Vice President JD Vance drew comparisons to Selina Meyer, the bumbling vice president played by actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus on HBO's hit political satire Veep after he stopped a rally speech to check whether President Donald Trump had called him.
As Selina Meyer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus won multiple Emmy Awards and numerous other accolades for portraying the perpetually dysfunctional vice president.
Running throughout the series is one of its most memorable gags: despite working just steps from the Oval Office, Meyer repeatedly turns to her staff to ask, "Did the president call?"—a joke that underscores just how politically sidelined and disconnected she remains even while serving at the highest levels of the White House.
Vance turned to his phone and said:
"I'm going to take some questions here... It's funny, y-y-you know, sometimes people call, I gotta make sure it's not the president... He's over at NATO right now... Okay, it's not the president."
Asked about Iran, Vance kept glancing down before giving "thanks to the incredible efforts of our amazing U.S. military" and Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for orchestrating "a deal with the Iranians."
You can watch what happened in the video below.
It was an embarrassing display that immediately drew comparisons to Veep.
The video of Vance stopping the rally to check his phone also comes as rumors continue to swirl that he may not run in the 2028 election after The Daily Mail, citing multiple sources, reported that Vance had become "more isolated than ever" following former intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard’s departure.
Before the war with Iran began in February, Vance was reportedly the lone senior official arguing for a more limited response rather than a broader military campaign, warning that a larger operation risked igniting a wider regional war. As Vance’s standing has diminished, the influence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reportedly grown.
A source told the Mail that "rumors are also circulating in the West Wing that Vance is weighing whether to step back from the 2028 race entirely as a tactical move" and that it might be better for Vance not to "own everything that's gone on in the last couple of years."
Vance's team pushed back against the Mail's reporting, telling The Independent that the publication's story was "just a flimsy compilation of completely illegitimate sources who have no idea what they're talking about." Trump, meanwhile, has not confirmed Vance has his endorsement.
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