Democrats approach 2028 with no frontrunner

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Pat Ford** (0:37)
Hey, everybody, welcome to The David Pakman Show. I'm producer Pat Ford filling in for David again today. David is heading back home from California today, so it's me hosting instead. He did a bunch of media appearances over the last week or so out in California. A bunch of those interviews have published already, but there are a bunch more coming out. So if you're looking for more David content, it's out there. However, he was not available today to host the show, but we have quite the show for you, a real shake up in the Democratic primary. We have a look at the picture in the Senate. Democratic odds for taking the Senate in 2026 look pretty good. We're going to start things off today by talking about JD Vance because he appeared on Will Cain's Fox News Show.
The interview seems like an audition for 2028 I think out of all the potential contenders for the 2028 election on both sides, Republican and Democrat, JD Vance clearly seems like the person who's most likely to announce a candidacy because he's just so clearly well set up for it being Trump's vice president right now.
JD Vance got this little test run first in the form of being asked about the Iran War, which by all accounts he was actually against to his credit before the Iran War started. He was the voice in the room saying, wait, isn't this against everything we ran on? Aren't we supposed to be the anti-war? We're in a crowd now, didn't we say that we're not going to do more forever wars in the Middle East? So here he is being asked about it, and of course, he can't say that the Iran War is a disaster because he still has to represent his boss, he still has to represent Trump. So the test for JD Vance, and we'll see him doing this with a bunch of different things, is he has to try to thread the needle between staking his own position so he can look like his own man and have a chance in 2028, while at the same time still appearing loyal to Donald Trump and acting like the things that Trump is doing right now is going to overall help the situation. So here's the first clip that we're going to look at. Here is JD Vance being asked about the seesaw that has been the Iran War with Trump one day saying that the war is over, and the troops are coming home, and Iran lost, and then the next day saying that we have to go back to war, we have to hit him harder than ever before because they fell through on some agreement or something like that. Here is Will Cain asking about that seesaw effect.

**Will Cain** (2:57)
Let's talk for a minute about Iran. There is frustration, Mr. Vice President, I think, out there, on the seesaw nature of what's going on in Iran. We're close to a deal, then we're going to bomb the hell out of them. The strait is open, then the strait is closed. And I'm sure that frustration is shared inside the White House.
So I know it's hard to project, but let me ask you, how does this end? What does this look like when and if it's over with Iran?

**JD Vance** (3:28)
Well, the thing I could say with confidence is, I think this ends with the United States in a stronger position, with Iran not having a nuclear weapon, and with the strait of Hormuz return to a place where oil and gas prices are stable for the American people.

**Pat Ford** (3:43)
All right, so I gotta stop real quick. JD Vance here says that the objectives now for the US are, apparently, that the US leaves Iran in a stronger position than where it was before, that we have destroyed their nuclear capabilities, and that the strait of Hormuz is open. Well, I hate to break it to you, but that sounds a lot like the position that we were in before this war started and Trump decided to make all these policy changes with Iran. So the US being in a stronger position, it's going to be really difficult to imagine the US ending up in a stronger position once all this is said and done, especially because we've already depleted our missile stockpile and we've already spent billions and billions and billions of dollars in this war and we don't know how long it's going to go on for. When it comes to the Iranian nuclear weapons program, well, we had that under control by all accounts under the Obama deal that Trump got us out of. And even if you don't believe that, well, then I guess you believe Trump who said that after Operation Midnight Hammer we had destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities. So that one too doesn't make sense. And then when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz being opened, of course, that was something that we also had before we had the stable gas prices that JD Vance wanted. So all these things that we're laying out as successes now really were just things that we had before Trump got involved. And remember, they said that they were going to have regime change. There was talk about the US installing a puppet government over there in Iran, they certainly weren't going to have a nuclear weapons program. And now Trump has said that, well, maybe they can have some nuclear capabilities.