’t think that he’s a bad guy,” mused Behar, who even went so far as to admit he had a “good vibe.” It’s no surprise that the interview in which he wasn’t asked about his signature achievement to date was the one he performed best in. Nor should it shock that, when he wants to, he excels at speaking the language of America’s progressive elite class. After all, he cut his teeth playing the “Good Republican,” writing fawning New York Times op-eds about “Barack Obama and Me.” Despite his humble beginnings and meteoric rise through the rough-and-tumble MAGA political ecosphere, Vance is still the accomplished Yale grad with an intuitive understanding of what appeals to and revolts the average white-collar Democrat; in no small part because he once did — and perhaps still does — share many of their sensibilities. Where he’s faltered, though, is on the news of the day. Vance spent an awkward conversation with Megyn Kelly walking the aforementioned tightrope of making the irreconcilable cases that both Epic Fury was a success and that signing the Memorandum of Understanding in its current dismal form was imperative. Ultimately, his own views — which are shared by the increasingly crankish Kelly — came through. In rebutting the deal’s critics, Vance failed to so much as erect strawmen, opting instead to beat up on loose hay. “Fundamentally, if you look at what they’re proposing, they’re proposing an endless conflict. They want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian,” he declared, before begging Kelly to push back on these apparent lunatics “from inside the tent.” This is how the vice president rewards the supporters of his boss’s most consequential decision of his six years in office? With vile, lazy smears directed at them in an effort to placate a figure who has lobbed the same smears at his own administration? This is not a man with the requisite judgment to win a fight for the Republican Party’s nomination, much less be trusted with the keys to the White House. His unpreparedness for the bright lights was even more manifest during a sit-down with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, who asked him prior to the deal’s formal release, “Why not allow the world to see whatever this deal is you signed with Iran?” “Yeah, so there are some frankly diplomatic protocols that I don’t fully understand. The Qataris and the Pakistanis, who have been helpful in mediating this agreement with the Iranians, they’ve asked us not to release the full text for a little while,” replied Vance. “We’re actually trying to push them to get it out today because we want to tell the American people what’s in this deal. It’s fundamentally a good deal for the American people, but it’s also very simple, and I’ve also seen some misrepresentations about it.” His claim not to “understand” the “diplomatic protocols” at play was both suspect and of grave concern. The point person for the entire enterprise was unable to wrap his head around the reason for concealing the contents of the agreement from his constituents? It almost came as a relief when the deal leaked and it became clear that he had lied: the administration had been delaying because it knew the reaction to the establishment of a $300 billion war chest for the mullahs, the failure to secure the Strait of Hormuz over the long-term, and the unenforceable demand that Israel lay down its arms in the fight against Hezbollah would be justly apoplectic. Perhaps the vice president merely misspoke when he characterized the accurate representations of his deal as “misrepresentations.” Worst of all, though, was an assertion Vance made during a Monday evening conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper. “The coolest thing about the progress we’ve made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system — senior leadership, even IRGC officials — say, ‘You know what? We may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust. But we recognize the way that we’ve done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake. Let’s try something else,’” he marveled. Isn’t it neat what nice things notorious liars will say when their opponent has removed the boot from their neck and extended a $300 billion bag among numerous other concessions? A contempt for the Democrats’ doe-eyed naivete about the nature of America’s enemies has long been among the right’s unifying organizing principles. Vance would replace it with the rebranded Obama-ism to which he has always subscribed. In “Communion,” Vance frets that his critics will always view his Road to Damascus moment vis-à-vis Trump as “a politically cynical maneuver to gain political power.” By embarking on a mendacious press tour spotlighting the continuities between the Never Trump Vance of yesteryear and the MAGA enforcer of today, he has rendered that fear a self-fulfilling prophecy. In June 2026, JD Vance won the battle over Trump administration policy, but lost the war for the soul of his party. It makes for a striking parallel to the shooting war America has just forfeited at his behest. *** Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite and a 2023–2024 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies.