Michael Scherer

But he is a part of the senior strategy meetings.

I mean, he is in the room.

He was on the signal chat, you know, when they're talking about what's going to happen next.

So he has a political role where he's, you know, out and about carrying the president's message to the country, increasingly carrying a message that hopefully serves him well, I think, is his hope there.

for his own political future, he sees himself as someone who is trying to bring sort of an ideological, intellectual order to what the president has brought to the country.

He's trying to be the glue that connects Trump's whims and interests and desires to some theory of governance and theory of power.

what the country, you know, should be doing.

And then the last thing he does is he's kind of a troll.

I mean, he's like a chief troll for the White House.

Like Stephen Miller, he's out there a lot pushing the bounds, owning the libs, getting on fights on Twitter, things like that.

I haven't heard much tension between Vance and Trump.

I don't think there's tension.

I think they get along fine.

I think Vance is busy.

I think he's doing stuff to help the president.

I think the unspoken tension that is there is that Vance clearly is the next guy up in 2028.

And it's not clear Trump's going to be there for him.

We just don't know how that's going to play out.

And it's not clear that Trump sees Vance as his clear successor at this point.

And so I think that's sort of an undercurrent tension there.