Dear Mr. Vice President

Dear Mr. Vice President,

I wrote you an open letter in July out of concern about the direction you were taking on Israel. I strongly disagreed with you, but I assumed you were acting within what you considered to be good faith. I thought you were getting pulled into a political movement that was becoming increasingly hostile to Israel, and that perhaps you did not fully appreciate from where some of the arguments you were repeating came.

I no longer believe that.

You do make some good points. Israel is a sovereign nation, and its interests are not always the same as ours. No American leader has an obligation to support every decision made by Benjamin Netanyahu, and no American should be called anti-Semitic for criticizing Israel where interests or opinions differ. I have criticized Israeli policies myself and will do so again when I believe Israel is wrong.

What concerns me is the pattern around your criticisms. You have remained close to Tucker Carlson, as Carlson has moved further into a world some would have called the “alt-right” in 2017, but that has moved even further. Frankly, I think getting fired from Fox News broke something in him and he has flushed his integrity down the toilet to try and regain his former fame.

You have become increasingly obsessed with conspiracy theories that portray Israel as guilty of nefarious things. People around you increasingly respond to your critics by accusing them of being paid Israeli shills. At the same time, your economic philosophy has scorned free markets and turns toward government-directed outcomes, while your Catholic “post-liberalism” rejects important parts of the classical liberal tradition on which our constitutional system depends—the constitutional prevention of government from enforcing the supremacy of one religious faction most of all.

In short, you are a threat to our nation, and to our way of life.

Although you have not yet announced it, you are running for president in 2028 and are positioning yourself to inherit Donald Trump’s movement. 

Tucker Carlson influences part of that audience, including a growing fringe selling itself as “conservative” that has become openly hostile not only to Israel, but also to Jews as people. Carlson has normalized people like Nick Fuentes, and ideas such as that Christians who support Israel have a “brain virus.”

You are not stupid, Mr. Vice President. You are, in fact, one of the most intelligent people in American politics. You know exactly what Tucker Carlson is doing, and you know exactly who is gathering around him, yet you refuse to draw a line.

Perhaps that is because you agree with Carlson. If so, have the courage to say it. Perhaps you think Carlson has gone too far but you are afraid to alienate his audience (whose ratio of actual Americans to Third World foreigners and bots, just like Fuentes’ own, is debatable to say the least) before 2028. If that is true, have the courage you displayed in Iraq and admit it.

Instead, you stay close enough to Carlson to keep his audience while leaving just enough distance between yourself and his worst arguments to deny responsibility for them. You might also keep in mind that his actual audience might not be as big as he claims.

That is not leadership, or at least it is not the kind of leadership the conservative movement needs.

Your growing obsession with conspiracy theories involving Israel makes this even harder to dismiss. You told Joe Rogan that Epstein “clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.” You also acknowledged that there is no evidence that Epstein worked for the Mossad, the CIA, or any other intelligence service. 

Sir, it was our FBI that left Epstein’s blackmail material in an unlocked safe for four days while getting a subpoena to remove it. The FBI has judges on speed-dial for those kinds of situations and could have had a warrant almost immediately. The FBI could also have left a guard. Instead, it left the safe open and those materials vanished. It wasn’t the Mossad that did that, and it wasn’t any other part of Israel. It was our FBI, so if that points to an intelligence service, it points to ours. 

As vice president you are privy to the kinds of classified materials that would tell you exactly who the FBI allowed to take those materials. You don’t have evidence to support your claim because you know your claim is not true, and yet you made it anyway.

Shame on you, sir.

Increasingly, whenever Israel is involved, and, sometimes, even when it is not, you begin with suspicion and then go looking for evidence. Israel becomes the hidden hand. The Mossad becomes the explanation, and Israeli influence becomes the story behind the story. Facts that would be considered hopelessly inadequate in almost any other context suddenly become enough to entertain sweeping claims, as soon as Israel is involved.

Then came the Israeli influence campaign surrounding the Memorandum of Understanding. Israel reportedly funded an American campaign designed to influence American opinion—an idea given to them by your late friend, Charlie Kirk. 

Foreign governments try to influence American politics all the time and there is nothing wrong with that unless they use illicit means or spread information that is not true.

Do you know what is true? The Islamic regime occupying Iran was about a week away from having the materials to build 11 nuclear bombs. I keep hearing that our intelligence has been wrong about the regime’s nuclear progress for 40 years, but my source for that is not our intelligence. It is Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who negotiated for the Islamic government before the war started. Araghchi thought he was making the case that we should give up on stopping them from getting the bomb, but it made the case that we should give up on the negotiations.

Since you want to be Commander-in-Chief, let me ask you something: do you prefer dealing with this regime before a jihadist in a minivan takes out a major U.S. city, or after?

I grew up during the Cold War. I remember hearing as a child that it takes a half hour for a Soviet ICBM to hit the United States, and I remember thinking about what I would do with that half hour. Imagine a six-year-old or a 12-year-old wondering what he would do if he only had half an hour before the world ends. 

We are fighting the Islamic regime to make sure my children and your children never have to ask themselves a question like that.

As Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in a 2001 sermon at Tehran University, “The employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth, but [such a bomb] would only do damage to the Islamic World.” He then said, “it is not unreasonable to consider this possibility.”

“Death to America” is an official slogan of the Islamic Republic—a “policy,” in fact, as the former “Supreme Leader” your boss helped kill described it in 2023. If one nuclear weapon is enough to take out Israel, for what do you think the Islamic regime wants the other 10? And that’s assuming it would have stopped at 11. The regime has plenty of targets in the United States, and has all of Europe if it runs out. It wants to hit us; but it also wants plausible deniability when it does.

You are a bit younger than me and might not remember this, but the Islamic Republic had children roll across minefields to blow up mines during the Iran-Iraq War, ahead of its army. It had those children wrap up in rugs first to help hold their bodies intact, so they could be buried. More recently, it killed an estimated 50,000 (at least) of its own protestors. Given that this is how the Islamic regime treats its own people, how do you think it would treat us if it had the means to kill us?

Let me be clear: if Benjamin Netanyahu really did have to talk Trump into this war, that would reflect negatively on President Trump. It was our negotiators who found out how close the regime was to having nukes, so it should have been us talking Israel into bombing Iran—which is what Trump openly and clearly said a few days later. This is our war and it needs to be fought no matter how unpopular it may be. That is what real leaders do: they lead.

“America first” does not mean America only, and if you can’t see that, I’m sorry, but you are unfit to serve.

People who defend Israel are increasingly accused by those around you of being paid by Israel. People who criticize you are accused of being paid Israeli shills. Tomi Lahren has seen this personally. 

If Israel is paying someone, show me the money. I’m certainly not getting paid, but nor do I need to be. I support Israel because I believe supporting Israel is in America’s interests. I also believe Israel represents something worth defending in a region dominated by governments that share neither our values nor our interests. The question is not why I support Israel, but why you do not.

Your political calculation is obvious. The Republican Party after Trump will need someone capable of holding its different factions together. Marco Rubio can appeal to traditional conservatives and the pro-Israel wing of the party. You can appeal to the populist wing. More importantly, you can become the Republican candidate Tucker Carlson is willing to support.

Allow me to go a step further.

I don’t think you are anti-Semitic, and I don’t think you hate Israel. I think you are an extremely intelligent man whose ambitions exceed his morals, and I think you want to position yourself as close to Marco Rubio as possible, to get the alt-right’s support. 

The alt-right is not a conservative movement though, nor a part of the actual right. The phrase means “alternative to the right,” and it stands as a group of people that believe everything the left does about identity politics, white supremacy, and everything else. I hope courting that vote costs you the primary, and you can call me an Israeli shill from now to the 2028 election. It will not make the fact that you are courting those who call Hitler “cool,” who call Stalin a “great man,” or who compared incinerating Jewish bodies to baking cookies, go away. You are courting that vote (people who tend to complain online far more than vote, by the way), and I intend to make you own it.

You aren’t even really a conservative. Your economics are not free-market. You support tariffs, stronger unions, and an aggressive government role in shaping markets. You have embraced over-zealous anti-trust enforcement and have repeatedly shown that you are comfortable using state power to produce economic outcomes you consider desirable.

Some of your criticism is valid. Markets are not perfect. China does not practice free trade, and pretending that unilateral free trade with a mercantilist adversary is somehow principled conservatism is ridiculous. Corporations can become powerful enough to distort markets and government alike. I agree with you on more of that than you probably think. The problem is that once the government takes responsibility for producing the “right” economic outcome, someone has to define what that means. I don’t trust you to do that. I don’t even trust you to protect my children from the IRGC’s nuclear weapons.

We’re both Marines. We are also both Christians, but your Catholic “post-liberalism” is a problem. You are a brother in Christ, but the post-liberal political philosophy with which you have associated yourself rejects important parts of the classical liberal tradition, including individual liberty, limited government, and religious freedom.

Patrick Deneen, whose work you have praised, called for an American “regime change.” Post-liberals believe that government should promote their conception of the “common good.” Some are willing to aggressively use bureaucratic power once their side controls the bureaucracy.

I understand why that appeals to those who watched the left capture our institutions, but the answer to progressive authoritarianism is not conservative authoritarianism. It is to un-capture the institutions entirely, and to put in safeguards, such as a return to the Tenth Amendment, to ensure that they are never captured again.

That is why limited government and free markets matter. Those principles are not inconveniences that prevent good leaders from doing good things. They are safeguards that prevent bad leaders from doing terrible things, which leaves me wondering what exactly you think conservatism is supposed to conserve.

You also subtly insult American Protestants as materialistic heretics in your new book—and I don’t think a party whose voting base has been evangelical Protestants for nearly 50 years at least will vote for a man who proudly condemns the Reformation itself. Millions of Christians died in wars inspired by religious hatred between 1522 and 1714; not one, by the grace of God, was an American, and we would like to keep it that way.

Your economics reject important parts of free-market conservatism. Your post-liberalism rejects important parts of classical liberalism. Your foreign policy increasingly treats one of America’s closest allies as a source of hidden manipulation. Your political coalition increasingly tolerates people who question the loyalty of American Jews and anyone else who supports Israel, and your closest media ally keeps moving further into the alt-right, while you find reason after reason not to draw a line.

I spent eight years in uniform, first in the Marine Corps and later in the Army. I do not use the title Marine casually, and though I do not like to question another Marine’s honor, I am questioning yours.

A Marine does not sell his integrity for a promotion, and I think that is exactly what you have done. You have decided that drawing a line costs more than remaining silent. That is a political calculation, and it may even be a good one, but it should be beneath you.

I once saw you as a man who entered politics because he believed something and was willing to lose something for it. Now I see another politician calculating his next move.

Luckily, I see other Republicans as well, and my guess is that Marco Rubio decides to run, not just to protect us from the political left, but increasingly to protect us from you. I’ll be sending him a copy of this letter.

If Rubio runs, he has my vote. I urge him to do so, and though the last time I wrote you I closed with “Semper fi,” I think I’ll save that for him. Rubio may not be a Marine, but he is far more worthy than you.

Sincerely yours,

Wallace L. Garneau