Vice President JD Vance’s White House portfolio is coming into sharper focus.
President Donald Trump has tapped Vance, along with National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, to oversee a deal to sell and save TikTok, the Chinese social media company facing a ban in the U.S., two people familiar with the arrangement told NBC News.
The assignment, first reported by Punchbowl News, tops a longer list of tasks Vance is tackling.
His week began in his native Ohio, where, on the second anniversary of the toxic East Palestine train derailment, he committed the administration to completing cleanup efforts and defended Trump’s call for tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China. It continued with Vance nudging his former Senate colleagues to support a pair of Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees. And it ended Friday with Vance calling for the rehiring of a Department of Government Efficiency staffer who resigned after the Wall Street Journal surfaced racist remarks he had made online.
Up next week: the first overseas trip of Vance’s vice presidency, with an itinerary that includes an artificial intelligence summit in Paris and the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
“Some of the biggest priorities in front of the president the president has looked to JD to support and advance,” said a senior White House official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking. “Even the most complicated deals he trusts JD to help support.”
Another White House official, asked to grade Vance’s performance so far, gave him an “A.”
Vance’s portfolio is instructive of how and where the White House is most confident deploying him three weeks into Trump’s term. He’s trading on his relationships on Capitol Hill while representing the administration in crisis areas domestically and at meetings abroad.
“I play the role that the president needs me to play, whether it’s casting the tie-breaking vote or maybe talking to some of my old Senate colleagues about the importance of voting on this nomination,” Vance said in an interview this week with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “I sort of see my job as an all-around player. When I played Pee-Wee football, you would sometimes get a trophy, ‘Mr. All Around,’ for the kids who played offense and defense.”
Vice presidencies can be complicated to navigate. Dan Quayle is remembered more for his blunders. Al Gore struggled to emerge from Bill Clinton’s shadow. More recently, Kamala Harris received several high-profile but tricky assignments, including immigration and abortion. Her term serves as a cautionary tale of how a specific policy portfolio can mutate into a political liability.
“JD’s role in the White House is simple,” a source close to Vance said. “His role is to get stuff done for President Trump whenever President Trump thinks he can be helpful. … He’s not demanding a portfolio. These are not little things that JD is being entrusted with.”
Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump State Department appointee, noted that Vance is playing to strengths he honed as a senator and on the campaign trail last year.
“He’s a skilled communicator and MAGA translator — not just to the base, but to the Senate at large,” Bartlett said. “He looks the part, has a pronounced presence on social media.”
The East Palestine trip was a throwback for Vance, who represented Ohio in the Senate and strengthened his bond with Trump when advising him on how to respond to the train derailment there two years ago. With Vance at his side, Trump visited the village weeks after the disaster. Trump and his team later would assign a cosmic significance to the trip, regarding it as the moment that his 2024 presidential campaign found its footing after a rough start.
“We are committed not just to finishing the environmental side of the cleanup, but hopefully seeing East Palestine build back better and stronger and more prosperous than it was before this disaster happened in the first place,” Vance said there Monday, flanked by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, village firefighters and state and local officials. “That’s not going to happen overnight. Of course, I’m a realist about this, but I just want the people to know here that President Trump, me and the entire administration are committed to ensuring that the people of East Palestine that … their government does right by them.”
The senior White House official praised Vance for accepting assignments without complaint or reservation — and without demanding a specific lane or area of interest to own.
“He’s been all things to all people in a way most can’t fulfill,” this person said. “Everything from leading from certain policy dealmaking to helping usher through the Cabinet picks to blitzing the media and doing Sunday shows — he’s proven there’s nothing he’s unwilling or unable to do.”
On the Cabinet front, Vance has emerged as Trump’s eyes, ears and voice in the Senate, where he served for two years. His existing relationships with fellow Republicans in the chamber came in handy during the messy confirmation battle for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was confirmed only after Vance’s tie-breaking vote. More recently, Vance helped swing two key GOP votes in the fights over Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominees for Health and Human Services secretary and director of national intelligence, respectively.
“I want to thank VP JD specifically for his honest counsel,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., wrote Tuesday in a post on X after announcing that he would vote in favor of Kennedy’s nomination.
That same day, Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., declared his support for Gabbard and similarly credited Vance. Young told reporters that he sought reassurances about “national security gaps” and that Vance “got me those requested answers.” Young and the vice president engaged in extensive conversations to secure Young’s commitment, a source familiar with his decision said.
“I think all of us who have served with JD have had conversations with him,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who added that she had sought out Vance for a discussion on the tariff issue. “I’ve talked with him, for example, about the difference between our relationships with Canada, which is very important to my state, versus our relationship with Mexico and China.”
Meanwhile, Vance’s travel next week will give him an opportunity to build his foreign policy credentials ahead of his own anticipated presidential run in 2028. (“We’ll cross the political bridge when we come to it,” Vance told Bartiromo, who pressed him this week on his future plans.)
Trump’s antagonistic stance toward NATO allies and his approach toward Russia’s war with Ukraine rate as key points of concern abroad. In an interview this week with Breitbart News, Vance said he would approach the AI summit in Paris as an opportunity to chat with other world leaders about finding a diplomatic way to “bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close.”
As for the Munich Security Conference, Harris represented the Biden administration at last year’s event in an effort to reassure those nervous about the prospect of Trump’s return to power. Vance heads there with a reputation that precedes him as an opponent to Ukraine aid.
“There’s probably nobody better to send into that world,” Bartlett said of Vance, a Yale Law School graduate who worked in venture capital before entering politics. “This is somebody who speaks and understands MAGA, yet has the similar degrees and maybe even business acumen that the rest of the room has.”
Bartlett added: “When the liberal elites get together and mock Trump, his policies and the way he talks, it is JD Vance that serves as that bridge that can illustrate to them, maybe even educate them, precisely what the Trump administration is talking about, and do it in ways that are much more understood than mocked.”
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