This insane JD Vance admission has Republicans — and Fox News — paralyzed with fear

If you sat down and tried to invent the worst possible person to put in charge of negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran — and obviously Donald Trump doesn’t count — you'd have no recourse but to choose JD Vance.

If you didn’t know, and he takes every single opportunity to tell you, he’s the vice president of the United States. And your worst expectations will be met, because he’s leading the way when it comes to negotiating with the wily and wicked Iranian government.

Vance, remember he’s the vice president, is fresh off a book tour for Communion, his memoir about finding his way to Catholicism. I am a lifelong Catholic and, like the Iran negotiations, if I have to invent the worst possible person to explain Catholicism to me, it would again be JD Vance.

This joke of a negotiator and deity is now the face of the most consequential American diplomacy with Iran since arguably 1979. And this joke of a man and his reborn righteousness is now tasked to talk down a regime that has spent four decades building its identity around resisting and rebelling against American foreign policy.

It's hard to imagine a worse match of temperament to task.

I don’t know about you, but I had to pick myself up off the floor when I watched Vance’s press conference from the White House on Thursday. When asked what qualifies him to sit across from Iranian officials, Vance told reporters Joy Behar — who interviewed him on The View earlier in the week — is "way tougher than the Iranians," and that the two are "best friends now."

To say that statement was baffling, bizarre, and ridiculous would be the understatement that trashes all understatements.

Never mind that Behar, and her cohorts at The View, spent the interview grilling him over Trump calling the affordability crisis "a hoax" while Vance scrambled to spin it. The idea that sparring with an 83-year-old daytime talk show host is preparation for negotiating Iran's nuclear program is the kind of line that should disqualify a student from a high school Diplomacy 101 class.

All I could think was that the Iranian delegation heard that quote — they hear everything — and jumped up and down at the prospect of going toe to toe with a neophyte negotiator.

Negotiators who have outlasted six American presidents being told their toughest opponent in Washington uses Joy Behar as his measuring stick. It's not really an insult to Behar. In my previous career as a media relations guy for Kmart and Sears, we had several opportunities to interact, and Behar is as lovely as she is sharp and quick-witted.

But tougher than Iran? It sounds like a self-deprecating remark Behar would make about herself.

But those words from Vance are shocking. It's an admission. If you need a co-host of The View to prep you for the Strait of Hormuz, you've already lost the negotiation before it started.

None of this would really matter much if Vance were just a motormouthed mouthpiece, which he is on his best days. But this? He's leading the actual talks, alongside Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, for an agreement that's supposed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, restart nuclear inspections, and release frozen Iranian funds during a 60-day window before a final deal gets signed.

Vance has spent days insisting the money picture is being overstated, even as Iran's own Revolutionary Guard puts out its own numbers. They are going to twist him in so many directions, and it should worry all of us that Vance is way over his head.

It would help if Vance had any real track record here. He doesn't. The late Richard Holbrooke spent decades in the foreign service before he hammered out the Dayton Accords for Bill Clinton. Zalmay Khalilzad built a career across Republican and Democratic administrations before George W. Bush sent him to broker political settlements in Baghdad.

And who led President Obama’s successful Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA? His secretary of state, John Kerry, who was a U.S. senator for 28 years and chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before President Obama appointed him to his Cabinet.

And Ambassador Wendy Sherman, who worked in the State Department and served as President Bill Clinton’s North Korea policy coordinator, handling early negotiations regarding their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

And J.D. Vance? He spent two years in the Senate, wrote a book about converting to hillbillies and Catholicism, and went on The View. Can’t think of much else.

By the way, Vance's Catholicism tells him a lot about sin and redemption. It tells him very little about Qom.

Many Republicans — and Fox News — seem aghast at the danger, grumbling now about a war powers vote nobody in the GOP had the spine to force when the strikes started. And now they’re biting their nails and trying to bite their tongues about the Iran deal.

And they served two years with Vance, so they know the horror of which they speak.

Trump bombed Iran without congressional authorization, Congress did nothing, and now the administration that has bungled this from the start chooses to send its most combative, least diplomatically tested official the job of ending a war and signing an agreement?

Trump outrageously told Axios that Iran unconditionally surrendered. So if that’s what he and Vance think, they haven’t read the fine print of the Memorandum of Understanding signed this week.

Floating words like "surrender" to describe a deal that looks more lopsided by the day is a great place for JD to begin negotiations — I’m being facetious, of course.

It's reminiscent of how Trump kept calling the new Reflecting Pool a triumph right up until the algae bloomed and the paint started to peel. Vance can narrate this as a historic win for as long as he wants. The cracks are already showing, and his false diplomatic veneer will peel off faster than the reflecting pool.

The real risk isn't just that Vance fails. It's how. Iran has sixty days to extract concessions from a man with no negotiating record and a touchy temper. Remember when he ridiculously lectured Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office?

And, remember, he has that annoying habit of constantly describing himself as "the vice president of the United States." Iran will be fed up with that brag after one hour.

If this deal collapses — or worse, holds together! — the fallout will land squarely on Vance, not Trump. Is Trump trying to set him up for failure and doom his chances at the presidential nomination in 2028?

If Vance, just one last reminder that he’s the vice president of the United States, hopes an Iran deal becomes his calling card for 2028, he’s way out of his league. Just ask Joy Behar.