JD Vance Is In Desperate Need Of A Nineties Summer

Vice President JD Vance’s decision to spend nearly three hours chatting with Joe Rogan on his podcast is the type of choice that drives consultants to drink more heavily than they do on a normal Wednesday. Devoting that amount of time to open questioning and long-winded theorizing about politics, culture, and conspiracy theories is a minefield for any elected politician, and one where it’s easy to create clips that will be edited and used to make half-baked arguments or warp what’s said into an unintended context.

Unfortunately for Vance, despite his well-known and much-admired communication prowess, that’s exactly what happened. On Iran, Israel, Jeffrey Epstein, and more, the vice president came across as far more interested in defending his own personal opinions than fulfilling the task of representing the Trump administration. Taken as a whole, the interview reads as if he’s already the 2028 nominee, speaking for the Republican Party he wants to manifest, not the one that currently exists under President Trump.

Time and again, the knock on this VP has been simple: He’s too online. He pays far too much attention to random social media accounts criticizing his tireless advocacy for a bad deal with Iran than he does to the possibility that the deal is, well, bad. He complained vociferously to Rogan that Israel is apparently funding some of the same people who are criticizing his deal online. But given that polls show the deal is unpopular with a significant portion of Republicans, and that only a small minority of voters think it’s a better deal for America than it is for Iran, Vance seems to be investing a gargantuan belief in the effectiveness of pro-Israel propaganda to move the needle.

Conservative Fox viewers and Daily Wire readers have never been sold on this deal, and now that it’s fallen apart, it’s something he should be eager to put in the rearview mirror — a collapse he should understand is the fault of Iran doing what Iran always does, not something he should blame on foreign manipulators. The sooner voters forget about Vance’s cheerleading for a doomed plan as his first major foray into foreign policy, the better it is for him.

For a vice president who seems to view the world more through the lens of podcasters than real life, the prescription is clear. The biggest viral trend over the past few months for American parents is in favor of giving kids a “nineties summer” — minimal screen time, maximum outdoor time, a throwback to the America where the rare moment of connecting to the internet came with the crackling sound of AOL dial-up and people focused on the real world of their neighbors and friends, long before the word “podcast” even existed. Perhaps that’s the recipe the vice president needs to reset, and get back to being the effective voice for this administration he was in its first year. Let the podcasts roll on. Everybody needs a break sometimes.