AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin
Vice President JD Vance is a prolific tweeter, normally posting multiple times a day to defend President Donald Trump’s policies and bash their administration’s critics and political foes. The last few days, however, have seen an uncharacteristic near silence from the veep, who has retweeted a few posts from MAGA allies but not posted anything of his own.
In a Rose Garden press conference last Wednesday, April 2, Trump declared it to be “Liberation Day” and announced a series of sweeping new tariffs, including a 10% levy on virtually all imported goods, 25% tax on foreign automobiles, and a long list of what he described as “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries around the world.
The markets were rattled after Trump’s plans were confirmed, with U.S. stock futures plummeting in after-hours trading, continuing to have historically bad days on Thursday and Friday, and opening with an immediate plunge on Monday. Even a number of Republicans have spoken out to criticize the tariffs as causing unnecessary economic harm.
A CNN article last Friday dug up some of Vance’s previous speeches and social media posts in which he denounced tariffs as a futile attempt by “hyper-protectionists” to bring back U.S. manufacturing jobs that “aren’t coming back.” Unsurprisingly, Vance changed his tune and has dutifully voiced support for Trump’s tariffs — but he has been a lot less vocal than he usually is about it.
Vance usually tweets multiple times a day, often with a pugilistic tone. His pinned tweet is still an August 2024 comment he added to a retweet of a post from Donald Trump Jr. with a video of himself attacking his predecessor, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, on border issues.
Screenshot via X.
The day of Trump’s Rose Garden press conference announcing the tariffs, April 2, was the last day Vance posted any of his own tweets. After retweeting a Fox News contributor’s post eulogizing actor Val Kilmer, Vance posted just two tweets that day. One discussed the GOP’s “political problem” of trying to “get our base to vote in off-cycle elections,” and urging the party establishment to “try to actually learn from [Trump’s] political success.” The second tweet shared an old video of Trump complaining about trade deficits, with a caption from the veep that read, “President Trump has been calling this out for decades.”
Since April 2, Vance has only retweeted a handful of posts from accounts affiliated with the White House (like the Trump War Room or Rapid Response 47 accounts) or otherwise pro-MAGA (like X owner/DOGE chief Elon Musk) that were defending the president’s tariff policy.
