With the announcement of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) and a formal signing ceremony is expected to take place Friday in Geneva, it would appear as though the U.S. war with Iran is coming to a close.
What remains to be seen, however, is what happens to President Donald Trump’s coalition of supporters and the Republican Party as a whole in the aftermath of the conflict that caused deep divisions.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Vice President J.D. Vance to discuss the deal with Iran (read more about that here) and also his message for the right – particularly, non-interventionists unhappy about the war – moving forward.
Defending the War
In Megyn’s view, most people who are either on the right or right-leaning independents prefer to be “fighting with the left” than engaged in a “kind of civil worry over on the conservative team.” And yet the latter has been the case since the war began.
“The non-interventionalist right feels very betrayed by [the war],” Megyn noted. “Whether you agree with that they’ve been betrayed or not, Mr. Vice President, what do you say to those people?”
The vice president said he mad a few messages, starting with a defense of the Iran war. “What I’d say to them is, one, I think you can walk through all the ways in which this has led to a good place for the United States of America, and I’d ask them not to sort of view this purely through the filter – I know a lot of these folks are frustrated with a role that Israel has… but don’t look at it from the lens of, ‘What is it that different people think about it,'” he implored. “What do you think about it?”
Megyn interjected that she has spoken to enough people in that camp to know “they are against it,” but Vance once again implored those people to consider why.
“I’m saying, ask yourself. I think you can make the best argument that the nuclear program is destroyed, the Iranian conventional military is destroyed. We had, yes, a temporary rise in energy prices. That is already coming down substantially,” he explained. “As I said repeatedly, we were never going to get the quagmire that a lot of people were warning about because Donald Trump is just not George W. Bush.”
“So… the first argument I’d make is: Look at where we are right now,” Vance continued. “And I think you can make the best argument that where we are right now is a good place for the United States of America and, again, if we transform the Middle East, it was just fundamentally worth it.”
A Big Tent Coalition
Seemingly unconvinced that would sway people, Megyn asked Vice President Vance what other arguments he had. That is when he made the case for maintaining a big, broad coalition.
“The second argument I’d make is, even if you disagree with this particular action, it’s completely ridiculous to pick up your marbles and go home. That’s not how politics works,” he said. “I’ve been very much on the inside of a lot of these debates and conversations. Some people have criticized our immigration policy, some people criticized tax policy, or some people have criticized foreign policy. The way that politics works is that you have to stay engaged in the process.”
When Vance encouraged people to speak up and “be pushing back from inside the tent,” Megyn noted that those who tried were often on the receiving end of Truth Social posts from President Trump – like the one where he wrote, in part, “those who speak ill of Mark Levin are not MAGA.”
The vice president said his boss has no problem “pushing back at a criticism of [Megyn’s] that he thought was unfair,” but he also didn’t stop him from coming on The Megyn Kelly Show.
“I talked to him last night and I said, ‘Mr. President, Megyn Kelly’s show, and I’m going to defend the administration’s policies.’ He said, ‘Absolutely, I love that.’ Because again, he engages and he is going to criticize you when he disagrees with you and he is going to say nice things about you when he agrees with you,” Vance posited. “But that is what I actually love about the president is he is not viewing these debates from the outside. He is participating in them himself.”
Vance said his personal “frustration” with the “non-interventionist side” has been what he sees as an abandonment of the larger cause over a single issue. “We can have that debate. You disagree with the president on this particular policy, that doesn’t mean you can give up on the entire enterprise,” he said. “The reason why neocons are so much more effective in politics than the people on the other side in our coalition is because they play the game. They get disappointed, they make their criticisms, and they go back and they live to fight another day.”
To that point, the vice president said it took a coalition of people across the spectrum of the political center and right to get him and Trump elected. “The coalition that made Donald Trump the president of the United States, and J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States – people have to remember this – it was Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. It was also Mark Levin. It was also a lot of people like John Podhoretz who want a more aggressive foreign policy,” he emphasized.
“I’m never going to say that John Podhoretz is not welcome in the Republican Party. Just as he is disappointed right now [about the Iran deal], sometimes other people are going to be disappointed at other times,” Vance added. “You can’t just quit politics because the leader of a country of 330 million people makes a decision you disagree with.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Vice President Vance by tuning in to episode 1,340 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.