A Fox News regular went on air and branded JD Vance disloyal for explaining why Republicans got crushed.
The pundit swears he’s only standing up for the President.
And Donald Trump already answered him with two words he never saw coming.
The Old Speechwriter Tried to Write the Vice President’s Lines
Marc Thiessen spent years putting words in powerful men’s mouths. He wrote speeches for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and later ran the speechwriting operation in George W Bush’s White House.
And some habits stick.
Thiessen sat down with Bret Baier on Fox News’ Special Report and unloaded on Vice President JD Vance over the message Vance posted on X after Republicans lost both the House and the Senate. Vance didn’t bother with the usual list of excuses. “The reason we lost is the war,” he wrote.
Thiessen called that a betrayal. “It was, quite frankly, disloyal to the president of the United States,” he told Baier.
Then the old speechwriter instinct kicked in. Thiessen recited the lines he wanted to hear. He wanted Vance to say the war was “the right thing to do.” He wanted Vance to call Trump “one of the most courageous presidents in my lifetime because he took this very difficult political decision and put the country ahead of his own political interest.”
He was pitching copy on live television, and the Vice President was supposed to read it word for word.
But Baier had a simpler theory. “Because he wants to run for president,” the anchor said.
Thiessen laughed and then delivered something that sounded a lot like a threat dressed up as advice. “He needs Donald Trump’s endorsement to run for president, or he’s not gonna get the nomination,” he said. Thiessen added that if he were Vance, he “would not be taking a line contrary to Donald Trump” on the war.
Donald Trump Never Picked Up Thiessen’s Script
One small detail wrecks the whole disloyalty charge. The man Thiessen claims to protect read the same post and mostly agreed with it.
Reporters asked Trump about Vance’s verdict during a tour of the White House ballroom construction site. “I think it’s largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term,” Trump said. He added, “I know how he feels about it.”
Trump stood by the decision to fight and said he “would have done nothing different.” Nobody needs to pretend the two men see the war through the exact same lens. But a President who calls his deputy’s diagnosis “largely true” isn’t describing a knife between the shoulder blades.
And the post didn’t drop out of the sky. Insiders told Axios that Vance worked with senior administration officials on the message. Reuters reported that some White House officials knew about it before it went up.
So the great act of disloyalty cleared the building first. Thiessen either missed that part or decided it didn’t matter.
He leaned hard on one Trump comment about 2028, too. Asked whether the two men had talked about a run, Trump said they discuss “a lot of things” and then shrugged. “Maybe he won’t run. I don’t know who’s going to run.” That reads like a President declining to crown anybody with more than two years left in his own term, which is what just about every President in history has done.
The Two-Week War That Never Ended
So what’s really eating Thiessen? Follow the war.
Back in April, with the two sides locked in a standoff, Axios reported that Trump was consulting a handful of hawks outside the administration. The list included Thiessen, retired General Jack Keane, and the late Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). All three, according to Axios, wanted military action to break the deadlock.
Thiessen made his case in public, too. During an April appearance on Fox News, he said “the time has come” to restart the military campaign and claimed the United States “can finish this in two weeks.”
About a week later, the Washington Post ran his column under the headline “Trump Is 14 Days From Decisive Victory in Iran.”
Those 14 days came and went. Spring turned to summer, summer turned to fall. And voters walked into the booth in November with the war still hanging over their gas tanks.
And Thiessen didn’t stop at timetables. The Daily Caller reported that he repeatedly urged Trump to take out the Iranian negotiators who refused to cut a deal. Bold talk from behind a columnist’s desk.
Maybe that’s unfair. Pundits blow deadlines all the time, and nobody mails out refunds for a bad column. But most of them don’t turn around and question the loyalty of a man who reportedly voiced his doubts in private meetings and then backed the President in public once the decision was made.
Loyalty to the President or Loyalty to the War
Strip away the cable-news theatrics and Thiessen’s standard comes into focus. Loyalty, as he defines it, means repeating that the war was a triumph. Count the cost out loud, and you’ve betrayed the boss.
But the voters already counted it for themselves. Quincy Institute polling found nearly four in five Trump voters wanted the administration to declare victory and wind the war down. Echelon Insights found that Trump 2024 voters who soured on the President pointed to wars and Iran about five times as often as they blamed tariffs.
Trump pointed to the gas pump. Vance pointed to the same place. The neoconservatives who pushed hardest for more bombing would rather point anywhere else.
This isn’t Thiessen’s first swing at Vance, either. Back in August, he used his Washington Post column to accuse the Vice President of undermining Trump’s strategy on the war, and the two men have traded shots ever since.
And the lineage tells its own story. Thiessen came up through the Bush-era Pentagon and White House, the same operation that marched Republicans into Iraq and then watched voters hand Congress to Nancy Pelosi in 2006 and the White House to Barack Obama in 2008. That establishment wing also gave the country amnesty pushes and trade deals that shipped factories overseas. Now it smells an opening. With Trump barred from another term, the old guard wants its party back, and JD Vance, the heir apparent to the America First movement, stands squarely in the road.
But the war crowd won’t fight Trump head-on. His voters would run them out of town. So they go after the man most likely to carry Trump’s agenda forward and call it protecting the President.
Democrats now hold both chambers, and the party’s socialist wing walks in with more House seats than it has ever held. Every week Republicans burn arguing about loyalty oaths instead of ending the war hands that crowd another gift.
Reuters reported that a return to major combat operations remains under consideration inside the administration. If that day comes, expect Thiessen and company to demand that every Republican stand and applaud on cue. Expect them to call anyone who mentions the gas bill a traitor.
But the President already showed his hand on the loyalty question. Asked whether his Vice President got it right, Trump didn’t reach for Thiessen’s word.
“I think it’s largely true,” he said.
Sources: Mediaite, “Fox News Contributor Accuses JD Vance of Being ‘Disloyal’ to Trump”; Axios, “Vance takes a step toward 2028 in MAGA power play”; Axios, “Trump’s VP says the Iran war cost them the midterms”; Reuters via BusinessDay, “Vance points finger at Iran war after US electoral humbling”; Arab News, “Trump says ‘largely true’ Iran war caused midterms loss, after Vance comments”; AFP via Yahoo News, “Analysis: Vance walks Trump tightrope with scathing election critique blaming Iran war”; Daily Caller, “Horsemen Of The Neocon Apocalypse Reportedly Whispering In Trump’s Ear”; Media Matters, “Fox News figures push for Trump to start bombing Iran again”; Marc Thiessen, “Trump Is 14 Days From Decisive Victory in Iran,” Washington Post via AEI; Quincy Institute polling; Echelon Insights polling
