Vance Gets The Tough Jobs As He Works To Gain Trump’s Trust

President Donald Trump has given Vice President JD Vance some of the toughest assignments in the White House. His allies say it’s a sign of trust, but the political risk is high for the young firebrand who is eager to take the MAGA mantle from his boss someday.

The challenging jobs include brokering a sale of TikTok to a U.S.-based buyer — a goal that has eluded both Trump in his first term and former President Joe Biden — and working behind the scenes to push the White House’s agenda through a chaotic, Republican-led Congress, according to two people familiar with the matter. And he’s continuously demonstrated a willingness to stick his neck out for the administration in public displays that garner intense backlash while riling up the base on social media, in speeches and in an Oval Office tiff with the Ukrainian president.

Vance’s allies dismiss the difficulty and instead see the tough jobs as a sign of clout.

“The real takeaway here is this speaks to the trust they clearly have for him, because you don’t give these things to somebody you don’t have trust in,” said one longtime Vance adviser, granted anonymity to speak freely.

Vance is doing all that under two gargantuan shadows: Trump, who constantly commands a global spotlight, and billionaire Elon Musk, who is often by the president’s side and is hell-bent on breaking the bureaucracy. And the challenge every vice president faces — to maintain popularity, relevance and power — weighs especially heavy on Vance, the 40-year-old No. 2 behind a term-limited Trump.

Vance has been meeting privately with the president and spends most of his time in his West Wing office steps from the Oval, where he enjoys walk-in access, according to a person familiar. And the adviser said Vance had established trust not just with Trump but also among top White House aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles and her deputies, Taylor Budowich and James Blair, over years of relationship-building. Vance is also close to Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who pushed the president to select Vance as his running mate.

“Vice President Vance is President Trump’s right hand man,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to POLITICO.

Even before Trump took office, it was apparent that the administration would struggle to get all of the president’s nominees confirmed, and the White House — trying to project an image of order, rather than the chaos that marked much of Trump’s first term — couldn’t afford for a nominee to fail confirmation. So Trump tasked Vance with making sure that wouldn’t happen, according to two people familiar with the matter.

All of Trump’s secretaries have been confirmed.

Vance had only spent two years on Capitol Hill as the junior senator from Ohio before rising to the vice presidency. But he had formed relationships in the Senate during that time, including with some Democrats. Vance ultimately helped flip a handful of “no” votes — including Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) for Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — pushing through all three of Trump’s most controversial nominees. (Vance, the president of the Senate, cast the tie-breaking vote on Hegseth’s confirmation.)

“Vice President Vance knows the Senate, he knows the procedure, and most importantly he knows the people and is a trusted friend and former colleague to many,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said in a statement to POLITICO.

Trump’s second early problem was TikTok. On Jan. 18, two days before his inauguration, the video-sharing app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, went dark after the Supreme Court upheld a law barring any company from distributing, maintaining or updating it. Trump’s White House knew saving TikTok would be seen as a major political victory, particularly among younger voters who were already swinging toward the GOP. Failure to do so, on the other hand, would be seen as an epic flop.

So Trump gave the project to Vance, according to two people familiar with the matter, alongside national security adviser Mike Waltz.

Vance started his career in Silicon Valley working for Peter Thiel, the iconoclastic, right-wing billionaire co-founder of PayPal and Palantir. And Vance’s roots in Big Tech and his Bay Area Rolodex played a major role in getting him named as vice president — with deep-pocketed tech titans, including Musk, reportedly lobbying Trump on his behalf.

“Because he has a background as a deal-maker, it was a natural fit for the president to deputize him for the TikTok deal,” the longtime adviser said.

Then there’s Vance’s role as the White House’s “troll in chief,” acting as Trump’s top in-house attack dog — a part that requires trust from Trump to cede the spotlight.

It happens nearly daily on X, when Vance — who writes all his posts himself, according to a person familiar — issues harsh rebukes of the president’s critics. It happened in Munich, when the vice president, speaking in front of the European political establishment, delivered an uppercut to decades of international allyship. And it happened this month in the Oval Office, when Vance — typically quiet during sprays with world leaders — cut off Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to demand more respect, catalyzing in an explosive argument with the wartime president in front of the American media.

Vice presidents often throw out the red meat on the campaign trail and then quietly tend to the base once in office. But Vance has set himself apart by keeping up the fire, even in the meeting with Zelenskyy, a space where many of his predecessors would have kept quiet.

Among the core America First base, Vance is seen by many as the heir to the MAGA throne, a stature he’s helped solidify through his willingness to back Trump. While his predecessor, Mike Pence, often tried to recast the president’s most controversial statements and actions within a traditionally conservative framework, Vance tends to push them even further into MAGA-land. And while Trump talks from the gut, Vance sounds more like one of the new breed of influencers with increasing clout in the party, practiced in podcasting and social media trolling.

“I’m already on the JD 2028 train,” said Charlie Kirk, the executive director of Turning Point USA and a key Vance ally who pushed for him during last year’s veepstakes.

In the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual straw poll earlier last month for who should be the next Republican nominee — the first in a decade without Trump as an option — Vance notched over 60 percent of the vote. Second place went to Steve Bannon, with a distant 12 percent.

But asked last month on Fox News if Trump saw Vance as his successor, the president blurted out a quick “no,” before adding “but he’s very capable.”

On that front, at least, Vance is keeping coy.

“We'll worry about presidential politics at the appropriate time,” Vance told the Daily Mail last month.