Vice President JD Vance looks on before boarding Air Force Two to return to Washington, DC, from Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport on April 8, 2026, in Budapest, Hungary. | Jonathan Ernst/Pool/Getty Images This past week has been a disaster for Vice President JD Vance. He embarked on two foreign adventures — campaigning for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and leading peace negotiations with Iran — that ended in total failure. Orbán lost by an enormous margin; Iran quit the talks, and President Donald Trump announced a new blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. These events are not just humiliating for Vance, but reflect a deeper failure of his vision for the world — one that he hoped to advance as vice president, but appears to be crumbling just as he tries to take the MAGA mantle. When it came to US foreign policy, Vance has had two overarching goals: to turn the United States into a patron of Europe’s far-right parties, and to move away from the kind of military adventurism that had long defined the Republican Party. In both areas, he is failing spectacularly. European far-right parties across the continent are increasingly distancing themselves from Washington; Trump’s foreign policy…
JD Vance had a vision for the world. Trump is wrecking it.
