Controversial comments by U.S. Vice President JD Vance have set off ripples of unease in the American Jewish community.
Vance, a friend of Tucker Carlson — a conservative podcaster who has been accused of dabbling in antisemitism — has conveyed the impression that he tolerates antisemites in the isolationist “Make America Great Again” wing of the Republican Party.
The Republicans are currently embroiled in an increasingly acrimonious debate concerning two intense and interlocking issues, both of which Vance has addressed of late.
The first one is whether the party should welcome racists like Nick Fuentes, an antisemite and Holocaust denier whom President Donald Trump once hosted inadvertently at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida before winning another term of office.
The second one concerns the degree to which the United States should support Israel, its chief ally in the Middle East.
These issues surfaced after two guests deemed hostile to Jews and Israel appeared on Carlson’s podcasts.
Fuentes, in his interview with Carlson this past October, described Republican supporters of Israel as “Christian Zionists” who have been “seized” by a “brain virus.”
Some Republicans criticized Carlson for not challenging Fuentes’ claim. Commentators pointed out that Vance neither chided nor denounced Carlson’s friendly approach to Fuentes.
More recently, Carlson interviewed Ian Carroll, a conspiracy theorist who claims that Israel masterminded the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, and that the disgraced financier/sex offender Jeffery Epstein had worked “on behalf of Israel.”
Vance remained conspicuously silent after this interview.
Last November, at a Turning Point USA conference, a young Republican took a swipe at Israel and Jews. He asked Vance why the United States backed “ethnic cleansing in Gaza?” And he claimed that Judaism, “as a religion, openly supports the prosecution” of Christianity.
Vance challenged neither calumny.
Furthermore, he dismissed leaked chats from young Republican leaders who praised Adolf Hitler and joked about gas chambers. “They tell edgy, offensive jokes, like, that’s what kids do,” said Vance, downplaying their offensive remarks.
“When I say that I’m going to fight alongside of you, I mean all of you, each and every one,” he added. “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests.”
Critics called this unsettling incident an illustration of Vance’s apparent tolerance of antisemites and an example of the bitter infighting within the Republican Party over free speech and bigotry.
After his appearance at Turning Point USA, Vance softened his rhetoric. During an interview on CNN, he claimed that conservatives welcomed people of all backgrounds to the party. “I think we need to reject all forms of ethnic hatred, whether it’s antisemitism, anti-Black hatred, anti-white hatred,”
Last week, however, he ignited further controversy when, in a remarkably glaring omission, he failed to mention either Jews or Nazis on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
As he said, “Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism, and one of the enduring lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history: that while humans create beautiful things and are full of compassion, we’re also capable of unspeakable brutality. And we promise never again to go down the darkest path.”
His post included photographs of himself and his wife, Usha, touring the Dachau concentration camp last year. During his visit to Germany, Vance praised the radical right-wing Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), which the German government has regularly denounced.
The Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, reacted vigorously to Vance’s statement regarding International Holocaust Remembrance Day, saying that his omissions “offered comfort” to antisemites in the Republican Party.
Shapiro, a Democrat, said, “Remember that the reason why we memorialize the Holocaust on this day, really, essentially, is to never forget. And the reason you want to never forget is so that we never live through that atrocity again. Part of never forgetting is making sure that the facts of what happened are recited, are remembered. The fact that JD Vance couldn’t bring himself to acknowledging that six million Jews were killed by Hitler and by the Nazis speaks volumes.
“It is not a surprise to me, however, given the way in which he has openly supported the AfD party, given the way he openly embraces neo-Nazis and neo-Nazi political parties, given the way in which he has offered comfort, really, to the antisemites on the right who are infecting the Republican Party. So it’s not a shock to me that he would omit that …”
Vance’s spokesperson dismissed Shapiro’s blast as “a misguided plea for attention from a political lightweight.”
The most recent remarks by Vance should come as no surprise.
As the Jewish Democratic Council of America said recently, “Vance defended Trump’s 2024 statement that Jewish Americans who did not vote for Trump were disloyal, calling Trump’s accusation “reasonable.”
In 2022, when Vance was a U.S. senator from Ohio, he said that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned last month, did “nothing wrong” by attending a white nationalist conference organized by Fuentes.
Vance’s position on Israel has created discomfort in Jewish community circles as well.
In 2023 and 2024, he voted against a $14 billion emergency aid package to Israel, despite the fact that virtually every Republican was in favor of it.
Vance, in an UnHerd interview, classified Israel a U.S. ally, but added a qualifier. “We’re going to have very substantive disagreements with Israel, and that’s okay,” he said. “And we should be able to say, ‘We agree with Israel on that issue, and we disagree with Israel on this other issue.’”
Trump’s record on antisemitism, though sullied, has been better than Vance’s. In his most recent condemnation of antisemites in the Republican Party, he told The New Times, “I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them.”
“I am the least antisemitic person probably there is anywhere in the world,” said Trump, whose daughter, Ivanka, a convert to Judaism, is married to Jared Kushner, a Jewish real estate tycoon who has served as his advisor.
During his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump aroused outrage when, in a Twitter post, he depicted Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, standing next to a Jewish star and piles of money. The message must have appealed to antisemites.
And in one of his final campaign ads, he posted images of three Jewish Americans — George Soros, the liberal financier; Janet L. Yellen, the then chairwoman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and Lloyd C. Blankfein, then the chairman of Goldman Sachs — and warned darkly that they represented “global special interests.”
Vance has not made such dog whistle statements. But there are people in the Republican Party who are drawn to antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric, and they are presumably emboldened when a politician of Vance’s stature tolerates it.