Vice President JD Vance is having a rough month. The more he steps in front of an audience — whether it’s beside his wife, flanked by allies, or standing in what should be friendly territory — the more the energy seems to slip through his fingers.
And the contrast with the kind of reaction President Donald Trump commands feels impossible to ignore. So this time, Vance reached for a familiar trick out of Trump’s playbook, hurling an insult at a perceived enemy to fire up a friendly crowd, and even then, it landed flat.
Vance spoke at the first meeting of Trump’s Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, Feb. 19, opening with a line that should have been an easy sell.
He began by licking Trump’s boots.
“Thank you, Mr. President, for your leadership but also for the kind words about me personally,” the sycophantic Vance began.
“I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but after the President said that I was so smart,” Vance continued gushingly, patting himself on the back, “and I didn’t want to repeat our congresswoman who froze for 20 seconds over in Munich.”
Turning to Trump and lifting his hands for added punch, a simpering Vance thought he was telling a joke, smiling at Trump as he said, “Now I’m tempted, sir, just to freeze for 20 seconds, and just stare at the cameras and maybe they’ll say nice things about me like they do about congresswoman Cortez.”
Vance’s wisecrack about congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez before a friendly audience landed with a deafeningly silent thud, not a snicker, not a giggle and certainly no laughter. Critics contend if you can’t make your friends laugh, you’re in trouble.
Vance, sensing his attempt at humor completely missed the mark, quickly tried to move on, but the internet wasn’t having it, and neither was the progressive lawmaker from New York.
Ocasio-Cortez flipped the script quickly delivering a pointedly blistering comeback above a clip of Vance’s embarrassing flop.
“The only thing longer than my pause to think was their silence to his joke,” she said in a scathing post on X.
A democratic candidate for Congress in Missouri’s 2nd District, Fred Wellman, also blasted Vance above a clip of the attempted joke.
“This whiny victim will never shut up and he will never be President.”
X user MR. M agreed, “The harder he tries to be funny, the worse it gets. A charisma void.”
And this response on Vance whining about hoping for better media coverage.
“I think his visit to the Winter Olympics proved that won’t happen.”
Several clips of the 36-year-old Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference have gone viral in mostly conservative circles amid speculation about a potential 2028 presidential run.
And she told The New York Times that her message warning wealthy world leaders about working-class discontent paving the way for a slip into authoritarianism was becoming lost in the dissonance and that that was frustrating.
Her trip to Germany is one of her most high-profile foreign trips, yet, and was met by overwhelming approval from Europeans but a few stumbles along the way seem to be roiling conservatives.
She was asked whether the U.S. should send in troops if China attacked Taiwan, a U.S. ally, and she paused before stumbling through an answer. She also referred to Venezuela as located below the equator. It’s not. It’s in the Northern Hemisphere.
