U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who reports say opposed the war from the beginning and later became a leading figure in diplomatic efforts to end it, has spent the past 24 hours promoting the agreement he is widely said to have helped draft and advance. After staying largely out of the public eye during the war, he has now emerged in a media blitz to sell the deal.
Vance chose to begin that campaign on the podcast of Meghan Kelly, a former mainstream television news anchor who moved to social media broadcasting after losing her show. Over the past year, Kelly has turned sharply against Israel and has repeatedly embraced or amplified antisemitic ideas. Just weeks ago, she hosted a roughly two-hour podcast with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists who alleged Israeli ties to attempts on Donald Trump’s life, Jewish control of the United States, and blackmail of officials by American Jewish bodies such as AIPAC, which they called “foreign agents.”
Kelly is also publicly aligned with figures such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, both described in the article as open antisemites who have spread extreme accusations against Israel, including claims that it is behind major historical events, that Benjamin Netanyahu or other Jews used witchcraft against Trump, and that Jews sacrifice children. Kelly has never distanced herself from them and has reacted angrily when asked to criticize their antisemitic remarks.
During the interview, Vance shocked many viewers by not rejecting Kelly’s suggestion of Israeli control over Trump. Instead, he praised Kelly and Carlson and said, “Trump’s coalition was built by people like Meghan Kelly, Tucker Carlson and others.” The article says Vance is closely associated with a “isolationist” camp that wants the U.S. to step back from world affairs and is often tied to conspiracy thinking and overt antisemitism. It also notes that he has never disavowed those fringe figures, and that Carlson’s son recently worked under him in the White House.
