BREAKING: JD Vance cut out of Iran negotiations as Trump hands control to Kushner & Witkoff in STUNNING shake-up.
It was already one of the cruelest things a president has said about his own vice-president on the record: “If it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance. If it does happen, I’m taking full credit.” Trump was, of course, referring to the negotiations to end the war in Iran, which he had put his vice president in charge of.
Now, Trump has removed Vance from the negotiations entirely.
In a moment so chaotic it unfolded during a commercial break on MS Now — with a host literally calling the president on the phone between segments — Trump confirmed that JD Vance would not be leading the next round of Iran talks in Islamabad. Instead, real estate developer Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner would handle it. The official reason? Security logistics. The Secret Service didn’t have enough time to set up.
Sure. Right.
The humiliation was compounded by the fact that nobody told U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz, who went on ABC’s This Week the same morning and told the world that Vance would absolutely be leading the Islamabad talks. Minutes later, Trump called a different host and said the opposite. The vice president of the United States was publicly benched, and his own administration didn’t even get the memo in time to coordinate the story.
“JD is great,” Trump later told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl. That’s apparently the presidential equivalent of “bless his heart.”
Let’s zoom out on what has actually happened here. Vance reportedly opposed this war from the beginning — telling people privately it was “massively expensive” and “a huge distraction of resources.” He was right. The war has cost nearly $30 billion, killed at least 15 American troops, wounded hundreds more, sent gas prices over $4 a gallon, driven oil to $100 a barrel, and produced four consecutive broken deadlines without a single concrete concession from Iran.
Vance spent 21 hours negotiating in Pakistan last weekend and came home with nothing. Trump called him multiple times during those 21 hours to check up on him — and then asked other people to weigh in on the VP’s performance. Like a micromanaging boss sending someone into a job interview and then polling the receptionist about how it went.
Now Jared Kushner — the man who received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia after leaving his last government job — is back at the negotiating table. Along with Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer who has been deployed to solve Ukraine, Iran, and Gaza simultaneously, apparently because Trump’s foreign policy is a real estate deal that just needs the right closer.
Vance flew to Pakistan. Failed to get a deal. Got blamed preemptively. Got replaced by his boss’s son-in-law. And Trump went on Truth Social to threaten to knock out “every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran” while adding “NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!”
This is the foreign policy of the most powerful nation on earth. A Truth Social threat. A commercial-break phone call. A vice president benched mid-war. And Jared.
Yeah, “JD is great.”
.- Occupy Democrats