There’s something a bit off about JD Vance. And I mean that literally: the vice-president has been snacking on sauerkraut and other fermented foods as part of a weight-loss regime. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr got a number of Trump officials, including Vance, on to the diet, and is thrilled with the results. “Within 20 days I lost 20 pounds,” Kennedy said at an event in Michigan last month. “JD Vance is also on the diet and you can see how different he looks.” Dunno about that: still looks like a naked opportunist to me.
If you want to get into Donald Trump’s good books, improving your looks is a surefire way to do so. According to MS Now, the president is loving Vance’s svelte new figure; it’s helped propel him back into Trump’s good graces. Which is lucky for him because he doesn’t have many other fans. They may be full of beneficial bacteria, but everyone around Vance seems to hate his guts.
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That includes a member of his protective detail, who is now under investigation for revealing to the media the Vance family’s lavish travel requests. The Hillbilly Elegy author reportedly asked for one of his sons to be dropped off at a golf lesson via helicopter, and demanded last-minute chopper trips to Virginia to go house-hunting. With help like that you can understand why Vance is so pronatalist. I’d be popping out kids too, if I could get the taxpayer to fund helicopter trips to their extracurriculars.
It’s not just the help he has angered. On Friday the Washington Post reported that Vance has faced a barrage of attacks from within his party “unlike that faced by other vice-presidents in decades”. Vance’s allies told the Post that the attacks, which seem largely driven by his mild criticism of Israel and the Iran war, are a “coordinated” attempt to poison his 2028 presidential chances. Over the weekend a Fox News panel criticised Vance for a recent appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast where (in a brief moment of good judgment) he questioned putting troops on the ground in Iran. “[Vance] seems to be going off base a lot, and contradicting the president a lot in public lately, and it’s not helpful,” Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen said.
I can’t say it’s not fun to watch Maga infighting. Nevertheless, it’s hard to take too much satisfaction from Vance’s troubles considering they only really benefit his rival for the 2028 Republican nomination: the odious war hawk Marco Rubio, who is now narrowing the gap with Vance in the polls. A setback for one awful politician always seems to spell a career boost for someone even worse. It’s really quite the pickle.
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Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
