JD Vance Swipes At His GOP Critics On Iran Deal: ‘Ironic’ They Don’t Want the War ‘Stopped’

Megyn Kelly interviewed Vice President JD Vance on her eponymous Sirius XM show on Tuesday about his upcoming book, “Communion.” The discussion turned tense at times as Kelly grilled Vance about President Donald Trump’s attacks on MAGA critics of the war in Iran, herself included.

At one point during the lengthy interview, after discussing some of the details of the peace deal with Iran, Kelly brought up some of the criticism of the deal from the more hawkish elements inside the GOP, including from her former Fox colleagues Marc Thiessen and Mark Levin.

“Okay, so here’s some of the reaction,” Kelly said, adding:

Marc Thiessen said, “If the deal terms are accurate as has been leaked, it’s a complete disaster.” He’s calling this, by the way, “the Vance deal.”

“I wonder why he doesn’t call it the Trump deal,” Vance interjected, as Kelly agreed, “I wonder, too.”

“Then there’s Ben Domenech, who was on Special Report last night. He called this the ‘Hillbilly Obama deal,’” Kelly continued, as Vance quipped, “I wonder who that’s a reference to.”

“Which seems to be a shot at you, sir. ‘Not bold foreign policy,’” Kelly made clear, adding:

There’s a guy named Yinon Magal, an Israeli journalist who’s very close with Netanyahu, basically his mouthpiece, who called you a lowlife and called Donald Trump a loser.

The Israeli ambassador to the United States called this so disappointing.

Then there’s Mark Levin, who’s been rage-tweeting about it every five minutes. He demands to see the memorandum. He demands that this be treated like a treaty, to where now you have to get congressional approval for the MOU.

The Constitution says you need approval to declare war, which Trump doesn’t think he did and didn’t seek. And he defended him on that. But now that we’re ending it, which you definitely don’t need congressional approval for, he wants this treated like a treaty and is demanding you go before Congress, sir.

“ To be clear, I don’t think congressional approval was required. I firmly believe that the president, this was never a full-scale war in the conventional or legal sense of it. We definitely made sure that we dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s here,” Vance replied, adding, “So I wanted to defend the administration on that point.”

“But it is kind of ironic that they’re really, really worried about stopping this thing, while they were completely gung-ho about starting this thing,” he concluded, taking a swipe at his critics.

Below is the rest of their exchange:

JD Vance: I want to be responsive and charitable to some of these concerns.

First of all, why do they believe Iranian propaganda only about one thing, the peace deal? They don’t seem to believe Iranian propaganda, and rightfully so, about anything else.

If you’re in the position of endorsing Iranian propaganda only when it’s related to this peace deal, then maybe you should check yourself a little bit and question your sources.

The second thing I’d say is: what is their alternative?

If you look today, Brent crude is around $78 a barrel. West Texas crude is even lower, $75, $73 a barrel. The numbers float around a little bit, but what that means is lower gas prices for Americans and lower energy costs for Americans.

That means that this little blip we’ve had in energy costs, which has caused a lot of people some problems, we’re now getting back to normal.

Fundamentally, if you look at what they’re proposing, they’re proposing an endless conflict. They want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian is dead.

That is not what the President of the United States wants.

What he said is: I set about this to end their nuclear program, eliminate their ability to threaten their neighbors and project power, and make sure that no future child would have to deal with a terrorist regime with an atomic bomb.

That’s why the president set out to do this. He feels, and he’s right, that he’s accomplished that goal.

Now we can get to the negotiation and see what are the other benefits we can get from this. Frankly, what are the benefits the Iranians could get from this if they behave.

I just don’t think the people criticizing this are actually dealing with the reality of what’s in it. And number two, they don’t have an alternative.

If your alternative is just to drop bombs without any clear goal or any clear American interest implicated, then you’re not making the wise decisions on behalf of the American people. The president is.

That’s why we’re in this position.

Megyn Kelly: I’m going to give you a sound bite from John Podhoretz, who is the chief over at Commentary magazine, which is very pro-Israel and very neocon. Preview: he’s not happy here.

[Podhoretz clip plays]

Megyn Kelly: Thoughts on that?

JD Vance: There’s a lot to respond to there, but I actually appreciate that because John is kind of giving away the game.

He’s saying he really doesn’t care that much about higher oil prices for Americans. Doesn’t care about high gas prices. And he wants boots on the ground in a country,

Megyn Kelly: And doesn’t seem to care about casualties.

JD Vance: Exactly. He wants boots on the ground and casualties in a country of 95 million people where, again, the President of the United States never said that his goal was to install Reza Pahlavi to become the new leader of Iran.

What he said is: if the Iranian people want to rise up, great. That’s their business. That’s between them and their government.

What we want is a cessation of their nuclear program, either through diplomatic means or through military means, as he ultimately went down that pathway.

And I think, Megyn, there’s actually a deeper foreign policy debate that I think the last few months has papered over.

When President Trump uses military power, he’s not an isolationist. He’s not a Rand Paul guy, Ron Paul guy. He never has been. Never was.

But what he is, is a guy who says, “If I’m going to use American military power, I want to accomplish a discrete objective.”

Every single day, I saw it very much from the inside, he was asking: Have we accomplished that objective? Can we stop this?

And once we got to the point where people were saying, yes, we feel like we are in a much stronger position; we feel like their nuclear program is destroyed; we feel like their conventional military, it’s going to be impossible for them to rebuild it for very, very many years, he said, “Okay. Then I want you to go and negotiate a deal that transforms the Middle East.”

And that’s what he did.

Watch the clip above.

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