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The U.S. vice presidency is a peculiar post — a messaging avatar with no formal role, a prominent figure that is simultaneously powerless and (potentially) all-powerful.
Should Donald Trump win in November, J.D. Vance will be no different.
A fresh wave of anxiety washed across Europe on Tuesday after Vance — an isolationist who believes America has been protecting Europe “for far too long” — got the nod as Trump’s running mate.
Headlines in Europe blared words like “disaster” and “fear.”
But constitutionally, the vice president’s authority is mostly ceremonial — unless the big boss dies, voluntarily delegates something or tries to overturn an election. And if Trump’s first presidency is any guide, he would mostly use his second No. 2 as a high-profile hype man for himself, someone to dispatch where he doesn’t want to go.
For Trump, that includes Europe.
The former president had a well-known aversion to any trip that took him away from his bed (well, beds, if you include Mar-a-Lago and Bedminster). And he especially seemed to loathe coming to Europe, where he regularly faced lecturing leaders and persistent protesters (not to mention a giant, diaper-clad baby Trump balloon).
Instead, when possible, Trump sent his vice president.
For instance, he deployed former Vice President Mike Pence several times to the Munich Security Conference, the gathering of global grandees that President Joe Biden was so eager to zoom into a month after his inauguration.
Vance was keen to attend that same conference earlier this year as a U.S. senator, trumpeting his message that America must hand Europe responsibility for the war in Ukraine.
That’s the kind of role Vance would likely serve if elected: transatlantic scolder-in-chief.
Practically, it might not go much beyond that. While Vance would have regular access to Trump’s ear — able to sway the fickle president — so would Fox News personality Sean Hannity and the MyPillow guy.
And unlike Pence, who supported the Iraq war and explicitly denounced Trump’s isolationism during his brief 2024 presidential bid, Vance is already simpatico with Trump’s innate foreign policy instinct: Let others defend themselves (unless it’s Israel).
In other words, he doesn’t have to convince Trump of much, even if he wanted to. He can just be the bullhorn.
The thing is, Vance has become an eager bullhorn — a vital quality in America’s reality show-meets-politics era.
Vance started as a smooth and adaptable interviewee in 2016, calmly explaining Trump’s appeal for befuddled liberals while promoting his autobiography “Hillbilly Elegy.” Yet he soon MAGA-morphed into a pugnacious Trump surrogate in every forum — on Fox News, off the Senate floor, on the campaign stump.
As vice president, he’d likely add Europe to that list.
During the Trump years (version 1.0), Mike Pence gradually became the face of Trumpism abroad, regularly getting shipped to Europe to finger-wag at America’s allies. He was also there, presumably, to mop up the tepid applause and swift rebuttals that Trump despised.
But whereas Pence, despite his radio host background, was a sedate, stiff presence at the overseas podium, Vance’s TV savviness would likely bring a more animated, voluble version of Transatlantic Trumpism to Europe.
“I think he agrees with what I’m going to say,” Vance began as he took the mic in Munich earlier this year — the “he,” of course, being Donald Trump, and an early signal of how Vance may translate Trump as his overseas envoy.
“There’s a fundamental issue here that Europe really has to wake up to,” Vance said, insisting his remarks were meant “in the spirit of friendship, not in the spirit of criticism” because “I don’t think that we should abandon Europe.”
That fundamental issue? “The United States has to focus more on East Asia,” he said. “That is going to be the future of American foreign policy for the next 40 years and Europe has to wake up to that fact.”
While the theory is broadly reminiscent of Barack Obama’s much-heralded pivot to Asia, Vance’s version is much more dramatic. As Vance explained to POLITICO’s Ian Ward earlier this year, he wants to fundamentally overhaul the global order, crafting a system where each nation is responsible for its own security and financial well-being.
That would mean a complete redo of international trade and security structures.
For now, however, Vance’s plans will live or die on Trump’s whims — as is the fate of all vice presidents.
Yet Vance, at 39, could eventually inherit the MAGA crown. Trump is 78, just survived an apparent assassination attempt and can (constitutionally) only serve one more term.
It’s a feasible path in American politics. Since 1900, ex-vice presidents have won roughly 25 percent of all presidential elections. And in total, 15 vice presidents have eventually become president — eight because the president died.
Vance’s allies see him on that path. And Vance himself is eyeing that future.
“Trump will, at most, serve four years in the White House,” he told POLITICO in March. “There is a big question about what comes after him.”
