JD Vance confronts Jewish GOP skeptics ahead of a potential 2028 run

By Patrick Svitek, CNN

Las Vegas (CNN) — Vice President JD Vance has in recent months given voice to a rising skepticism in America toward Israel, leaving some Jewish Republicans uncomfortable, if not openly concerned, about the expected GOP frontrunner in the next presidential election.

Some Jewish GOP activists have expressed a preference for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, while other ambitious Republicans have worked to stir doubt about Vance’s pro-Israel credentials. Among them is Sen. Ted Cruz, who recently said the party has not coalesced around Vance ahead of 2028 and that there will be a “full discussion” about what the party stands for before then.

Vance addressed those criticisms Monday night with the Republican Jewish Coalition, a coalition group of influential political activists and donors, hours after he campaigned against Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for US Senate.

Reporters were kept one floor below the room at the Venetian in Las Vegas where Vance spoke with RJC members. CNN obtained audio of Vance’s remarks from a person who attended the roughly 45-minute “fireside chat” with Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator who is the national chairman of the RJC board. Vance did not take audience questions, but the moderated conversation veered into sensitive territory on a few occasions.

At one point, Vance raised “some of the obvious elephants in the room,” referring to growing skepticism of the US-Israel relationship among young people. Vance said Republicans need to “actually get out there and talk about the ways in which it is in the best interest of the United States of America.”

Then there was Tucker Carlson, who has argued the US should drop Israel as an ally and came up when Coleman asked about how Vance decides on which media platforms to appear. Coleman said Carlson, as well as Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan and Nick Fuentes, “have platformed antisemites.”

“I recognize a lot of people in this room might disagree with things that Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly or Joe Rogan has said,” Vance said, proceeding to distinguish Rogan from Fuentes in particular, saying they are “very, very different” people. Fuentes, who was hosted by President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022, is a White nationalist and Holocaust denier.

Vance otherwise defended his engagement with the media personalities, saying Republicans need “to be willing to go everywhere and bring our message anywhere and to any person.”

The RJC’s CEO, Matt Brooks, told reporters earlier Monday that the group decided to keep the event private to allow for an “open and honest” conversation. And he said the RJC also invited Rubio and Cruz to speak, but they could not make it for various reasons.

It was Vance’s first time coming to the RJC gathering since 2022, when he was a candidate for Senate in Ohio and attended the event but did not speak. Much has changed inside the GOP since then, with Israel’s war in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks – and the US and Israel launching the more recent war in Iran – coinciding with a drop in public support for Israel across party lines.

It is a concerning direction for the highly engaged political donors and activists who make up the RJC and could play an outsize role in picking the next GOP presidential nominee. The group is closely aligned with Miriam Adelson, the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and a leading donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign effort, giving more than $100 million.

It was unclear if Adelson, who has attended past RJC summits, was present for Vance’s remarks. But RJC leaders who spoke to reporters afterward praised him.

“The vice president really helped himself tonight,” Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who is now an RJC board member, told reporters afterward. “He answered a lot of questions that people had about where his heart is.”

Not everyone was as impressed. Some attendees say he failed to fully address what they saw as a major issue – Carlson.

“He totally deflected,” said Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Gen Z Jewish activist, predicting Carlson would “continue to dog” Vance like the far-left streamer Hasan Piker has been linked to El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race.

The Tucker Carlson questions

Carlson did not respond to a request for comment on Vance’s appearance at the RJC meeting. But Vance has declined to disavow Carlson even after Trump had a falling out with the former Fox News host over the Iran war and has called him “totally irrelevant.” Carlson has apologized for backing Trump and said he would no longer support the Republican Party.

During a June podcast interview, Carlson said he will always consider Vance a friend and lamented that Trump had put him in an “impossible situation” by pursuing foreign conflicts at odds with their 2024 campaign promises.

“I feel sorry for JD Vance,” Carlson said.

Vance’s views on Israel have been especially scrutinized since he took the lead in promoting an Iran peace deal that was struck in June but has since collapsed. Referring to reports of Israeli government officials criticizing the deal upon its unveiling, Vance warned them against “attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”

Days later, during an interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, Vance accused some in the Israeli government of trying to manipulate American public opinion to undermine the deal.

Vance regularly condemns antisemitism and has disavowed Fuentes by name, calling him a “total loser.” But in a December 2025 interview with NBC News, he said he did not think antisemitism was “exploding” on the right, and he has avoided criticizing Carlson as he has become anathema to many Jewish Republicans.

“Tucker’s a friend of mine. Do I have disagreements with Tucker Carlson? Sure. I have disagreements with most of my friends, especially those who work in politics,” Vance said in a December 2025 podcast interview.

Vance’s answers on Monday night, which did not address Carlson any further, fell flat with some attendees. One of them said he had the opportunity to disavow Carlson and disappointed “many” when he “ducked the Tucker issue altogether.”

Sid Rosenberg, a New York City radio host, also panned the answer in an X post that said Vance’s overall remarks were “not strong enough on Israel.” Earlier in the day, Rosenberg had urged the RJC crowd to “give Vance a chance.”

One attendee summed up Vance’s response as: “I got to go talk to these guys, I got to go carry the message.” The attendee indicated they were mostly sympathetic to the argument, even if it did not fully grapple with the issue of Carlson.

Stuart Weil, an RJC member from California, said he walked away from Vance’s remarks feeling that concerns about his positions on Israel were overblown.

“I have no fear of supporting JD Vance as the president of the United States,” Weil said.

Ron Dermer, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States and a longtime adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, offered notable praise for Vance during the conference. At the same time, Dermer recalled a 2022 lunch they had in Jerusalem where Vance “asked me a lot of questions about why this serves US interests.”

“I had no problem making that [case],” Dermer said. “There’s a simple answer to that, and that’s that Americans’ interests are served by working closely with Israel, so that didn’t concern me at all.”

Among those who watched Vance on Monday night was Ruby Chen, the father of a slain Israeli-American hostage, Itay Chen. Ruby Chen met with Vance last year.

“Having the privilege of meeting President (Joe) Biden, he felt about Israel in the kishke,” Chen said, using the Yiddish slang term for guts or stomach. “I think President Trump has that gene inside of him as well when it comes to the state of Israel. I think JD Vance, if he becomes president, he looks at it in more of an analytical viewpoint, for good or for bad.”

Vance’s stop in Michigan shows the contours of 2028 race

Hours before arriving here, Vance visited Michigan to campaign for Senate candidate Mike Rogers in arguably the most important race for RJC members in the midterms. El-Sayed, who is Muslim, made criticisms of pro-Israel spending central to his primary campaign and accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, an allegation the Israeli government denies.

Speaking in suburban Detroit, Vance criticized El-Sayed over his initial response to a March attack on a Detroit-area synagogue, noting the synagogue’s rabbi and security guards were attending Monday afternoon’s event. El-Sayed has spent recent days apologizing to Jewish Democrats in the state for that response, in which he said that “hurt people hurt people.”

As much as the midterm race is galvanizing Jewish Republicans, it was hard Monday to escape the early contours of the 2028 primary.

Cruz assailed Carlson as “the most dangerous demagogue” in the country, and last month, the senator’s allies launched a new group to fight antisemitism on the right, Front Line Action, that helped defeat two candidates in the Florida primaries.

Eric Levine, an RJC board member, said Cruz has been “a perfect example” of a Republican taking on Carlson, but noted there has been “no shortage” of Republicans speaking out.

Gabe Groisman, a Republican strategist and former RJC board member from Florida, acknowledged there were “concerns” about how Vance navigates this fraught moment inside the party. But he also said there is “a lot of hope that his position, while it is nuanced or may come at a different angle from President Trump, is still very strong on the American Jewish community.”

“Most people believe that when it is time for him to really express his positions,” Groisman said, “it’s going to be positions that people are comfortable with.”

Still, Groisman added, “it’s not automatic for him or for anybody.”

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