JD Vance has been clear that he supports Donald Trump’s aspiration to take over Greenland in the face of Denmark’s defiance, attacking Copenhagen for “not doing its job” and “not being a good ally” in a Fox Business interview last month.
But on Friday, the vice-president is expected to double down on the rhetoric when he and his wife, Usha, make a high-profile visit to a US military base on the Arctic island — a new provocation in the Trump administration’s extraordinary quest for territorial expansion targeting an EU member and Nato ally.
A White House official on Thursday said Vance would be “emphasising the importance of bolstering Arctic security” but also hit out at Denmark’s handling of the territory.
“Unfortunately, Danish leaders have spent decades mistreating the Greenlandic people, treating them like second-class citizens and allowing infrastructure on the island to fall into disrepair. Expect the vice-president to emphasise these points as well,” the official said.
Vance’s Greenland trip is emblematic of more: the 40-year-old former Marine is rapidly putting his stamp on Trump’s second term as the president’s most outspoken antagonist when it comes to America’s European allies.
Last month, he blasted Europeans for harbouring a “threat from within” during a speech in Germany. Two weeks later, he harangued Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during an angry Oval Office clash.
This week, it emerged that he had argued against a US military strike on the Houthis in Yemen because it would amount to a “bailout” of Europe, according to a Signal chat with top officials that accidentally included The Atlantic magazine’s editor.
Vance’s positions — which include a fierce defence of the administration’s use of tariffs against allies and adversaries — are attracting attention because he is reinforcing the president’s own tendencies towards economic populism and isolationism. In contrast, Mike Pence was a check on those impulses in the same role during Trump’s first term.
But Vance is also being closely watched because he is the most likely Republican successor to Trump if he decides to run for the White House in 2028, as is widely expected.
“He’s not scared to go out there and be in the face, and speak up and talk about what is actually in his heart and what he cares about,” said Brian Mast, a Florida Republican congressman and chair of the House foreign affairs committee.
“If we just have this hunky-dory relationship where we don’t ever talk about the things that are wrong, we’re not strong. We need a Europe that can stand on its own. That’s a real partnership. We’re not looking for a dependent. I think that’s the message JD is delivering constantly,” Mast added.
The messages being delivered by Vance publicly have represented a radical departure from the foreign policy missions of previous vice-presidents, which often revolved around reassuring allies and partners.
That made Vance’s strident critique of Europe in the Signal chat this week — the first big political furore of Trump’s second term — all the more striking.
“It was informative that Vance is in fact, just as anti-European or even more anti-European than we knew,” said Charlie Cook, the veteran US political commentator and analyst. “Vance has no sense of the US having any responsibilities for anything except our own self-interest.”
Cook added: “It was the clearest demonstration that, at least in his mind, the doctrine in place for three-quarters of a century no longer exists.”
Cliff Sims, a close friend and informal adviser to Vance, said the vice-president had a “fully formed worldview that aligns with Trump’s instincts”, which explained why he was the “ideal weapon for Trump to deploy to execute his agenda”.
But Sims did not believe there was a special underlying disdain for Europe driving Vance.
“I don’t think it’s a personal animus towards them as much as it is a policy animus towards them. I have never heard him say anything personally negative about any European leader,” he said.
In the first weeks after Trump launched his second term, Vance seemed to keep a lower profile, especially compared with Elon Musk, the technology billionaire who appeared to be ubiquitous in the president’s inner circle. But Vance has stepped up his public appearances.
On the day of the Signal chat, he was visiting a plastics company in Michigan, warning companies that if they failed to build products in America the administration would have “nothing for you”.
This week, as the furore over the Houthi war plans engulfed the White House, he travelled to the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia for a shooting session, lunch and assailed the “woke” agenda — a frequent target — in a speech.
“We are going to do everything that we can to make you the most lethal fighting force the world has ever seen,” Vance said. “No more quotas. No more ridiculous mumbo jumbo. No more diversity trainings.”
Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist at the consultancy Penta, said Kamala Harris, Vance’s Democratic predecessor as vice-president, had been “more deferential to Biden and less certain, less vocal”. “Vance on the other hand, has been turned loose, largely because he has a Trump-like approach when it comes to confronting the media and taking on critics,” he said.
It is a remarkable political twist for a man from an opioid-ravaged community in Ohio who made it to Yale university and only a few years ago attacked Trump as “cultural heroin” and declared himself a “never-Trump guy”.
But now, as he tries to cement himself as the ideological force behind Trump — including criticism of judges that many critics see as an affront to the rule of law — Vance is also increasingly a political lightning rod.
He was booed during an appearance at the Kennedy Center in Washington and during a skiing trip with his kids in Vermont.
According to Real Clear Polling, 45 per cent of Americans have an unfavourable view of him and just 42 per cent have a favourable view. Cook said Vance was “not a natural at politics” and had been “more lucky than good”.
But political analysts say he is setting himself up to pick up Trump’s baton in four years’ time, with Europe in his crosshairs.
Beacon Policy Advisors wrote in a recent note that “it is certainly too early to crown Vance as the presumptive Republican nominee in 2028, but he has so far been making the moves to set himself up as a strong contender in that race”.
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