Vice President JD Vance has once again scapegoated the U.S.–Israel alliance and the war with Iran for Republican midterm setbacks, recycling the selective framing he first test-ran on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Under the rhetorical banner of an “Americans first” doctrine that regularly decries alleged Israeli influence operations, he now demotes Jerusalem to an electoral liability. What drove voters to the ballot box, however, was persistent consumer inflation and punitive fuel prices aggravated by the mismanaged drawdown of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — not the durability of the bilateral alliance; but that’s not the reality Vance wants to address.
Scrutinized in full, Vance’s public record reveals a glaring and indefensible double standard. While he reflexively singles out Israel for condemnation, he maintains a telling silence on Qatar (whose Prime Minister ignored Vance as if he were a nobody) — the long-standing financial and logistical sanctuary for the Hamas leadership. This blind spot is entirely predictable given Vance’s fierce personal friendship and political alliance with Tucker Carlson, whose media maneuvers share the exact same pattern. Documented reports reveal that the Qatari Embassy in Washington poured $180,000 monthly into public relations firms like Lumen8 Advisors to broker elite media access, notably orchestrating Carlson’s softball sit-down with Doha’s prime minister. Network denials of direct compensation cannot erase this institutional manipulation — nor can they obscure how Vance’s loyalty to Carlson effectively shields the whitewashing of a terrorism sponsor. By refusing to denounce Doha’s role in sustaining Hamas or Tehran’s systemic campaign of proxy terrorism, Vance betrays the selective, coordinated nature of his circle’s “isolationism.” Perversely, this ideological blind spot leads him to legitimize Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, even as Tehran crowds burn his image in effigy and the regime openly champions outcomes calibrated to “Make America Hungry Again.”
