If Vice President JD Vance has seemed more reserved and less incendiary as of late, it's likely because he deleted the X app off his phone for Lent.
Semafor Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith wrote in an op-ed that he'd spoken to two people close to Vance who confirmed the vice president deleted the X app from his phone for Lent. However, Vance did post on X between February 18 and April 2, so his social media fast seemingly allowed him to post from his computer.
In any case, Lent is over and Vance hasn't broadly reverted to posting controversial comments, at least not on X.
According to Smith, Vance's allies aren't sure what has driven the sudden shift in his famously provocative online persona.
The vice president may be keeping a lower profile ahead of his new book launch in June. Vance is releasing his new book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, on June 16.
The book's publisher, HarperCollins, describes it as "an intimate account of why he strayed from the Christianity of his youth and what led him back to faith."
In the past, Vance has shown no qualms with using personal insults on social media. He called Pod Save America host Jon Favreau a “dips***” after the liberal podcaster called him an “unreliable” source of information.
The exchange came in the wake of a shooting at a Texas ICE facility that killed a detainee and wounded two others.
“The gunman had anti-ICE messaging carved on the bullets he used. What, precisely, did I get wrong, dips***?” Vance wrote in response to Favreau.
In January, Vance compared Senator Tammy Duckworth — a veteran who lost both of her legs in combat during the Iraq War — to the character Forrest Gump.
“Watching Tammy Duckworth obsessively interrupt Marco Rubio during this hearing is like watching Forrest Gump argue with Isaac Newton,” the vice president wrote on X.
Vance's ambitions post-Trump may also be coloring his new, toned down social media presence.
The 41-year-old is widely assumed to be the frontrunner to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2028. With midterms quickly approaching, Vance has approximately another year before he has to get serious about undertaking a presidential campaign, but he may be feeling the pressure to get started early as his current polling leaves room for improvement.
The latest poll results from YouGov have JD Vance's popularity at just 31 percent — lower than Trump's by two points — and notes that 52 percent of poll respondents said they have a negative view of the vice president.
The vice president's trip to Hungary to support Prime Minister Viktor Orban's ultimately failed re-election campaign didn't do him any favors, according to CNN data guru Harry Enten.
According to Enten's analysis in early April, Vance's trip occurred at a time when 58 percent of Americans held the belief that the Trump administration was "too focused" on international matters.
“JD Vance going and campaigning for the prime minister of another country that is pretty far away from here is just part of a larger picture that the American people dislike," Enten said.
He then claimed that Vance was the most unpopular vice president in U.S. history when compared to other vice presidents at the same time in their terms.
Enten said Vance's approval rating was at -18 points, declaring the vice president is "not doing too hot to trot at this point."
“JD Vance started off his vice presidency in plus territory, and now he is in negative territory. Down he goes. JD Vance getting dragged down, along with the president of the United States,” Enten concluded.
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