Former Vice President Mike Pence has rejected JD Vance’s claim that the war with Iran cost Republicans the midterm elections, arguing that voters were frustrated not because the US went to war, but because it failed to finish the job.
“There’s no question that the war in Iran became a frustration for millions of Americans, but it wasn’t because President Trump started the war or took on Iran,” Pence said in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, his first since the elections. “It’s because we stopped short and didn’t finish it.”
Pence blamed what he called the administration’s “politics of appeasement,” pointing to one round of negotiations after another. Americans, he said, grew frustrated with the lack of progress and with the price of fuel at the pump.
The morning after Election Day, Vance had pinned the losses squarely on the war. “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” he wrote. Pence said he disagreed with his successor, adding that the reasons for the defeat were “much more complex than gasoline prices or the war in Iran.”
Pence also took aim at Vance over Israel. He said he had “great concerns about what I’ve heard coming out of the vice president’s office with regard to Israel,” after Vance listed the US-Israel relationship among the issues that drove voters, and pushed back on growing calls to distance America from the Jewish state. “Israel is our most cherished ally,” Pence said.
He described the midterm results as more than a defeat. “The Republican defeat in these midterm elections wasn’t just a rout; it was a reckoning,” he said. Pence argued that voters had rejected Trump’s redirection of the conservative movement toward protectionist tariffs, policies of appeasement toward Russia and Iran, and the marginalizing of the right to life, as well as corruption around the administration. Asked whether Trump’s family had improperly profited from the White House, however, he said he had no way of knowing and would not speculate.
