Dear Vice President Vance,
You’ve lived an accomplished life, rising from a difficult childhood in a poor Ohio home, through the Marine Corps to Yale, and then into a fortune in venture capital. Along the way you wrote your bestselling memoir and became the vice president of the United States. You accomplished all of this in just 40 years.
Semper fi, sir!
I, too, am a Marine, and, in light of your recent comments on the Joe Rogan show, I’d like to reply, Marine to Marine.
You referred to a Time Magazine article that claimed Trump’s former campaign manager, Brad Parscale, runs an Israeli influence operation inside the United States. Apparently the global ad agency Havas hired Parscale’s firm on behalf of Israel. Time reported that a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filing supports this claim. According to the article, this campaign does not exist to undermine the Trump administration, but to “keep young conservatives from drifting away from supporting Israel.”
The suggestion that Israel conduct a campaign to regain support among young Americans, particularly young conservatives, actually came from your late, close friend, Charlie Kirk. If the Israeli government is taking Charlie Kirk’s advice, good for them. It was good advice.
When you talked to Rogan, you let the specter of ill intent sit like a fog in the air. In reality, there is nothing wrong with Israel, or Israeli citizens, or Israeli companies supporting American influencers with whom they may agree. You also speculated that Jeffrey Epstein was deeply connected to Israeli intelligence, while admitting you have no evidence of that, and then you pivoted immediately to the Iran war and the peace negotiations with which you engaged with the Islamic regime occupying that country.
Jeffrey Epstein died on August 10, 2019; that’s almost seven years ago—predating the current war with Iran’s Islamic regime, the bombing of its nuclear facilities, and the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel that precipitated the Gaza war and the larger regional conflict that followed. What Jeffrey Epstein did was horrific, but it has nothing to do with the war with Islamic regime, and you had no reason to bring it up in that context.
Frankly, your use of it sounded like an anti-Israel smear. There is also the question of intent: what, exactly, were you, the sitting vice president, a man with a schedule of considerably more trying tasks upon your shoulders—sorting out America’s welfare fraud catastrophe most prominent among them—trying to accomplish on the Joe Rogan show spreading what, by all accounts, looked like anti-Semitic conspiracy theories? That is not an accusation, but it is a request for clarification. The American public needs to know if you are standing with our ally, or sliding into the alt-right.
The worst thing is that you were not even clear about what, specifically, you were blaming Israel for doing wrong. The closest you came was saying,
What bothers me is actually when Americans allow—meaning American leadership—allows that [Israeli] influence to affect their judgment, and to affect what they are advocating for. That’s what really bothers me. People are always going to try to influence the United States of America, whether they are allies of ours, or whether they’re enemies of ours; but again, when I open up the pages of Time Magazine and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign, being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing—and, oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving the money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways—do you know, my response to that is, well, “Go to hell.”
You are correct that many countries try to influence the United States, just as we try to influence other countries. We live in a country that believes in free speech, so this is the norm. You are also correct that you should not be attacked personally for negotiating, on the president’s behalf, with the terrorist junta ruling Iran.
But let us talk about those negotiations.
If the Israeli government is taking Charlie Kirk’s advice, good for them. It was good advice.
Negotiations require two things to be successful: an agreement must be possible, and all parties must be negotiating in good faith. With the current regime occupying Iran, I don’t think either of those conditions are true, and it is very likely that giving it breathing space lengthened the war.
More to the point, Israel has been proven correct in saying Iran is not a trustworthy negotiating partner. We are bombing regime targets (again) after its forces attacked commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, in violation of the memorandum’s safe-passage provisions, and now President Trump has made it clear that further negotiations with the current regime leadership would be a waste of time. Even more importantly, the Mossad—the same agency for which you allege Jeffrey Epstein was working as a spy and blackmail operative (without one atom of evidence worth three seconds of a judge or prosecutor’s time)—recently uncovered yet another IRGC plot to assassinate President Trump while he was in Turkey. Shouldn’t you be happy that American leadership listens when a foreign government is right—particularly when it just saved your boss’s life?
Free speech exists so we can debate ideas in the open, and the simple truth here is that Israel was right and you were wrong.
I’m sure Israel is funding influencers. Not only did Charlie Kirk encourage them to do so, but it is in their best interest to do so. Also, I’d like you to consider the hypocrisy of going to Munich and lecturing the Europeans about free speech and then turning around and criticizing Israel for financing those exercising it here.
What is truly troubling is not that you devoted so much attention to Israel while ignoring the far more extensive influence operations conducted by China and Qatar, both of whom fund not only influencers but also universities and media outlets. Qatar in particular spends billions of dollars a year on media, lobbying efforts, universities, and other forms of influence, and somehow you said nothing about that. You also said nothing about all the Islamic regime’s propaganda flooding social media. I’ve lost count of the number of times they have supposedly sunk the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford.
Qatar is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood. It has hosted Brotherhood leaders, supported Brotherhood-aligned governments and organizations, and used its state-funded media outlet, Al Jazeera, to amplify their influence. An internal 1991 memorandum written by Mohamed Akram, a senior figure in the Brotherhood’s American network, described its work in the United States as a long-term “civilization-jihadist process” intended to undermine Western society from within through religious, civic, educational, and political institutions. Federal prosecutors later introduced the document as evidence in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case.
Why are you so focused on Israeli influence when influential Muslim Brotherhood organizers have been so explicit about their long-term ambitions in the United States? You were on Joe Rogan’s show for three hours. Couldn’t you have mentioned any influence campaign other than the one your close friend encouraged Israel to undertake?
Shouldn’t you be happy that American leadership listens when a foreign government is right—particularly when it just saved your boss’s life?
The Islamic regime in Iran is increasingly isolated. While many Arab governments continue to criticize Israeli policies, they have also come to view their neighbor’s regional ambitions, ballistic missile program, and network of proxy militias as a far greater strategic threat. They are also increasingly tying themselves economically to Israel, including by buying Israeli defense materials.
The Middle East conflict is no longer Arabs versus Jews. Increasingly, it is Israel and its Sunni neighbors against an expansionist Shi’ite regime across the Strait. Once the Islamic Republic of Iran falls, so, too, eventually will its proxy forces, and suddenly peace—or, perhaps, less war—in the Middle East will move from dream to achievable reality.
That regime must fall, and I implore your support for the continued operations to ensure that this happens. The Islamic Republic of Iran can never have a nuclear bomb.
My concern is not that you criticized Israel. Allies disagree all the time. My concern is that you gave public credibility to a narrative that has become central to the American isolationist movement: that Israel manipulates the United States into wars against its own interests. Stopping the Islamic regime from getting a nuclear bomb is our war, too. Once a vice president begins lending credibility to claims for which he admits he has no evidence, that narrative acquires a legitimacy it has not earned.
Your friend Charlie Kirk believed Israel needed to make its case to young American conservatives. Now you are treating Israel’s decision to follow that advice as evidence of something sinister.
Israel has been and continues to be one of the United States’ most important allies. What’s more, they continue to be our friend. Positioning yourself in a way that captures the anti-Israel sentiment creeping into the fringes of the Republican Party also makes you look like a politician who is willing to run against his friends for political advantage, and anyone who will turn on a friend for votes deserves neither friends nor votes.
Thank you for your time, sir, and semper fi,
Wallace L. Garneau
