It was hardly the first time that someone on social media called someone else fat. But it may have been the first time that a vice president of the United States did so.
Peeved at a conservative columnist who criticized his position on Iran, Vice President JD Vance jabbed on Wednesday at his physical appearance. “If you’ve ever met him in person,” he wrote on social media, “it’s quite obvious the man has never missed a burrito.”
In an era when playground insults pass for political dialogue, few have leaped into the online flame wars with more gusto than Mr. Vance. The first millennial vice president has long dispensed with the decorum and restraint of his older predecessors to go after the “idiots” and “scumbags” who anger him, from the “limousine socialists” on the left to the “disgraceful” conservatives on the right.
He works, of course, for the master of the personal put-down, and perhaps that explains Mr. Vance’s emergence as one of the administration’s chief trolls. But even if he hopes to impress President Trump, Mr. Vance also appears to have a natural appetite for conflict, the product of a generation that grew up with gladiatorial political instincts. It is not enough that someone else may be wrong about policy or politics; they must be stupid, mendacious, vile or, yes, even overweight.
“Vice President Vance’s willingness publicly to disparage others in personal terms stands apart from the behavior of modern vice presidents during the last half-century,” said Joel K. Goldstein, a scholar of the vice presidency at the St. Louis University School of Law. Whatever his motivation, Mr. Goldstein added, “it departs from the norms associated with the office and undermines the goal of promoting rational public discourse.”
Mr. Vance’s advisers and allies see it differently, of course. By engaging with critics, however disparagingly, they argue that he is demonstrating the sort of accessibility and authenticity Americans are craving, at least Americans of a particular stripe. He has himself been the target of plenty of ugly attacks and should be free to push back. Those who see his tone as uncouth, they say, are the same pompous elites who have similarly tut-tutted Mr. Trump for more than a decade.
“I tend to err on the side of openness,” Mr. Vance told NBC News early last year. “That’s probably a generational thing, right? I come from a very tech-forward generation.”
Still, even Mr. Vance has evinced some concern with his online habits. In May, he told NBC that he had given up social media for Lent, deleting the app for X, formerly called Twitter, from his phone. “It’s one of these things where not having that as a distraction, I think, has made me much more productive,” he said.
But he said that living “in such a crazy bubble” meant that social media gave him a chance to have unplanned interactions with people. “I think one of the good things about social media is that it actually exposes you to unfiltered raw opinions, and that’s one of the things that I need to hear as a political leader,” he added. “So I will definitely reinstall it, but I’ve enjoyed my little break from it.”
A spokesman for the vice president, who declined to comment on the record, said Mr. Vance’s words to NBC still stood but that did not mean he would not engage online with supporters and critics alike.
What makes Mr. Vance’s combative tone online so striking is that it comes in contrast to other venues where he projects a more thoughtful, measured demeanor. His new book, “Communion,” released in June, offered an introspective look at his journey from evangelical Christianity to atheism to Catholicism. To promote it, he even went on ABC’s “The View” for a vigorous but civil interview with the mostly liberal hosts.
One of the hosts, Joy Behar, even said afterward that Mr. Vance had a sense of humor and that, while she disagreed with him on issues, he should run in 2028 because he would stop being so caustic. “I think if he were president, he’d go back to being a kinder person,” she said. “Trump is the one who’s not kind.”
Vice presidents have often played the role of attack dog, traditionally freer to be more aggressive than the presidents they served. The most vituperative vice president of the modern age was surely Spiro T. Agnew, who eagerly served as President Richard M. Nixon’s pit bull against perceived enemies like liberals (“pusillanimous pussyfooters”), journalists (“nattering nabobs of negativism”) and antiwar protesters (“an effete corps of impudent snobs”).
But he never had access to the bullhorn of social media. And his successors have generally taken a less abrasive, even stodgy approach, attacking opponents, yes, but steering away from the kind of personal denigration that Mr. Vance favors. Even Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s first vice president, maintained an old-fashioned disciplined dignity throughout his four years in office, in sharp contrast to Mr. Vance’s bring-it-on feistiness.
“It’s childish behavior that is unbecoming of the office,” said Kevin Kellems, who was communications director for Vice President Dick Cheney. “He’s behaving like a high school jock trying to win over the temporary young fun friends.”
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Jamal Simmons, who served in the same role for Vice President Kamala Harris, said Mr. Vance appeared to be auditioning for Mr. Trump’s support for a presidential run in 2028.
“I would guess this is the culture of Vance’s boss in grading his performance,” Mr. Simmons said. “In the Trump administration, everybody has an audience of one, and you get rewarded for being pugilistic and snarky.”
Mr. Vance certainly has the pugilistic, snarky part down. Never much of a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy, he issued blast after blast through most of last year and into early this year until his Lenten break from social media. What makes him different from Mr. Trump, who regularly attacks friends and foes alike online, is that Mr. Vance directly responds to critical messages and gets into back-and-forth arguments with other posters.
“I have an extraordinary tolerance for disagreements and criticisms from the various people in our coalition,” he wrote last year about attacks on Tucker Carlson’s son Buckley, who works for the vice president. “But I am a very loyal person, and I have zero tolerance for scumbags attacking my staff. And yes, *everyone* who I’ve seen attack Buckley with lies is a scumbag.”
He does not hesitate to go after journalists who annoy him. Terry Moran, the former ABC News correspondent, is “a leftwing radical,” he claimed. Josh Kraushaar of the Jewish Insider, he wrote, is either “the biggest hack in Washington” or “the dumbest journalist in Washington.”
Nor does he hesitate to take on fellow Republicans. David Reaboi, whose X biography describes him as a “right-wing Twitter pugilist,” is, according to the vice president, a “loser” for suggesting that Mr. Vance’s team was leaking to the news media about Iran peace talks. Right-wing influencers like Laura Loomer, Mr. Vance wrote, are “disgraceful actually” for “attacking the administration and sowing division” in a dispute about how much to focus on abortion.
He also has little filter when it comes to profanity. “I hate this smug, self-assured bullshit,” he wrote of a podcaster who called Trump supporters “very, very dumb.” He declared a Wall Street Journal story reporting that Mr. Trump sent a bawdy letter to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to be “complete and utter bullshit.” To Democratic senators grilling Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, he wrote, “You’re full of shit and everyone knows it.”
After he deleted his app for Lent, Mr. Vance’s social media feed turned more conventional, evidently maintained by his staff. For the past couple of months, it broadly praised Mr. Trump, boasted about the vice president’s anti-fraud efforts, said nice things about Mr. Vance’s wife, praised Mr. Trump some more, offered support to political allies, gave updates on Iran talks and praised Mr. Trump even more.
But then this week, the authentic Mr. Vance was clearly back online, lashing out at Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and columnist for The Washington Post who has been one of the leading voices on the right supporting Mr. Trump’s war against Iran.
In a scathing column last week, Mr. Thiessen blamed the vice president for the failed memorandum of understanding with Tehran and said Mr. Vance “publicly undermines the president” by seemingly contradicting Mr. Trump’s stated policy. “Perhaps it’s time for the president to take the advice of those who have delivered him success in Iran — not those like Vance who have failed him,” Mr. Thiessen wrote.
A few days later, Mr. Thiessen jumped into an unrelated social media thread over affordability — specifically the price of burritos. Responding to a post quoting a university student complaining that it costs too much to buy Mexican fast food, Mr. Thiessen wrote: “Cry me a river. The burritos in the college cafeteria are included in your meal plan.”
That was when Mr. Vance jumped in, suggesting that Mr. Thiessen had gone back for seconds in the cafeteria too often. Some commenters online came to Mr. Thiessen’s defense by recalling that Mr. Vance, who by his own account lost 30 pounds between 2022 and 2024, was not always so svelte himself.
Mr. Thiessen did not respond to messages requesting comment, and Mr. Vance’s office declined to elaborate.
An ally of the vice president said the columnist had it coming. “It’s neither appropriate nor constructive for self-described ‘Republican’ commentators like Marc Thiessen, who earns an absurd living promoting war after war on television, to use their platforms to dismiss the economic anxieties of young Americans,” said Alex Bruesewitz, a former Trump campaign aide.
He added: “I support elected officials who speak the truth. The vice president was right: Marc Thiessen appears to be severely obese. He should lay off the burritos.”
But don’t expect Mr. Vance to lay off the social media.
The post Insults, Expletives and Fat-Shaming: Vance Trolls Critics on the Right and Left appeared first on New York Times.
