Vice President JD Vance has the bad luck of trying to sell another book at the same time that he’s being put in charge of a much-maligned deal to end the war in Iran. But one strategist thinks the real intention is to cover up who the actual architect was.
CNN’s Audie Cornish closed her Thursday show talking about President Donald Trump’s comment during his G7 press conference, during which he said he’d blame Vance if the memorandum of understanding (MOU) fails.
Democratic strategist Meghan Hays asked if anyone truly believed that Vance was the one who negotiated the Iran deal.
Hays, the former Joe Biden White House director of messaging, asked: “Are we just trying to hide that Jared Kushner was actually the one negotiating this deal, who does not work for the United States government?”
“I mean, I just think that maybe Marco Rubio will end up better when he’s trying to run for president,” Hays continued. “But I don’t think that Donald Trump cares who gets blamed as long as it’s not him. But I don’t think the American people are that stupid to [not] realize their gas prices went up because we went into a war of choice by Donald Trump.”
A report from The New York Times in May said that Trump wanted to give Iran a $300 billion “bribe to back out of a war he never should have waded into,” as The New Republic characterized it. The Times said that an Iranian official put the reconstruction of Iran at $300 billion.
The idea came from United States Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law, both of whom are real estate investors. The two had also pitched a kind of real estate investment fund that would help provide financial incentives for developers in Iran. Kushner is already being investigated by the House Judiciary Democrats for cashing in on foreign investment funds while working on behalf of the United States government.
If Democrats win in November, the Trump administration believes that investigations will promptly begin, The Hill reported.
The Jerusalem Post noted that Israeli right-wing figures are attacking Witkoff and Kushner as “losers” over the plan.