AI Summary
5 min readJD Vance opposed the Iran war in private meetings with Donald Trump, argued against it in front of other senior aides, and Trump was visibly angry about it. That much is well-established across multiple news organizations. Yet Vance has publicly defended the war, said "so far so good" in July, and used his speech at the midterm convention to create a straw man about how the ghost of Charlie Kirk would have opposed the war but still voted Republican. The tension between his private position and his public posture is not hidden—it was in the subhead of the New York Times story that Jonathan Swan co-wrote. But the harder question, which Swan and host Tim Miller wrestle with, is whether Vance is trying to have it both ways: keeping Trump's good graces while signaling to the nationalist wing that he is really on their side. Swan is skeptical that Vance wants these stories out there, because his single political goal between now and January 2028 is to get Trump's endorsement, and Trump is ostentatiously withholding it. Miller thinks Vance may be more strategic than that—using the leaks to build a separate lane.
The weapons depletion story and the polygraph
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of The Bulwark Daily
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (01:31) **Welcome and Banter** - Tim Miller introduces Jonathan Swan, co-author of *Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency*, and they trade jokes about skincare routines and his new baby.
- 2 (02:25) **JD Vance's Private Opposition to the Iran War** - Swan defends his reporting that Vance privately opposed the war, arguing it's a verified fact from multiple sources, not a leak designed to help Vance.
- 3 (05:23) **The Public vs. Private Vance** - Miller presses on the contradiction between Vance's private opposition and his public support for the war, which Swan says his story explicitly addresses in the subhead and body.
- 4 (08:55) **The Trump-Vance Dynamic and Political Machinations** - Miller compares Vance's situation to Jared Kushner's during the first term, suggesting Vance is trying to stay in Trump's good graces while leaking his opposition.
- 5 (18:10) **Weapons Depletion and the Pentagon Leak Hunt** - Swan details the alarming depletion of U.S. weapons stocks, particularly long-range missiles and air defenses, and the administration's aggressive leak investigations.
- 6 (20:30) **The Driscoll-Hegseth Conflict and Trump's Loyalty Test** - Miller and Swan discuss the resignation of Driscoll and why Pete Hegseth survived internal battles despite negative press.
- 7 (25:05) **The Public's War Weariness and Trump's Spin Problem** - Miller and Swan note that the public is heavily against the war, seeing its link to rising costs, and Trump has failed to spin the narrative.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
The co-author of the signature book inside Trump 2.0 says the media only knows 5% of what is happening inside the administration—particularly when it comes to national security, the money-making, and the self-dealing. Jonathan does have new reporting about how the administration keeps pretending that our military is not running low on long-range missiles. In reality, the war is costing us a month's worth of Patriots almost every day. Plus: Stephen Miller has become the White House's resident kingmaker, why Trump is turbocharged on AI, and some contentious moments when Tim and Jonathan discuss how to characterize JD's divergent private and public posturing on the war.
Jonathan Swan joins Tim Miller.
show notes:
- Jonathan’s “Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump”
- The Bulwark’s campaign to help the Haitian community of Springfield
- Closing Song - MJ Lenderman - She's Leaving You
- Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BULWARK at https://www.oneskin.co/BULWARK
#oneskinpod
More from this podcast
The Bulwark Daily →