Category: Washington Post

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) is facing growing calls to be more transparent about his health nearly six weeks after he was hospitalized.

McConnell, 84, has been absent from the Senate since he said he suffered a fall June 14. His office shared a photo of McConnell holding the Washington Post on July 12, and McConnell said in a statement that he had left the hospital and moved to a rehabilitation center — but he did not say when he planned to return, offering only that he would not “be able to return to the Senate floor to vote quite yet.”

Those scant details have not quieted rampant rumors and online speculation about McConnell’s condition.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said last week that he had heard nothing from McConnell since he was hospitalized, despite sending a letter seeking an update on his condition. He urged McConnell to call into a news station for a few minutes or put out a short video to reassure his constituents.

“When you’ve been in a hospital for a month and you’ve missed all the votes … you owe your boss, like anybody else out there who works, an explanation of what’s been going on and when you’ll get back,” Beshear said.

Scott Jennings, a longtime McConnell ally who worked on some of his reelection campaigns, urged McConnell on Thursday to “routinely update his constituents on how he’s doing” and be transparent about the work he’s doing while recovering. He said he expected McConnell to share an update on how he’s doing in the coming days.

“Truthfully, I think a little transparency on the front end here would have saved him a whole lot of grief,” Jennings told CNN’s The Arena with Kasie Hunt. “But that didn’t happen and they are where they are now.”

David Popp, a McConnell spokesperson, said McConnell has continued to work during his absence.

“The Senator continues to meet with staff regarding Senate and Kentucky business, including discussions on defense appropriations, foreign policy, the farm bill, constituent services, and constituent federal grant requests,” Popp said in a statement to the Washington Post. “As the Senator continues to improve in rehab, we will be sure to keep you updated.”

McConnell said July 12 that he did not break any bones when he fell and did not suffer a heart attack, a stroke, a hemorrhage, or a concussion, but he has said little else about what happened to him.

Popp referred to McConnell’s earlier statement when asked when McConnell might return to the Senate or whether he planned to attend Tuesday’s funeral for Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), his longtime colleague, at Washington National Cathedral.

McConnell said in his statement that “folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older.”

“Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct — I can’t help it,” he said.

McConnell spent 18 years as the Republican leader in the Senate before stepping down early last year. He remained in the chamber to serve the final two years of his term, which ends in January.

Rep. Andy Barr (Ky.) won the Republican primary to succeed McConnell in May and is heavily favored to win his seat in November. The Senate is scheduled to be in session for only 10 more weeks during McConnell’s term as senators head home to campaign ahead of the midterm elections.

McConnell’s absence has narrowed Republicans’ edge in the Senate, giving them an effective 52-47 majority as long as he is absent.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said earlier this month that they had spoken with McConnell, but some other Republican senators have raised questions about McConnell’s absence.

Earlier this month, Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) cast doubt on the legitimacy of the photo that McConnell shared of himself — only to dismiss his comments later, saying he was just repeating a rumor he had heard. (The Post reviewed the photo’s metadata and found it appeared it was taken July.)

“It’s not fun watching anybody age,” Johnson told reporters. “We’re all hoping Mitch recovers fully and comes back. I haven’t talked to him, so I have no knowledge.”

Last week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) wished McConnell a speedy recovery but also suggested he should disclose more about his condition.

“At a certain point you do have an obligation to your constituents and the country to tell them what’s going on,” Hawley told Fox News, saying he felt “totally in the dark” about McConnell’s status.

McConnell is hardly the first senator to be away for an extended stretch at a time while ailing or in recovery.

Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) was absent for two months in 2023 while seeking treatment for depression. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) missed votes for nearly three months that year while battling shingles and faced calls to resign. She returned to the Senate but died months later.

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) did not vote during his final eight months in office before he died in 2018. And Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) did not vote for nearly a year after suffering a stroke in 2012. He released videos of himself relearning how to walk before returning to the Senate and served out the rest of his term.

Lester Munson, Kirk’s chief of staff at the time, said Kirk was able to keep working even though he was not in the Capitol voting.

Kirk worked with Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), for instance, on an amendment to a defense policy bill to tough sanctions on Iran. Senators in both parties — includes Sens. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), Jon Tester (D., Mont.) and Joe Manchin III (D., W.Va.) and McConnell — stepped up to help Kirk’s office carry on, Munson said.

“I think people kind of just assume — not really correctly — that if the senator’s in the hospital or something like that, that they can’t do their job,” Munson said. “That’s not entirely true. There’s obviously some things they can’t do … but a lot of other things continue to be carried on.”

Kirk did not have to contend with social media speculation about his health and other online pressures in the same way that McConnell has, Munson said.

The prediction market Polymarket, for instance, allows users to bet on whether McConnell will vote in the Senate by July 31. (The odds stood at 11% Friday evening.)

McConnell is also much better-known than Kirk or other senators who have had extended absences from the chamber. His decades of service should earn him some grace while he recovers, Munson said.

“As far as I’m concerned, this guy has given so much to the Senate over time and therefore so much to America, God bless him,” Munson said. “He’s got all the latitude in the world to deal with this problem.”

BANGOR, Maine — The Maine Democratic Party formally selected Troy Jackson as its new Senate nominee on Saturday, ending three tumultuous weeks that nearly derailed the party’s quest to unseat veteran Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

With just 101 days remaining until the November election, Democrats must now unify a party riven by the spectacular collapse of Graham Platner’s campaign following a sexual assault allegation and refocus attention on the long-indomitable Collins, whose defeat is key to long-shot Democratic hopes of retaking control of the U.S. Senate.

Accepting the nomination from a convention center in downtown Bangor with a 31-foot-tall statue of Paul Bunyan outside, Jackson repeatedly framed the election not as a partisan fight but an opportunity for the working class to stand up to a creature of Washington who had grown more loyal to her corporate benefactors than her constituents.

“This movement is not from the left. It’s not from the right,” he said, as supporters waved “Retire Susan” signs in the crowd. “It’s from the bottom — and we are growing.”

Jackson is a 58-year-old logger and former leader of the Maine Senate who aligned with Platner and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) during an unsuccessful run for governor this year.

He won the nomination by commandeering the progressive movement that had propelled Platner. Jackson’s supporters swept the delegate selection process for a hastily organized convention to choose Platner’s replacement, compelling most of Jackson’s rivals to drop out ahead of the meeting Saturday in Bangor.

Jackson’s challenge is to forge a broad coalition that can win in November, including the independent and crossover Democratic voters who have helped Collins hold on for five terms in an increasingly blue state.

Jackson has his own vulnerabilities — including a long history of opposing abortion rights and a temper that undercut his legislative leadership in Augusta — that could hurt his appeal with women voters who have been critical to Collins’s victories. He has also been reluctant to align with the national Democratic Party, which could provide critical resources in a marquee race.

Ahead of the convention, Democratic-leaning voters in Bangor remained wary of Jackson but highly motivated to beat Collins.

“Progressives and Democrats are often put in this position where we have to vote for whoever is put up against the greater evil,” Molly Wunderli, a 36-year-old graphic designer, said Friday as she left the library downtown.

An unenrolled voter who considers herself to the left of the Democratic Party, Wunderli expressed frustration that Platner was not properly vetted and about the rushed process to choose his replacement, which put the decision in the hands of just 600 people. But given the stakes, she said there was no question she would vote for Jackson in November.

“I hope he’s as advertised,” Wunderli said. “I’m always worried now about the other shoe dropping.”

The campaign has been clouded since the beginning by a bitter ideological battle among Democrats. While the national party establishment recruited Maine Gov. Janet Mills to run, the progressive base in Maine rallied around Platner, a combat veteran and oyster farmer whose populist outsider platform electrified liberal voters.

Mills’ candidacy fizzled before the June primary, even as Platner was beset by an escalating series of scandals that he largely attributed to poor mental health following his military service: old social media posts dismissive of sexual assault, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, sexually explicit text messages he sent to other women after he married, and allegations by ex-girlfriends who described volatile relationships with him. Efforts by national Democrats to push Platner aside only infuriated his supporters, and he won the nomination handily last month.

Then came an accusation of sexual assault from a woman Platner used to date, which he has denied. Under pressure from allies and threats from national Democrats to withhold financial support, Platner withdrew on July 10, setting off a scramble to find a new Democratic candidate.

That was demoralizing for progressive Democrats like Percy Williams, a 29-year-old middle school English teacher from Bangor. She was excited not only by Platner’s policies but also a persona that she believed carried a wide appeal in Maine.

“Some of my family members are Republicans, and they liked him because he talks like them,” Williams said.

While she had hoped Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, another unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate this year, would replace Platner, Williams said she came around on Jackson because “he’s the best that has a shot at actually winning.”

The Platner scandals still cast a pall over the race — and Collins will inevitably try to tie Jackson to the man with whom he shared such close political ties.

A Republican super PAC released its first ad on Saturday, highlighting Jackson’s temper and history of clashing with female colleagues. “Troy Jackson is like Graham Platner, but worse,” the narrator warns.

Jackson never mentioned Platner during the convention, but he did nod to the concerns about his anger. He was introduced by a former state legislator he once fought with, who praised his passion. Jackson told reporters later that “I do wear my heart on my sleeve,” but he always apologized to “anyone that I may have argued with that I might have went too far.”

But even Democratic voters unenthusiastic about Jackson are furious at Collins. A common criticism is that Collins, who presents herself as a moderate who will stand up to President Donald Trump, only breaks with him on votes that she knows Republicans will win anyway.

“She’s had multiple opportunities to be a Margaret Chase Smith and stand up for what’s right,” said Frank Bragg, an 85-year-old retired physician, referencing the former Maine senator who delivered a famous floor speech in 1950 denouncing McCarthyism. “And she’s just gone along with Trump.”

Bragg pointed to Collins’ support of the Save America Act, a Trump priority that would require photo identification to vote and roll back most mail voting, despite Maine overwhelmingly rejecting a similar ballot measure in November.

A Republican-turned-Democrat who once supported Collins in her early elections, Bragg said he appreciated what the senator had done for Maine, “but it’s also about standing up for the country.” He will vote for Jackson in November, though Bragg considers him “sort of another machine politician. It’s a bit of the same old, same old.”

With his nomination essentially sewn up before the convention, Jackson has already begun consolidating Democratic support in Maine and shifting his message to attacking Collins.

He secured endorsements from most of his opponents for the Senate nomination ahead of Saturday, as well as from Hannah Pingree, who defeated Jackson in the gubernatorial primary in June. Social media accounts for his campaign are pumping out posts slamming Collins for her closeness to the Trump administration and for confirming to the Supreme Court Brett M. Kavanaugh, who provided a decisive vote to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

But an ongoing rift with national Democrats could complicate the campaign. Despite his extensive history in elected office, Jackson is, like Platner, running as a disrupter — emphasizing his roots in conservative northern Maine while favoring progressive policies to rein in corporate power, expand healthcare access, and dismantle U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the controversial federal agency involved in a fatal shooting in Biddeford this month.

Jackson told the New York Times this week that, if elected, he would not support Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) continuing as Democratic leader of the Senate. He also expressed doubt about accepting help from Schumer, who has thus far declined to endorse Jackson, in the general election.

That could be an enormous handicap for Jackson, who is not a prolific fundraiser. Conservative groups have already lined up tens of millions of dollars to defend Collins.

Elizabeth Hannigan, a 33-year-old data analyst from the Bangor area, recalled seeing a Collins ad nearly every commercial break during the World Cup, touting all of the money she’s brought home to Maine. Hannigan said she worries whether Jackson will have enough time to mount a victorious campaign.

She wants Jackson to “get the national party behind him, not just the Sanders wing.” Hannigan, who considers herself to the center of the Democratic Party, said it would provide a signal of trust; she does not want to elect another Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.), a onetime progressive champion who has increasingly broken with his party since he arrived in Washington in 2023.

“I want someone who will vote with the general Democratic agenda,” Hannigan said.

President Donald Trump attacked a slew of journalists and some of his favorite political foils at a slimmed-down redo of the White House correspondents’ dinner on Friday, comparing one female reporter to a transgender social media star, mocking politicians’ physical appearances, and bringing his audience to mostly stunned silence for more than an hour before pulling out a red Trump 2028 cap and declaring he was running for another term.

Three months after a gunman exchanged fire with authorities outside the first correspondents’ dinner, throwing the event into chaos, Trump addressed reporters even as he embraced an aggressive stance that favors targeting journalists to root out leakers in his administration.

Trump veered on and off his prepared script for the evening, at one point calling it a “fricking stupid speech.”

The fraught event put the president on the dais with reporters who have covered him aggressively. Trump rarely speaks to audiences that aren’t packed with his supporters, leading to an unusual dynamic in a ballroom of reporters who are professionally bound to maintain poker faces.

Some of his first jokes drew laughs, including one that acknowledged the interrupted first run of the meal.

“I hope that everyone finally got to enjoy their entire, very delicious beef tenderloin, very special beef. And I want you all to know that Bobby Kennedy, who’s right here, personally ran over the cow with his car,” he said.

But the tone quickly shifted to a far more caustic attack on his favorite foils, including some of the reporters in the room. The bitterness was sharper even than some of his political rallies, where attacks on his enemies are leavened with boasts of his accomplishments. On Friday, he had little to sell, and a lot to complain about.

He said that he had once mixed up CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins, whom he said “never smiles,” with a transgender social media personality, Dylan Mulvaney, after he called the 34-year-old cable news star a “young, attractive woman.”

He said he planned to host twice-weekly fights at the White House.

“We will have sloppy Chris Christie, one of the sloppiest human beings, fighting,” Trump said to silence. “I could mention the governor of Chicago, but I’m going to mention instead Jerry Nadler. Oh my God! They’re fighting for a big piece of cheesecake, big fat piece of cheesecake.”

Then he told a joke about Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.).

“I hate some people,” he said to groans. “He’s a liar, and I called him watermelon head because he has the largest head I’ve ever seen with the smallest neck, pencil neck. How does that make a fat, ugly head on a little pencil neck?”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick laughed at that one, putting his hand on his forehead.

“This night is all about the First Amendment. Tonight was a full display,” CBS chief White House correspondent Weijia Jiang said after Trump finished talking. As the outgoing president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, Jiang led the event. She complimented Collins and a Wall Street Journal reporter whom Trump also attacked during his speech.

The speech took place as the administration has stepped up its legal pursuit of journalists who report on subjects that the White House views as national security threats, with Trump saying Friday that he believed journalists were legitimate targets for investigation.

A federal judge offered a withering takedown a day earlier of the Justice Department’s effort to subpoena New York Times journalists over their reporting about security concerns around a new, Qatari-gifted Boeing 747 the president has been using as Air Force One. Trump was unrepentant.

“We’re not after journalists. We’re after leakers. We’re after people that are cowards, people that are unpatriotic, people that are treasonous in many cases,” Trump said in the Oval Office a few hours before the correspondents dinner. “And the way you find them is through the journalists. When the journalists probably know they shouldn’t write, they shouldn’t be giving information out like that.”

He said that even though the Justice Department withdrew the subpoenas on Thursday, “we have a long way to go with that case,” suggesting that the New York Times reporters’ legal peril was not over.

Trump had offered mixed messages about his plans for a dinner that traditionally has involved presidents giving lighthearted speeches that poke fun at themselves and at the people who cover them.

In the event, he offered a mix of barbs directed at the press and his political opponents, with a few toward his own administration.

“We’ll do a little ripping, if you don’t mind,” he said, saying that “this place is the really largest group of Trump derangement syndrome people ever put together at one time.”

He said that the speech he had originally planned to deliver, “I’m telling you, I had something. I was going to go after you.”

Media critics have long questioned the White House correspondents’ dinner, which was first held in 1921, saying that it is an overly cozy moment of socializing between the president and reporters who cover the White House. Trump skipped the event during his first term.

Trump acknowledged that Friday’s speech was his first to the annual dinner. And he joked that he didn’t plan to do it again, unless the event was renamed the “Trump White House Correspondents’ Dinner” — a line he delivered with a chuckle, before later saying that he planned to come next year.

Trump came to the dinner once before, as the guest of the Washington Post during the Obama administration. President Barack Obama mocked Trump that year over his questioning of Obama’s citizenship. Many analysts have credited that moment with sparking Trump’s decision to run for president, but Trump said Friday that wasn’t true, and that he had enjoyed the moment because of all the attention.

Before the president took the stage, he was confronted with reporters whom he has attacked and who have won awards for aggressive coverage of his administration.

He greeted one of the lead Associated Press reporters who was kicked out of the White House press pool because the outlet refused to relabel the Gulf of Mexico to Trump’s preferred “Gulf of America.”

He shook the hands of a team of Wall Street Journal reporters who won an award for their coverage of his connections to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He shrugged his shoulders and smiled as CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer recounted how he had sued the Journal for $20 billion and how one reporter was forced to relocate her family because of threats against them.

Then he greeted Tyler Pager, a New York Times reporter who was served with a subpoena this month for his coverage of security issues around Air Force One.

The Society of Professional Journalists called this week for the White House Correspondents’ Association to use the dinner to condemn the Trump administration’s attacks on journalists.

“We believe it is hypocritical to celebrate the First Amendment in front of the man who relentlessly attacks it,” the group said in an open letter.

Trump never delivered the speech he planned for the April 25 dinner at the Washington Hilton before it was interrupted by a gunman who attempted to storm the basement ballroom where the dinner was being held. Cole Tomas Allen, 31, has been charged with attempting to assassinate the president, and an FBI special agent said in an affidavit that Allen had set an email to be sent to friends and family with “targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”

Trump acknowledged the risks around the event, saying, “It was not easy finding shoes to go on with your bulletproof vest, which many people didn’t want to wear, because they’d rather die than look 20 pounds heavier. … They put one on me. I said: ‘Are you sure? I’m not wearing this.’”

Security was high at the event, which was held at the Waldorf Astoria in downtown Washington. Trump’s family company operated that venue as the Trump International Hotel during the president’s first term, then sold their lease on the property in 2022 for $375 million.

The guest list had shrunk to fewer than 700, a stripped-down affair with attendees including mostly just the journalists who cover the president, rather than the more than 2,500 — including government officials, political operatives, and mostly B-list celebrities — who attended in April.

But many of the original tensions remained.

In the hours following the April shooting, Trump was unusually conciliatory toward reporters, making an appearance in the White House briefing room still dressed in his tuxedo as he took questions from many of the reporters who had been at the dinner earlier in the evening.

But that tone dissipated by the next day, when he called CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell “a disgrace” after she read excerpts from the alleged gunman’s manifesto to him.

Since then, his administration has returned to attacks on the press.

Trump last week called for stripping broadcast licenses from networks that didn’t air his primetime speech about election integrity. And the Justice Department this month issued the subpoenas to New York Times journalists who had reported on security concerns surrounding the luxury Boeing 747 that the Qatari government gifted for use as Air Force One, seeking their phone records in pursuit of leaks.

One element of the dinner was consistent with April: Entertainer and magician Oz Pearlman was once again on the program, a selection that sidesteps the politics of humor. This time he guessed correctly that acting attorney general Todd Blanche had $85 in his pocket.

As JD Vance prepares to make a decision about his 2028 plans, the vice president is facing a barrage of online attacks from within his party, criticism his allies say appears to be part of a coordinated attempt to poison the well for him politically.

His detractors have adopted the “Never Vance” slogan and flooded social media, especially over the past week, with attacks including claims that Vance is “unfit” to be vice president due to his efforts to negotiate a peace deal with Iran. They have asserted, without evidence, that Vance is making policy decisions not supported by President Donald Trump. They have likened him to former President Barack Obama and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.).

The sustained public hostility from Vance’s own side of the aisle is unlike that faced by other vice presidents in decades, both in intensity and in the early timing — two years before the party will choose its next presidential nominee. The unusual nature is a product of the central role that social media plays in today’s political discourse, as well as the high stakes as Republicans prepare to select a new standard-bearer after Trump, Vance allies and critics say.

Vance’s political team remains dismissive of the social media onslaught and its impact on Republican voters, believing that many of the attacks are not organic, a close ally of the vice president told the Washington Post — a sentiment echoed by two other people with knowledge of Vance’s strategy. The ally and other advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Vance’s allies are keenly aware of and monitoring the online attacks, but his team says the criticism sends a signal to the conservative base that establishment Republicans and opponents they label as neoconservatives hate Vance. That, they say, could ultimately strengthen his standing in a GOP primary.

“Loud Washington establishment voices form an online cacophony,” said Steve Cortes, a conservative commentator supportive of Vance, “but they do not remotely represent the consensus views of Republican voters.”

Vance, whose brand of politics is populist and skeptical of foreign wars, has remained the front-runner in 2028 Republican primary polling. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the favorite of many more traditional, business-minded Republicans, has gained ground in recent months, however, although Rubio has insisted he will support Vance if he runs.

The knives have long been out for Vance within the GOP, since before Trump selected him as his running mate. At the time, hawkish donors and conservative media personalities lobbied for Trump to reject Vance in favor of Rubio or Doug Burgum, now secretary of the interior.

Polling of Republican voters shows Vance’s favorability within the party as roughly on par with Trump’s.

Intense criticism from some Republicans, largely over Vance’s foreign policy views, has ebbed and flowed since the start of the second Trump term. The criticism reached a first peak in the fall as neoconservatives and pro-Israel activists portrayed Vance as antisemitic for sympathizing with figures who expressed skepticism over the U.S. relationship with Israel. More recently, attacks ticked up again after Vance sat for a nearly three-hour interview July 15 on Joe Rogan’s widely watched podcast.

During the show, Vance described himself as a “reasonable moderate” in the debate over the U.S.-Israel relationship. He also cited a recent Time report about an online pro-Israel influence operation run by a former Trump campaign official, through which Vance said he was being attacked “in dishonest ways” by paid influencers.

“You know, my response to that is, ‘Well, go to hell,’” Vance told Rogan. “I’m going to do what I have to do for the American people. I represent Americans first, and that’s the way that I’ve tried to do this job.”

Pro-Israel conservatives erupted. A Washington Post analysis of conservative influencers’ posts on X found that criticism of Vance spiked immediately after his appearance on Rogan’s podcast.

Critical posts poured in from prominent commentators including Ben Shapiro, Marc Thiessen, and Batya Ungar-Sargon, as well as online right-wing influencers and little-known X users whose anti-Vance posts quickly gained traction. Some of the users who pledged to oppose Vance and support Rubio in 2028 had profiles that strongly suggested they aren’t American voters and are based in other countries.

It was “obvious to anyone with an IQ above 70″ that the barrage of attacks has been “totally inauthentic and probably coordinated to a certain extent,” the close Vance ally said.

The upsurge in online criticism “hasn’t been reflected in any data correlating with Vance’s image among GOP voters, which currently tracks President Trump’s image to a T,” the person said. “If it were organic, authentic, or effective,” Vance’s favorability rating with Republican voters would have cratered over the past nine months, since the intense online criticism first peaked, the person said. “And that just hasn’t happened.”

A spokesperson for the vice president said Vance’s only focus is “fighting for the president’s agenda and delivering wins for the American people,” and that he is not concerned with social media.

Vance allies have pushed back publicly against some of the attacks, at times calling attention to common language used among those posting insults.

Jon Schweppe, a Vance supporter and senior adviser at the American Principles Project, who worked for Trump’s Federal Trade Commission until earlier this year, posted a chart on X last week that showed the vice president’s favorability among Republicans had remained steady despite an “anti-Vance op.” His post quickly received dozens of replies from accounts that didn’t follow him — all attacking Vance. Schweppe described the response as curious, since his post had not been shared by any high-follower accounts.

“Primary season — I guess it’s beginning before the midterms this year,” Schweppe said, adding that Vance’s detractors are “trying to create a divide and separate him from the president.”

“There’s going to be folks within the party structure, within the influencer structure, who are going to try to knock him down a few pegs in hope that a challenger can emerge to beat him, and that’s just what we’re seeing,” Schweppe said. “But it’s absolutely organized.”

The intense focus on the vice president is unusual. Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, didn’t face intense backlash from Republicans until the final weeks of his term, as the president and his supporters blamed Pence for failing to act to overturn the 2020 election results. Before that, Pence had been widely liked by Republicans, with few prominent conservatives raising their heads to harshly criticize him.

For a significant stretch of her vice presidency, Kamala Harris faced a version of the succession anxiety now surrounding Vance. Democratic donors, strategists, and commentators questioned whether her low favorability ratings, uneven political performance and widely reported management problems left her prepared to become president — an especially consequential concern given President Joe Biden’s age.

But there are significant differences: Vance is confronting a public, ideological revolt from prominent figures within the conservative coalition. The criticism of Harris, by contrast, generally was framed around competence and electability with jabs at what critics considered misstatements and gaffes. Few major Democratic figures publicly demanded that Biden remove her.

Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Pence in the White House, acknowledged that the attacks against Vance are far more intense than what Pence endured for nearly four years in office — at least until Trump turned against him at the end of his term.

Pence, however, was adamant throughout that term not to show any distance between himself and Trump, even to staff or other cabinet officials, Short said. Vance has at times signaled a different perspective regarding the war with Iran, he noted.

Trump has confirmed that Vance is “philosophically a little bit different” than him on Iran, and “maybe less enthusiastic about going” to war, although Vance has publicly expressed support for Trump’s decisions.

“I think that there’s been a difference in the way that the current team has made clear their policy differences,” Short said. “So I think that does create more scrutiny when you do that.”