Trump: Vance to Focus on Corruption; No Iran Deal Needed Because U.S. Controls Strait
President Donald Trump booted Vice President JD Vance out of negotiations with Iran for ending the war Trump started on behalf of Israel.
Vance will instead focus on “corruption,” the polite way of saying he is now reduced to a do-nothing job and attending state funerals.
But in the Truth Social message about Vance, Trump also said negotiations are, as a practical matter, over. “We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump wrote. “Those days have long since passed.”
The decision comes a week after Vance blamed the war for the GOP shellacking on November 3.
War Caused GOP Loss
Vance was unequivocal last week in an X post: Iran cost the GOP the election.
A pollster, he wrote, asked voters who fled the GOP what would make them come back to the party. The top four answers were these, Vance wrote:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
And the problem was not that MAGA voters stayed home. “Our voters showed up,” he continued:
And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.…
The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.…
[E]veryone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.
Trump twice agreed with Vance: first talking to reporters, then during an interview with Ross Douthat of CBS’s 60 Minutes.
“They didn’t like the war,” he said of voters. Problem was, they showed up and voted for Democrats:
They didn’t like the fact that gasoline went up. Because I had it down at a low in Iowa — it was $1.85 … a gallon, $1.85 a gallon. And when you look at $1.85 and you go up to three-and-a-half, $4, that’s still lower than Biden, lower than Obama. But the war was blamed for that, and they didn’t like the war, I think, mostly for that reason.
Trump also said voters dislike Israel.
Vance Out of Talks
As The New York Times observed, Trump ordered Vance — who opposed the war — to negotiate with Iran.
“The vice president traveled to Pakistan in April and met with Iranian leaders in a marathon session that ended without any resolution,” the Times reported:
Mr. Vance recently contacted a top Iranian political and military official to propose a renewal of comprehensive peace negotiations. In a letter sent from Mr. Vance via Qatari [mediators] to Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and former commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the vice president suggested that American and Iranian officials meet soon, adding that he would lead the talks for the United States.
But those peace talks are off the table now.
“I have asked Vice President Vance to focus his complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime taking place in Democrat run Cities and States throughout the U.S.,” Trump wrote on Truth Social:
The Blue States, such as Minnesota, California, Illinois, and many more, are all poorly run, corrupt disasters. Billions of Dollars is being stolen each and every month. Our Budget could be quickly BALANCED with the correction of this large scale criminal activity. CORRUPTION is in the Democrat Leadership’s blood!
But the peace talks won’t end just because Trump gave Vance a fake job that the FBI and federal prosecutors can and should handle.
“We don’t need a deal with Iran,” Trump continued:
Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!
War Not Over
That remains to be seen. On November 2, U.S. forces struck Qeshm Island, “which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used to launch drones and missiles, The Wall Street Journal noted:
On Tuesday, Iranian state media said that Tehran had hit a small Omani island that is key to aiding the navigation of ships transiting the waterway.
The strikes show that, while President Trump has signaled he doesn’t plan to restart major combat operations, a battle over a waterway crucial to global markets threatens to escalate the conflict.
As well, as the Financial Times disclosed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been hectoring Trump to restart the war.
“Netanyahu calls him every day [to urge him to resume the war],” but “those who don’t want a war within the White House and outside have been trying to combat that,” the newspaper reported:
The regional leaders are telling him not to escalate and [to] prioritize negotiations.
On November 9, Trump reported that peace might be at hand.
The leaders of “Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others, would prefer the status quo, in other words, a continuation of the Greatest Naval Blockade in History, and the new Operation Iron Gate — Therefore, Land and Sea,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. And while the U.S. is “ready to go” back to war, “at this point, that seems to be quite unlikely,” he continued:
Israel, and the entire Middle East, are protected from Iranian danger and threats. We are seeing positive momentum toward an end to this Conflict, and will ensure that America’s interests are at all times protected. At the conclusion of this Military Engagement, the American People, and the World, will be far safer and more secure.
Trump told Douthat that Israel and the U.S. regional allies will foot the bill for the war, which he claimed, again, the United States has “won.”
