How Iran emasculated JD Vance

[marmar]

How Iran emasculated JD Vance
The vice president’s alignment with Trump risks harming the persona he’s built with manosphere voters ahead of 2028

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published March 23, 2026 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) JD Vance will say many embarrassing things during his next two-plus years as vice president, but smart Democratic campaign consultants should keep a recent video close at hand for use in 2028. During a March 16 press availability in the Oval Office, Vance insisted that, unlike the decades of “dumb presidents” before him, Donald Trump is a “smart” one.

The vice president was asked why he was supporting Trump’s war with Iran after having crowed in 2023 that he opposed foreign interventions. (Vance backed the president, he said then, because Trump would avoid “starting world-historic catastrophes in the Middle East” and was a man of “great restraint.”) With his trademark smirk, Vance pointed to the president’s great intellect as the reason why Americans should “trust President Trump to get the job done.”

....(snip)....

Plenty of political commentators have noted that, by defending Trump’s war with Iran, Vance looks like a grasping phony, which could hurt his presidential ambitions in 2028. But it’s even worse than that for the vice president. Clips like this underscore that he is weak and, frankly, emasculated — eager to debase himself on camera for crumbs of approval from a president whose political and physical strength both seem to be rapidly waning. This is bad news for Vance, who has built his political brand by trying to appeal to the wannabe alpha-male crowd of the “manosphere,” a loose conglomerate of both secular and Christian right content creators whose bro poses and sexist politics helped propel Trump into the White House in 2024.

....(snip)....

But perhaps the most obsequious comment was, “Once the president makes a decision, it’s up to everybody who serves in his administration to make it as successful as possible.” This statement wasn’t too pathetic on its face, but it came after a question about Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned in protest of the war on March 17. Whatever the left’s criticisms of Kent — and I have plenty — there can be no doubt who looks braver. ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/03/23/how-iran-emasculated-jd-vance/

[usonian]

1. He's not half the man his Daddy was.