A month into Donald Trump‘s new administration and Vice President J.D. Vance has acquired all the swagger of someone who has been in the job for years.
Sitting down with the Daily Mail for an exclusive interview, Vance tells me he has just got off the phone with his boss.
‘The president, while he doesn’t sleep very much, you know, he’s only one man. He doesn’t have nine pairs of hands, and he needs people in his administration to get out there and implement the agenda that he was elected to do,’ Vance says, lounging back on a couch in his West Wing office.
This is where business gets done. Across the way, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, you’ll find his ceremonial office — all chandeliers, mahogany and white maple — the place where cabinet secretaries are sworn in before the TV cameras.
But this room — where Vance spends most of his working hours — is less flamboyant.
Big enough for all his advisers to gather, its key selling point is its proximity to the Oval Office just a few paces away down the corridor. He takes meetings from the pristine white couch, facing guests across a low wooden coffee table, or seated at his desk.
The pale-green walls are largely bare. The only real signs of Vance’s presence are a huge, scarlet US Marine Corps flag, hanging behind the desk — a memento of his time in the forces — and a football that has been signed by the Cincinnati Bengals, his favorite team.
It all suggests a man unconcerned with the trappings of state and in a hurry to get things done. And perhaps a man who, in four years time, might have his eye on the top job.
A month into Donald Trump’s new administration and Vice President J.D. Vance has acquired all the swagger of someone who has been in the job for years.
In the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, you’ll find his ceremonial office, all chandeliers, mahogany and white maple, the place where cabinet secretaries are sworn in before the TV cameras. (Pictured: Vance swears in John Ratcliffe in the Vice President’s Ceremonial Office).
Except that Trump, just weeks ago, raised some eyebrows by telling Fox News host Bret Baier that he wasn’t yet ready to endorse his second-in-command for a 2028 presidential run of his own: ‘No, but he’s very capable.’
What did Trump mean by that? Vance laughs off the question.
‘I think he said exactly what he should have said, which is: “It’s too early”,’ Vance says, adding that his sole current focus is ‘the American people’s business’. Not politics.
‘There will be a time to focus on politics, of course — [like] the midterms [in November 2026] — so let’s do a good job and then worry about the midterms,’ he continues. ‘And then we’ll worry about presidential politics at the appropriate time.’
Across the pond, Europe is still reeling from Vance’s recent six-day visit, during which he delivered an excoriating speech at the Munich Security Conference the day after an Afghan asylum seeker and accused terrorist had ploughed his car into a crowd in the southern German city, injuring dozens.
Chastising Europe’s top leaders, the VP warned that the biggest threat to the continent comes not from Artificial Intelligence, Russia or even China, but ‘from within’, referencing their lax stance on illegal migration and an apparent hostility toward free speech.
It appalled the European political elite, who lashed out at Vance’s ‘gaucherie’.
His response?
‘The Munich speech obviously earned a lot of headlines — some good, some bad — but the thing that most of the headlines ignored is the part in the speech where I said the biggest driver of censorship over the last few years has arguably been the Biden administration,’ he says.
‘We [he and Trump] believe in free speech. We believe in free expression,’ he continues. ‘We believe you can disagree with a particular viewpoint without labeling it as outside the bounds of reasonable political discourse.’
Vance claims he was honestly not out to provoke his hosts for the sheer hell of it, but to deliver a vital message that America’s core values are defended by hundreds of thousands of men in uniform.
‘Those young people do not put their lives on the line for censorship, they don’t put their lives on the line for allies who want to label migration restriction as a far-right neo-Nazi idea,’ he says.
‘And people have to realize that the thing that holds the entire Western alliance together is, fundamentally, American hard power, and we’re going to exercise that hard power on behalf of American values.’
But the Europe excursion wasn’t just about Vance flexing his muscles and telling America’s allies what’s what.
His wife Usha and their three children — Ewan, seven, Vivek, five, Mirabel, three — traveled with him on Air Force Two, joining him at a meeting in Paris with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Usha is, of course, the first Indian-American Second Lady. Her parents were born in the south-eastern region of Andhra Pradesh, before immigrating San Diego in the 1980s.
The Second Family also paid a visit to Notre Dame Cathedral, only recently reopened after the devastating fire of 2019.
‘It’s sort of perfect, right? Because I was able to work pretty long days in Europe, but I was also going to have breakfast with my kids and dinner with my kids, at least most nights,’ Vance says, his tone shifting easily from exasperation with Europe’s leaders to fatherly warmth.
‘And it makes it possible, I think, to really commit yourself to your work when you feel like your kids are there and you can be a good dad at the same time.’
Little Vivek marked his fifth birthday in Paris. A photograph, from the meeting with Modi, showed him frowning, much to his father’s amusement.
‘You know, sometimes the photos just don’t capture kids at the right moment,’ Vance says with a chuckle.
The birthday boy was also heard complaining that he was tired during their private evening tour of Notre Dame. But he did receive three cakes — one from the American embassy and two more from President Emmanuel Macron to sweeten the deal.
‘So we had the perfect birthday for a five-year-old, because he got to eat three cakes!’
Vance’s final act before leaving Munich was potentially his most provocative.
The Second Family paid a visit to Notre Dame Cathedral, only recently reopened after the devastating fire of 2019.
While his traveling press pool were allowed into his other meetings with political leaders, they were not invited to document his encounter with Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, barely a week before the country’s general election.
He is now keen to point out that he met with leaders of all four of Germany’s main political parties during the trip — and he says he has no intention of meddling in foreign elections.
In the end, Germany’s conservative CDU won out, with 28.5 percent of the vote share. The AfD, however, surged into second place, with 20.8 percent — the strongest showing for a far-right party in the country’s post-war era.
Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz on Sunday took aim at the Trump administration’s alleged ‘interference’ in the election.
‘The interventions from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow,’ he said.
But Vance insists his conversation with Weidel focused on the threat to free speech in Europe.
He cites disagreements over whether Europe should be more or less supportive of Ukraine’s war effort against Russia. Both are legitimate positions, he says.
‘But I think it’s ridiculous to say that one of those viewpoints is only Russian propaganda,’ he continues. ‘Give me a break. I just I can’t get over how much so many of our European friends want to label ideas they disagree with as “illegitimate”.’
Vance also met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at his hotel in Munich and says he tried to deliver ‘polite but firm’ guidance that the war must end rapidly.
‘He clearly hasn’t gotten the memo,’ he now says.
Hours earlier, Zelensky had gone public with his criticism of Trump, telling a press conference that the American president — who has made it clear he wants the war to end as soon as possible, even if it means further territorial losses for Ukraine — was living in a Russian-made ‘disinformation space.’
Not a clever strategy, says Vance — a man who, perhaps more than anyone in the past year, has learned how to handle his mercurial and sensitive boss.
‘The idea that Zelensky is going to change the president’s mind by badmouthing him in public media… everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration,’ he says.
While his traveling press pool were allowed into his other meetings with political leaders, they were not invited to document his encounter with Alice Weidel (pictured), co-leader of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Vance also met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky at his hotel in Munich and says he tried to deliver ‘polite but firm’ guidance that the war must end rapidly. (Pictured: Zelensky and Vance sit across from each other in Munich).
Trump retaliated in usual bombastic form, wildly labeling Zelensky ‘a dictator’ in a social media screed.
At 40 years of age, Vance — a former lawyer and venture capitalist — has only two years experience in the Washington fishbowl.
But his trip to Europe, delivering punches to the continent’s elite while delivering soft power by paying his respects at Dachau Concentration Camp and that visit to Notre Dame — in between being snapped in family man mode with his young daughter in his arms — suggests he has all the attributes for the top job one day.
And, here in the White House, it’s safe to say that everyone knows it — even a termed-out president who won’t be going quietly from the spotlight.
