In January, I wrote that US Vice President JD Vance’s persistent refusal to confront antisemitism on the populist Right had to be treated as a primary concern, not a side issue.
I argued that silence is a choice; that by declining to name what Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens were doing when they rehabilitated Nick Fuentes and shrugged off Kanye West’s threats against Jews, Vance was not staying neutral. He was moving the line.
Last week, Vance made clear he no longer needs anyone else to move it for him.
What he actually said
On Wednesday’s episode of The Joe Rogan Experience – recorded for an audience of more than 11 million people – the vice president of the United States said he knows “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that people “within” Israel’s government are secretly manipulating American public opinion to keep the United States at war with Iran indefinitely, “not toward any objective, but just indefinitely.”
He described a “discreet, extremely well-funded campaign” to derail his Iran negotiations, citing anonymous social media activity and unnamed reporters’ leaks as his evidence.
Strip away the geopolitical packaging and look at the structure of the claim: a secretive, well-funded foreign actor is covertly steering American opinion and policy against the public interest, with absolute certainty asserted but no publicly identified evidence offered.
Vance framed his accusation as being about actors within the Israeli government. But allegations that shadowy Israeli or Jewish actors secretly manipulate American policy inevitably echo one of the oldest antisemitic narratives: that Jews exercise hidden control over governments for their own ends.
Whether intended or not, that is the dangerous rhetorical tradition his claims invoke.
He didn’t stop there. Asked about Jeffrey Epstein, Vance volunteered that Epstein “clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence,” then floated an entirely separate theory: that Epstein may have been doing off-the-books “tax stuff” for Jewish billionaire Les Wexner, and that this – rather than, or perhaps alongside, the well-documented sexual abuse and exploitation – was Epstein’s real source of blackmail leverage.
Vance cited no evidence for this claim, nor did he identify any reporting supporting it. He nevertheless presented it as an “underreported” story rather than speculation offered live on one of the world’s largest podcasts.
When Rogan raised accusations that Vance himself had tolerated antisemitism, the vice president’s answer wasn’t engagement. It was dismissal. He said he has “a ton of respect for the Jewish religion,” has “never heard a good compelling argument” for why anyone would call him antisemitic, and then told his critics to “go to hell.”
The dodge I warned about, now on display
In January, I described Vance’s pattern precisely: personal declarations of innocence standing in for any actual reckoning with substance. He defended Tucker Carlson. He dismissed concerns about the populist Right’s growing comfort with antisemitic conspiracy theories as overblown talk about “extremism.”
The one notable exception came when Nick Fuentes targeted Vance’s wife with racist attacks. Then, suddenly, Vance demonstrated that he is perfectly capable of drawing a bright moral line when the target is someone close to him.
Last week supplied the update to that thesis. Vance is no longer merely tolerating conspiratorial rhetoric circulating within his political coalition. He is employing it himself.
“I respect the Jewish religion” is not a rebuttal to concerns that one has advanced conspiratorial claims about nefarious or secret Jewish or Israeli influence. Professions of personal respect do not answer concerns about the substance of one’s rhetoric.
The MoU was the problem. He reached for a villain instead
What makes this episode more than a rhetorical lapse is that the substantive criticism of Vance’s Iran memorandum of understanding proved well-founded. From the outset, critics pointed to major concessions regarding Iran’s role in Lebanon, unresolved questions surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, and other structural weaknesses in the agreement.
The deal effectively collapsed as US President Donald Trump resumed military strikes against Iran late last week.
The criticisms of the MoU were substantive, public, and ultimately borne out by events. They did not require positing a covert Israeli influence campaign to explain why the agreement unraveled.
Rather than defending the agreement on its merits, Vance shifted the explanation for its failure from public criticism to clandestine manipulation. That rhetorical move matters. Democratic politics assumes that policies often succeed or fail because citizens, officials, journalists, and institutions openly debate them.
Conspiratorial politics assumes that unseen actors secretly determine outcomes behind the scenes. When the hidden actors being accused are Israeli officials and unnamed well-funded “allies” allegedly manipulating America into war or into staying in a war, the echoes of longstanding antisemitic narratives become impossible to ignore.
Intent doesn’t contain what happens next
I don’t believe Vance sat down on Wednesday intending to promote antisemitism. That has never been the standard I’ve held him to, nor is it one that matters.
Once these words leave the mouth of a sitting vice president on a platform reaching more than 11 million people, they no longer belong solely to him. Iranian state media can cite them as confirmation that Israel secretly manipulates American policy.
Groypers and others already invested in narratives of hidden Jewish or Israeli control now have remarks from the vice president they can quote in support of those narratives.
Every person who has spent the last two years insisting that concern for Israel’s security is just code for dual loyalty now has America’s vice president reinforcing the premise that shadowy Jewish actors secretly steer American decisions.
That is how conspiracy theories become normalized – not because everyone agrees with them, but because they begin to sound like ordinary political analysis when repeated by people at the highest levels of government.
What I said would happen
In January, I argued that leaders establish boundaries through what they condemn, what they tolerate, and what they ignore – and that refusing to draw a line is itself a way of moving it. I warned that if antisemitism continued metastasizing within the coalition Vance is helping build, he would not simply have failed to stop it. He would eventually bear responsibility for legitimizing it.
That more charitable reading is no longer available.
This was not silence. This was not a failure to condemn someone else.
This was Vance speaking in his own voice – directly – to millions of people.
In January, I argued that refusing to confront antisemitic rhetoric would eventually normalize it. Wednesday’s interview marked something more troubling. Vance was no longer declining to police the boundary. He crossed it himself.
The writer is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.