The Most Dangerous Job in Trump’s White House

“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD,” quipped President Donald Trump last week about the ongoing Iran peace negotiations.

Vice President JD Vance must not have reached out for a conversation with former Veep Mike Pence before deciding to become Trump’s number two back in 2024. He didn’t even need to do that. All he needed to do was re-watch scenes from the January 6, 2021 invasion of the Capitol with rioters shouting, “Hang Mike Pence!”

Trump demands unquestioned 100% loyalty from everyone around him but feels no obligation to reciprocate. Over the years, I’ve personally found this to be one of his most morally repugnant traits. I value loyalty, but when it’s based on fairness and reciprocity. Trump, however, demands blind loyalty, asking those who serve with him to twist their values to fit his interests. Those who don’t become instant enemies.

Being VPOTUS is rarely a fair deal. Being Trump’s VPOTUS is a high-risk endeavor.

To start, no vice president wants to be just that. Dick Cheney might be our only example in recent memory of one who didn’t aspire to the presidency. Perhaps because, as some assert, he was the true power figure in George W. Bush’s White House. Nonetheless, we must start with the assumption that they ALL want to ascend to the top job.

Being VP has its perks. It gives them a front row seat, and even some say, in White House decision-making and elevates them to household name status around the world. They are literally a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Loyalty is built into the job. Veeps are hand chosen by the president. They don’t have their own separate vote and mandate, they just ride in on his (or someday, her) coattails. Their job is to step in if the president becomes incapacitated. Otherwise, they are there to support the president and never, ever outshine him in any way.

Here lies the paradox of being the Veep: the more loyal they are, the more they will forever be enmeshed in their president’s legacy. Success will shine brightly and almost exclusively on the president while the vice president will share in the blame for any failure.

Just ask Kamala Harris. Her attachment and reluctance to inch away from Joe Biden’s presidency, especially on Israel and Gaza, was her biggest liability in the 2024 election. Biden exacerbated this by staying in the race long after his disastrous debate performance with Trump. By taking his sweet time, Biden robbed Harris of the opportunity to compete in a primary and have some legitimacy of her own as the Democratic nominee.

But Biden also did Harris a disfavor that typically comes with the VP job: he gave her a shitty portfolio of issues to work on. Impossible really. The story goes that in a meeting about immigration policy, Harris spoke up about the need to address the root issues of migration, sometimes called push factors. Biden promptly saddled her with leading this hazy border initiative. Then Trump and Republicans seized on it, labeling her the “border czar.” The moniker stuck and did damage because it’s straightforward and well-defined, unlike the actual task.

To be sure, Biden is just one of a long line of presidents who have handed off impossible or unpopular missions to their Veeps. Lyndon Johnson made Hubert Humphrey the chief public defender of the Vietnam War. Bill Clinton asked Al Gore to reinvent government. And Biden should have known better since Barack Obama put him in charge of most of the administration’s Iraq policy.

So, Trump is doing much of the same by starting an unpopular war with a wobbly strategy, mostly at the behest of Israel and then sending Vance in to negotiate its end. And, if negotiating with Iran isn’t daunting enough, Trump is complicating matters further by firing off threats and insults.

While Vance was attempting diplomacy in Switzerland, Trump threatened Iranian negotiators on Fox News, saying “You close it [the Strait of Hormuz] and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your fucking country.” This prompted negotiators to walk out in protest.

Sure, you might argue that they are playing “good cop, bad cop” but I don’t buy it as long as these negotiations continue to limp along.

Either way, this is the excruciating reality of being Trump’s VP. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to spin up a pity party for Vance, he took the job!

A job that has always meant being the loyal shadow of the president and taking on the most politically fraught assignments. But under Trump, this job comes with an added hazard; because the Vance won’t just share in the blame for an Iran deal gone wrong, he’s at risk for becoming the scapegoat.

Never one to mince his words, Trump put it right out there. “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD.” It may have been delivered as a joke but for Vance, it might just turn out to be the most honest job description of all.

This is the English version of my column, La Globalista, in El Español.