Marine. Yale graduate. Calls the Rust Belt home with his beautiful, growing, mixed-race family. On paper, Vice President JD Vance ticks all the boxes for what the next generation of politics could look like.
But 2028 is a long way off. First, Republicans have to face the midterms, where the Trump administration’s record will be tested in a string of governors’ races and contests that could either salvage or eviscerate the party’s razor-thin congressional majorities.
For Vance, affectionately dubbed the “human Swiss Army Knife” by White House aides, that means hitting the road and hitting it hard to sell President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“When people are aware of some of the things that we’ve done, and they connect them to administration policies, they’re much more likely to vote Republican,” Vance told the Washington Examiner in an interview aboard Air Force Two.
The Washington Examiner shadowed Vance in Ohio and Minnesota on Thursday, a two-state deployment that doubled as a test run for the message Republicans hope will carry them through 2026.
First, in Toledo, the vice president honed the White House’s shifting message on affordability, a top-line issue for voters in competitive races across the country. Next, in Minneapolis, Vance met with immigration officials effectuating Trump’s deportation agenda and held a press conference with, largely hostile, local media outlets.
Together, the stops captured the two issues dominating the national conversation: cost of living and immigration.
Despite the frigid temperatures on the ground — it was minus-two in Minneapolis by the time Vance departed for Washington — the vice president eschewed gloves, scarves, and headwear during the trip. Whether the native-Ohioan felt perfectly comfortable braving the elements or was trying to project strength for the cameras, his aides, many of whom also hail from the Buckeye State, clearly weren’t enjoying the winter climate.
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One White House official, holding his gloved hands over his exposed ears while waiting on the tarmac in Ohio, turned to the press and joked, “Confirming on background: it is frigid.” Two other aides were pressed into assistance to kick open the rear door on Air Force Two, which had completely frozen solid, during the flight from Toledo to Minneapolis.
Sandwiched in between stops, Vance sat for a half-hour interview with the Washington Examiner. The vice president swapped his blazer for a bomber jacket and gave some candid insight on how he plans to walk the Trump tightrope in 2026 and beyond.
Vance, whose venture capital bona fides were put to good use last year by taking point on Trump’s directive to save TikTok, currently serves as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. The job presents both an opportunity and a challenge.
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It means Vance can take an active hand in helping the GOP craft its midterm strategy and message. But it also means Vance could face blame if a blue wave wipes out Republicans in November — a result that could make an uncontested 2028 GOP presidential primary all the more unlikely.
Since the Democrats swept the 2025 off-year elections, Republicans have steadily pressed the White House to do more to sell the president’s economic agenda. Yet, Trump himself hasn’t quite budged off his own 2024 messaging line, frequently accusing Democrats of pushing an “affordability hoax” and blaming the voters’ economic angst on his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
Some Republicans have privately vented that Trump’s plan of attack is completely devoid of strategy, and that he’s falling into the same trap that effectively ended Biden’s term at the midpoint in 2022. Vance pushed back on that notion during his interview with the Washington Examiner.
“First of all, there is a strategy behind the messaging,” said the vice president. “A big part of what we need to do is just connect what people are seeing on the ground with what the administration is doing.”
“I think the flip side of it is acknowledging, yes, there are a lot of people who are still struggling, but again, connecting that to some of the policy decisions made during the last administration,” Vance added.
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The vice president pointed to take-home pay, which fell by some $3,000 on average under the Biden administration before rising by roughly $1,300 during Trump’s first year back in office.
“If you’re an American in Toledo, Ohio, you’re still $1,700 – $1,800 poorer. So, acknowledging that there’s still a lot of work to do and letting people know we’re committed to do it, I think that’s certainly part of our strategy for the midterms,” said Vance.
For Vance, the pitch in places like Toledo is less about sweeping promises than steady reassurance — convincing voters things are improving, but it takes time.
The vice president said the administration could only do so much on its own and “ we really need Congress to do something” when it comes to “affordability in housing, affordability in health care.”
“We need Congress to take votes on policies that would be a win for the American people. For example, if you have a few moderate Democrats join with Republicans, and we get 57 votes on a really good health care package — now, is that going to have an immediate impact on the American people? No, because you need 60 votes to actually get some of this stuff passed,” Vance said. “But so long as we’re able to say to the American people, ‘Republicans are working for you,’ I think they’ll reward us in November.”
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Whether Vance’s more nuanced economic framing resonates with a national audience remains to be seen, but he certainly received a warm welcome in his home state.
The vice president, whose rally playlist featured early-2000s country hits, country-adjacent pop songs, and a select sprinkling of Rihanna, received increasingly louder rounds of applause as he continued to both hammer Biden’s poor economic stewardship and link Trump’s deportation agenda to potential relief in the housing market.
That latter point will most certainly be tested given the current national debate surrounding ICE’s migrant raids and the protests they’re spawning in response.
According to White House officials, Vance’s trip to Minneapolis was explicitly meant to “lower the temperature” on the issue of immigration. The vice president himself said as much during his remarks to the press in Minnesota, which followed a closed-door meeting with ICE agents, Customs and Border Protection officials, and local business leaders friendly to the administration.
Vance told the Washington Examiner that the administration will take disciplinary action, when “justified,” against ICE agents found guilty of wrongdoing.
“If we think that there are disciplinary actions justified, then, of course, we’re gonna take those disciplinary actions. That’s a separate question from whether, for example, the ICE officer who was hit by this car was in reasonable defense or in reasonable fear of his life. We’re going to investigate that,” said Vance. “We’re also going to defend people who were doing their job in incredibly tough circumstances. You can do both of those things at the same time.”
And just two days after Vance’s visit, violence again broke out on Minneapolis’ streets after ICE agents shot and killed a 37-year-old man filming federal officials, the second American citizen killed by ICE in Minneapolis this month. The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the victim was armed and threatened ICE officials, but videos of the incident appeared to show a group of 8-10 federal officials disarm the individual, beat him, then shoot him as many as 10 times while he was on the ground. Separate video appears to show ICE agents approach the individual, who was filming them with a cell phone, before the incident began.
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In both his sit-down with the Washington Examiner and in his Minneapolis press conference, Vance blamed local and state Democratic officials who uphold sanctuary city policies for the outbreak in violence.
“This is crazy town, and it’s why Minneapolis has been so chaotic,” said Vance. “This is not the fault of ICE. This is the fault of left-wing agitators and also some local officials who are supporting those left-wing agitators instead of supporting law enforcement.”
Sticking with the Trump-line has helped cement Vance — alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio — as one of the party’s most closely watched figures heading into 2028.
The vice president notably did not discount a potential 2028 run of his own while speaking to the Washington Examiner. Instead, the vice president said he was focused on the immediate task before him.
“One of the things that I try to keep as my North Star in this job is to focus on the job that I have, not on any future job I might want. That means that I give the president honest counsel, and that I execute his agenda, and I show loyalty to the man who tapped me to become his vice president because his success is fundamentally the success of the American people,” he told the Washington Examiner, adding that cabinet in Trump’s first administration sought to “enhance themselves by tearing down” the president. “So I’m going to keep on being a loyal soldier.”
Still, Democratic officials have privately complained that they wished former Vice President Kamala Harris had done more to separate herself from Biden’s dismal record on the economy and the war in Gaza before and after ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket in 2024. Vance doesn’t seem worried about that problem.
When asked by the Washington Examiner to assess his biggest regret, or the president’s greatest failing from 2025, Vance’s aides sought to end the interview, citing that we’d already run over time.
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“It’s ok, he can ask one more question,” the vice president intervened.
“But I’m way too smart to answer that,” he added.
