In recent conversations with aides and allies, President Trump often interjects with a question about his vice president: Does JD Vance have what it takes to go all the way?<\/p>\n
He usually answers his own question: He\u2019s not so sure.<\/p>\n
It is not that Mr. Trump is abandoning Mr. Vance. He involves him in major decisions, has given him high-profile opportunities to position himself for 2028 and trusts the 41-year-old vice president to wage partisan warfare on his behalf. In a cabinet meeting this week, Mr. Trump compared Mr. Vance to Eliot Ness, the mob-busting federal agent, for working to ferret out fraud in mostly Democratic controlled states.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump has long conducted running focus groups on his closest aides, and appears to enjoy needling them and keeping them off balance as a way of asserting his dominance. Several people in the president\u2019s inner circle have been subject to his quasi-public questioning of their performance and their future.<\/p>\n
But when it comes to Mr. Vance, the stakes are higher. As the default front-runner for the Republican nomination and would-be inheritor of the president\u2019s political movement, Mr. Vance\u2019s fortunes ride to a substantial degree on the enthusiasm of the support he gets from Mr. Trump. And Mr. Trump\u2019s regular polling of people on whether they prefer Mr. Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a> has become one of the most closely watched early indicators of how power in the Republican Party might pass to the next generation.<\/p>\n When he conducts those polls in private, Mr. Trump often compares Mr. Vance\u2019s performance to his own achievements. He has told several allies that Mr. Vance has never won a tough race without his help. (Mr. Trump\u2019s endorsement got Mr. Vance over the finish line in a tight race for an Ohio Senate seat.) He has brought up the number of vacations Mr. Vance has taken as vice president. (Mr. Trump does not generally take them.)<\/p>\n He has repeatedly mentioned the vice president\u2019s initial opposition<\/a> to starting a war with Iran and has done so in front of Mr. Vance. (\u201cI\u2019m more of a peace person than you are \u2014 but I had to do it,\u201d he has said to him.) The president has also questioned his decision to send a Vance-led delegation to a negotiation session in Pakistan that failed to end the war.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump, always keenly attuned to the optics of the presidency, has zeroed in on moments when Mr. Vance might not look the part. He has repeatedly brought up a moment from last spring, when Mr. Vance fumbled<\/a> Ohio State\u2019s national football championship trophy on the White House South Lawn. (Mr. Trump has said he is happy it wasn\u2019t him.)<\/p>\n This account of Mr. Trump\u2019s relationship with his vice president is based on interviews with more than a dozen people who are directly familiar with the dynamic between the two men. Some of them were granted anonymity to speak about Mr. Trump\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n \u201cVice President Vance has done a remarkable job of helping implement the president\u2019s America First agenda,\u201d Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement. \u201cThere has been no vice president in history who has been more empowered, and that is a reflection of the strong trust and relationship between the two. Any false media narratives from unknown and unnamed sources fabricating stories clearly do not have any knowledge of the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump, who turns 80 next month, is generationally and stylistically different from Mr. Vance, a Midwestern millennial who rose out of a hardscrabble upbringing and made that struggle the animating force of his political brand. The president, a Queens-born real estate developer raised in wealth, prefers to be ensconced in gilded surroundings. When Mr. Vance is not in Washington, he enjoys taking his family home to Cincinnati or to Camp David, the woodsy presidential retreat that Mr. Trump has only visited once in his second term.<\/p>\n In meetings, Mr. Vance frequently scrolls his phone, and he uses social media to fight with his critics. The president frequently posts to Truth Social, but he does not spend time replying to people online, as Mr. Vance does.<\/p>\n Susie Wiles, Mr. Trump\u2019s chief of staff, recently advised Mr. Vance to take a break from social media, as have other officials in the West Wing, according to people familiar with those interactions, because the fighting was beneath his office. (Mr. Vance said he took a break for Lent.) <\/p>\n Through it all, Mr. Vance has exhibited the one quality that Mr. Trump most prizes: loyalty. He has put aside his reservations about the war to back the president\u2019s handling of the conflict and carried out the traditional No. 2 attack-dog role against Mr. Trump\u2019s critics, even Pope Leo XIV.<\/p>\n He remains a popular figure among Mr. Trump\u2019s MAGA base. Tony Fabrizio, a longtime pollster for Mr. Trump, said the president chose Mr. Vance as a running mate in 2024 because he appeals to those voters. In an interview, Mr. Fabrizio said that the president saw Mr. Vance as \u201ca MAGA warrior who would go out every day and fight for the things the president wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Fabrizio added: \u201cHe knew that, and that was exactly what he got.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Who Likes JD Vance?\u2019<\/p>\n Even so, Mr. Trump has continued to needle Mr. Vance on matters of substance and style, from criticizing his shoes to ribbing him for his tendency to interject in conversations.<\/p>\n In November, the president wondered aloud why Mr. Vance was not more subservient, like the officials who work for President Xi Jinping of China.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy don\u2019t you behave like that?\u201d Mr. Trump asked Mr. Vance<\/a> during a breakfast for Republican senators. \u201cJD doesn\u2019t behave like that! JD butts into conversations! I want to have that for at least a couple of days. OK, JD?\u201d<\/p>\n People close to the president say that Mr. Vance is in Mr. Trump\u2019s good graces.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father always brings up how JD is a savage and annihilates the fake news, like the made-up narrative of this story,\u201d Donald Trump Jr., the president\u2019s eldest son, said in a statement relayed through his spokesman. \u201cInterviews, rallies, podcasts \u2014 he shows up and performs and that\u2019s what my father cares about.\u201d<\/p>\n To win the 2028 nomination, Mr. Vance must stay in good standing with Mr. Trump and reassure a Republican Party that has been molded in the president\u2019s image but fractured by his choices. So far, like most vice presidents, Mr. Vance has prioritized his relationship with the president.<\/p>\n Despite his misgivings about the war with Iran, he has loyally defended Mr. Trump\u2019s decision to start the conflict. And he has backed another politically fraught action, the creation of a $1.8 billion fund<\/a> to compensate victims of what the administration contends is political persecution. Compounded by Mr. Trump\u2019s recent retribution efforts against Republican lawmakers, that fund has sent Republicans into open revolt.<\/p>\n For Mr. Vance, whose political rise rested in part on his criticism of excessive American intervention abroad, the Iran war has left him balancing his loyalty to Mr. Trump against the antiwar sentiments of much of his political base<\/p>\n As Tucker Carlson, a close ally, recently put it<\/a>, the violation of a campaign promise to not involve the United States in conflicts overseas has put Mr. Vance in a \u201ctough spot.\u201d<\/p>\n Marjorie Taylor Greene, like Mr. Carlson, recommended Mr. Vance to Mr. Trump for the running mate job. Both have since fallen out of favor with Mr. Trump. In an interview, Ms. Greene warned that, should he run for the presidency, Mr. Vance will have trouble regaining trust from Republicans who oppose the war.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is no longer in a place where he can hang on to his former reputation,\u201d Ms. Greene said of Mr. Vance, whom she said she still considers an ally. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing that can protect him anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n As Mr. Vance works to shore up Mr. Trump\u2019s policies, the president has pondered his vice president\u2019s future.<\/p>\n Last summer, Mr. Trump said Mr. Vance was \u201cmost likely\u201d to be his political heir apparent: \u201cIn all fairness, he\u2019s the vice president,\u201d Mr. Trump told reporters<\/a> in August, adding that he thought Mr. Rubio could eventually be added to a presidential ticket but that it was \u201ctoo early, obviously, to talk about it.\u201d Since that interview, Mr. Trump has praised Mr. Rubio and has told people close to him how impressed he is with the job Mr. Rubio is doing.<\/p>\n Mr. Rubio spends more time with Mr. Trump than Mr. Vance does, as is typical of a national security adviser. Mr. Rubio frequently travels with Mr. Trump on Air Force One, and they have bonded over weekends in Florida. Mr. Vance, by nature of being vice president, does not travel on the same plane as Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n At a dinner in the Rose Garden earlier this month, Mr. Trump quizzed his guests about who would be the better choice: \u201cWho likes JD Vance?\u201d \u201cWho likes Marco Rubio?\u201d He made it clear that he was not endorsing either man.<\/p>\n In an interview<\/a> with Fortune in the Oval Office this month, the president was asked, again, about who best was positioned to carry on his legacy.<\/p>\n \u201cWhoever gets this is going to be very important,\u201d the president said. \u201cAnd if you get the wrong person: disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n During that interview, Mr. Vance was watching from the back of the room as Mr. Trump answered.<\/p>\n \u2018He came up empty\u2019<\/p>\n Mr. Vance is one of the most recognizable<\/a> figures in American politics other than Mr. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services secretary. One of his advantages as vice president is that he serves as the finance chair of the Republican National Committee, with direct access to donors<\/a>.<\/p>\n Allies of Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance say that the vice president is still best positioned to be Mr. Trump\u2019s successor. Despite widespread concern over affordability and the cost of the Iran war, Mr. Trump remains popular with Republican voters.<\/p>\n According to a Quinnipiac poll<\/a> published last week, some 73 percent of Republican voters still widely approve of the job Mr. Trump is doing. According to a poll released by Pew in February, 75 percent of Republican voters view Mr. Vance favorably.<\/p>\n They are both broadly unpopular, however. The president\u2019s overall approval rating has sunk to a second-term low. According to Quinnipiac, Mr. Vance is similarly unpopular, with 39 percent of voters approving of the job he is doing.<\/p>\n Recently, Mr. Vance has faced criticism among conservatives for his support for the Iran war, and for engaging with Mr. Trump\u2019s attacks on Pope Leo for speaking out against the war. Mr. Vance, who converted to Catholicism<\/a> in 2019 at age 35, advised the leader of the world\u2019s 1.4 billion Catholics to stick to religion.<\/p>\n Critics have characterized him as a political shape shifter.<\/p>\n Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is widely seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has repeatedly accused Mr. Vance, who was born in Middletown, Ohio, of overstating his blue-collar roots and misrepresenting himself as a product of Appalachia. (Though Mr. Vance\u2019s relatives were from Appalachia, Middletown is not part of the region<\/a>.)<\/p>\n In an interview, Mr. Beshear accused Mr. Vance of \u201cgoverning in a way that only hurts the places he claims he was from.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Beshear added: \u201cJD Vance doesn\u2019t have a real bone in his body. Last week he\u2019s appointed the fraud czar, and this week he\u2019s defending a new $1.7 billion slush fund for the Trump administration to give to their allies.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Vance\u2019s allies say that he is doing the work that would be most helpful to Mr. Trump by traveling the world on diplomatic missions and crisscrossing the country to bolster Mr. Trump\u2019s domestic agenda. They say he is not worrying about netting political wins.<\/p>\n On the international stage, Mr. Vance campaigned for a hard-right overseas ally, Viktor Orban. Mr. Orban went on to lose his race to be re-elected prime minister of Hungary. Mr. Trump\u2019s advisers say he expected that outcome, but the president wanted to help an ally who had stood by him in the years he spent as a political pariah.<\/p>\n A major test of Mr. Vance\u2019s domestic political sway came last summer, when he was asked by the White House political operation to visit the Indiana Statehouse to encourage Republicans to vote to redraw the state\u2019s electoral maps. In the end, the lawmakers declined to redraw the maps, and Mr. Trump waged a mostly successful retribution campaign to unseat those who defied his wishes.<\/p>\n Local officials believe Mr. Trump\u2019s attacks have done long-term damage to the Republican Party and that Mr. Vance has a perilous path ahead of him if he decides to run for the presidency.<\/p>\n \u201cHe came up empty in Indiana the same way that he came up empty in Hungary,\u201d State Representative Ed Clere, a nine-term Republican from southern Indiana who voted against redistricting, said of Mr. Vance.<\/p>\n Mr. Clere, who said he will run for mayor of New Albany, Ind., as an independent when his term ends, added that the vice president\u2019s involvement in the redistricting fight \u201cshould be a wake-up call for anyone who thinks Trump will be able to pass the MAGA torch to Vance, or anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n James Blair, one of Mr. Trump\u2019s top political advisers, said that Mr. Vance was willing to try to persuade Indiana Republicans even if it meant coming away with nothing.<\/p>\n \u201cThe vice president was willing to take on the fight in Indiana because he\u2019s not afraid to do what needs doing, even if it\u2019s an uphill battle,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cThe vice president takes on some of the toughest tasks and keeps at it until the job is done.\u201d<\/p>\n