Las Vegas\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
\n Vice President JD Vance has in recent months given voice to a rising skepticism in America toward Israel<\/a>, leaving some Jewish Republicans uncomfortable, if not openly concerned, about the expected GOP frontrunner in the next presidential election.\n <\/p>\n \n Some Jewish GOP activists have expressed a preference for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while other ambitious Republicans have worked to stir doubt about Vance\u2019s pro-Israel credentials. Among them is Sen. Ted Cruz<\/a>, who recently said the party has not coalesced around Vance ahead of 2028 and that there will be a \u201cfull discussion\u201d about what the party stands for before then.\n <\/p>\n \n Vance addressed those criticisms Monday night with the Republican Jewish Coalition, a coalition group of influential political activists and donors, hours after he campaigned against Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan\u2019s Democratic nominee for US Senate.\n <\/p>\n \n Reporters were kept one floor below the room at the Venetian in Las Vegas where Vance spoke with RJC members. CNN obtained audio of Vance\u2019s remarks from a person who attended the roughly 45-minute \u201cfireside chat\u201d with Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator who is the national chairman of the RJC board. Vance did not take audience questions, but the moderated conversation veered into sensitive territory on a few occasions.\n <\/p>\n \n At one point, Vance raised \u201csome of the obvious elephants in the room,\u201d referring to growing skepticism of the US-Israel relationship among young people. Vance said Republicans need to \u201cactually get out there and talk about the ways in which it is in the best interest of the United States of America.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Then there was Tucker Carlson<\/a>, who has argued the US should drop Israel as an ally and came up when Coleman asked about how Vance decides on which media platforms to appear. Coleman said Carlson, as well as Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan and Nick Fuentes, \u201chave platformed antisemites.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI recognize a lot of people in this room might disagree with things that Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly or Joe Rogan has said,\u201d Vance said, proceeding to distinguish Rogan from Fuentes in particular, saying they are \u201cvery, very different\u201d people. Fuentes, who was hosted by President Donald Trump<\/a> at his Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022, is a White nationalist and Holocaust denier.\n <\/p>\n \n Vance otherwise defended his engagement with the media personalities, saying Republicans need \u201cto be willing to go everywhere and bring our message anywhere and to any person.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The RJC\u2019s CEO, Matt Brooks, told reporters earlier Monday that the group decided to keep the event private to allow for an \u201copen and honest\u201d conversation. And he said the RJC also invited Rubio and Cruz to speak, but they could not make it for various reasons.\n <\/p>\n \n It was Vance\u2019s first time coming to the RJC gathering since 2022, when he was a candidate for Senate in Ohio and attended the event but did not speak. Much has changed inside the GOP since then, with Israel\u2019s war in Gaza following Hamas\u2019 October 7, 2023, attacks \u2013 and the US and Israel launching the more recent war in Iran<\/a> \u2013 coinciding with a drop in public support for Israel across party lines.\n <\/p>\n \n It is a concerning direction for the highly engaged political donors and activists who make up the RJC and could play an outsize role in picking the next GOP presidential nominee. The group is closely aligned with Miriam Adelson, the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and a leading donor to Trump\u2019s 2024 campaign effort, giving more than $100 million.\n <\/p>\n \n It was unclear if Adelson, who has attended past RJC summits, was present for Vance\u2019s remarks. But RJC leaders who spoke to reporters afterward praised him.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe vice president really helped himself tonight,\u201d Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who is now an RJC board member, told reporters afterward. \u201cHe answered a lot of questions that people had about where his heart is.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Not everyone was as impressed. Some attendees say he failed to fully address what they saw as a major issue \u2013 Carlson.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cHe totally deflected,\u201d said Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Gen Z Jewish activist, predicting Carlson would \u201ccontinue to dog\u201d Vance like the far-left streamer Hasan Piker has been linked to El-Sayed<\/a> in the Michigan Senate race.\n <\/p>\n \n Carlson did not respond to a request for comment on Vance\u2019s appearance at the RJC meeting. But Vance has declined to disavow Carlson even after Trump had a falling out with the former Fox News host over the Iran war and has called him \u201ctotally irrelevant.\u201d Carlson has apologized for backing Trump and said he would no longer support<\/a> the Republican Party.\n <\/p>\n \n During a June podcast interview, Carlson said he will always consider Vance a friend and lamented that Trump had put him in an \u201cimpossible situation\u201d by pursuing foreign conflicts at odds with their 2024 campaign promises.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI feel sorry for JD Vance,\u201d Carlson said.\n <\/p>\n \n Vance\u2019s views on Israel have been especially scrutinized since he took the lead in promoting<\/a> an Iran peace deal that was struck in June but has since collapsed. Referring to reports of Israeli government officials criticizing the deal upon its unveiling, Vance warned them against \u201cattacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Days later, during an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Vance accused some in the Israeli government of trying to manipulate American public opinion to undermine the deal.\n <\/p>\n \n Vance regularly condemns antisemitism and has disavowed Fuentes by name, calling him a \u201ctotal loser.\u201d But in a December 2025 interview with NBC News, he said he did not think antisemitism was \u201cexploding\u201d on the right, and he has avoided criticizing Carlson as he has become anathema to many Jewish Republicans.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cTucker\u2019s a friend of mine. Do I have disagreements with Tucker Carlson? Sure. I have disagreements with most of my friends, especially those who work in politics,\u201d Vance said in a December 2025 podcast interview.\n <\/p>\n \n Vance\u2019s answers on Monday night, which did not address Carlson any further, fell flat with some attendees. One of them said he had the opportunity to disavow Carlson and disappointed \u201cmany\u201d when he \u201cducked the Tucker issue altogether.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Sid Rosenberg, a New York City radio host, also panned the answer in an X post that said Vance\u2019s overall remarks were \u201cnot strong enough on Israel.\u201d Earlier in the day, Rosenberg had urged the RJC crowd to \u201cgive Vance a chance.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n One attendee summed up Vance\u2019s response as: \u201cI got to go talk to these guys, I got to go carry the message.\u201d The attendee indicated they were mostly sympathetic to the argument, even if it did not fully grapple with the issue of Carlson.\n <\/p>\n \n Stuart Weil, an RJC member from California, said he walked away from Vance\u2019s remarks feeling that concerns about his positions on Israel were overblown.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI have no fear of supporting JD Vance as the president of the United States,\u201d Weil said.\n <\/p>\n \n Ron Dermer, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States and a longtime adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, offered notable praise for Vance during the conference. At the same time, Dermer recalled a 2022 lunch they had in Jerusalem where Vance \u201casked me a lot of questions about why this serves US interests.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI had no problem making that [case],\u201d Dermer said. \u201cThere\u2019s a simple answer to that, and that\u2019s that Americans\u2019 interests are served by working closely with Israel, so that didn\u2019t concern me at all.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Among those who watched Vance on Monday night was Ruby Chen, the father of a slain Israeli-American hostage, Itay Chen. Ruby Chen met with Vance last year.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cHaving the privilege of meeting President (Joe) Biden, he felt about Israel in the kishke,\u201d Chen said, using the Yiddish slang term for guts or stomach. \u201cI think President Trump has that gene inside of him as well when it comes to the state of Israel. I think JD Vance, if he becomes president, he looks at it in more of an analytical viewpoint, for good or for bad.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Hours before arriving here, Vance visited Michigan to campaign for Senate candidate Mike Rogers in arguably the most important race for RJC members in the midterms. El-Sayed, who is Muslim, made criticisms of pro-Israel spending central to his primary campaign and accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, an allegation the Israeli government denies.\n <\/p>\n \n Speaking in suburban Detroit, Vance criticized El-Sayed over his initial response to a March attack<\/a> on a Detroit-area synagogue, noting the synagogue\u2019s rabbi and security guards were attending Monday afternoon\u2019s event. El-Sayed has spent recent days apologizing<\/a> to Jewish Democrats in the state for that response, in which he said that \u201churt people hurt people.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n As much as the midterm race is galvanizing Jewish Republicans, it was hard Monday to escape the early contours of the 2028 primary.\n <\/p>\n \n Cruz assailed Carlson as \u201cthe most dangerous demagogue\u201d in the country, and last month, the senator\u2019s allies launched a new group to fight antisemitism on the right, Front Line Action, that helped defeat two candidates in the Florida primaries.\n <\/p>\n \n Eric Levine, an RJC board member, said Cruz has been \u201ca perfect example\u201d of a Republican taking on Carlson, but noted there has been \u201cno shortage\u201d of Republicans speaking out.\n <\/p>\n \n Gabe Groisman, a Republican strategist and former RJC board member from Florida, acknowledged there were \u201cconcerns\u201d about how Vance navigates this fraught moment inside the party. But he also said there is \u201ca lot of hope that his position, while it is nuanced or may come at a different angle from President Trump, is still very strong on the American Jewish community.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cMost people believe that when it is time for him to really express his positions,\u201d Groisman said, \u201cit\u2019s going to be positions that people are comfortable with.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Still, Groisman added, \u201cit\u2019s not automatic for him or for anybody.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Las Vegas\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Vice President JD Vance has in recent months given voice to a rising skepticism in America…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-833185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}