A political pundit has put forward that US Vice President JD Vance could usurp power from President Donald Trump due to his erratic policy shifts. Sky News’ heavyweight Adam Boulton has implied that the President’s volatile approach might disconcert even devoted backers, particularly if the country ends up in a precarious situation which could have been dodged.In less than 100 days since Trump entered office, alongside Elon Musk acting as a quasi-Prime Minister figure, he has unleashed a barrage of executive orders.
The controversial tenure has seen impositions of tariffs on close partners like Canada and Mexico, an unexpected rebranding of the Gulf of Mexico, slashing aid to Ukraine temporarily, coupled with the forced expulsion of scores of alleged Venezuelans to El Salvador. Amid such unpredictability, Boulton suspects the strain may extend to Trump’s connections within the Oval Office. This tension, he argues, may lead some to pivot towards JD Vance as an alternative to their ageing commander-in-chief.
This is the same JD Vance who despite previously branding Trump as “America’s Hitler” currently serves in the second highest office in American politics, reports the Irish Star.
Boulton, writing for The i, shared his perspective on the political landscape: “Should Trump become more of a unpredictable liability – tanking the economy with tariffs, say or pushing America into an armed confrontation with an ally – then Republicans, including cabinet members, may decide that his comparatively squeaky-clean family-oriented VP is a better bet to keep them in power.”
The potential of JD Vance as a preferable choice for America remains uncertain, especially considering his tendency to shift ideological positions amid growing concerns from numerous experts about America’s drift towards authoritarianism.
What might have once seemed like a plot from a novel during Trump’s initial term is now being discussed by commentators as a creeping reality, a trend that could persist under Vance’s leadership.
Staffan Lindberg, a leading political scientist at V-Dem, in a report on declining democracies, stated: “The USA now seems to be heading towards a transition away from democracy under President Trump. In my view, the reverberations of this are and will be enormous across the world.”
This sentiment is echoed by American figures such as Tara Setmayer, former Republican communications director, who expressed her concerns to the Guardian: “We are approaching Defcon 1 for our democracy and a lot of people in the media and the opposition leadership don’t seem to be communicating that to the American people. That is the biggest danger of the moment we’re in now: the normalisation of it.”
In a stark illustration of current US entry restrictions, a French scientist was allegedly barred from entering the States earlier this month after their phone revealed text messages critical of the Trump administration.
As France’s Minister of Higher Education and Research described, the entry denial occurred “because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy”.
Amidst these concerns, commentators worry that if Vance were to assume presidential powers, rather than defusing tensions, he might perpetuate Trump’s divisive legacy.