A behind-the-scenes foreign policy disagreement between President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance spilled into public Monday, an extraordinary example of Vance breaking with Trump and other members of his administration and calling the timing of a recent military operation in Yemen “a mistake.”
The private dispute was made public in a stunning report in The Atlantic out Monday in which the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to an encrypted group chat of senior Trump administration officials as they planned airstrikes on the Houthis in Yemen.
It marks the first reported incident since Trump took office that Vance has butted heads with the president and other top officials in his hard-line isolationist stance against Europe.
“I think we are making a mistake,” Vance said to the group chat, which included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, national security adviser Mike Waltz and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, according to the report. It doesn’t appear that the president was included in the group chat.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance added. “There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”
Vance sent the message March 14, the day before Trump announced he had authorized a series of “decisive and powerful” airstrikes on the Houthis, an Iran-backed, U.S.-designated terrorist group in Yemen that has for two years targeted commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea. Two days before, Trump had announced 25 percent steel and aluminum tariffs and the European Union swiftly retaliated, launching the allies toward a trade war.
About 30 minutes after he delivered the message, Vance told Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again.” (The administration has argued that America’s European allies benefit economically from the U.S. Navy’s protection of international shipping lanes.)
“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC,” the Pentagon chief replied. Still, he added, “I think we should go.”
Buckley Carlson, Vance’s deputy press secretary, declined to comment to POLITICO. Will Martin, Vance’s communications director, told The Atlantic that Vance “unequivocally supports this administration’s foreign policy.”
“The Vice President’s first priority is always making sure that the President’s advisers are adequately briefing him on the substance of their internal deliberations,” Martin said, adding that Vance and Trump “had subsequent conversations about this matter and are in complete agreement.”
Vance has emerged as the administration’s attack dog on Europe, leading the charge on the GOP’s once-niche and now-accepted stance that the U.S. need not continue to support Ukraine. Last month, Vance stunned the European political establishment in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, delivering a harsh reprimand of the continent for losing sight of its values.
Other top officials in the group chat agreed with Vance’s distaste for helping Europe, whose economy is far more affected by Houthi attacks on shipping routes than that of the U.S. Waltz said he was working with the Pentagon and State Department “to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans.” And a person with the username “S M” — presumably White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — said it would be necessary to “make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return.”
On the morning of March 15, Hegseth in the group chat detailed the forthcoming strikes, which Trump announced on Truth Social about three hours later.
“I will say a prayer for victory,” Vance replied.
