JD Vance Is Pissed About Israel’s “Stupid Political Stunt” on His Trip

Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that he’d been personally insulted by Israel’s “very stupid” move to annex the West Bank.

While preparing to depart from Ben Gurion airport after a two-day trip to Israel, Vance was asked about the Israeli Knesset voting in support of a bill that would apply Israeli sovereignty to the occupied Palestinian West Bank, where the Israeli military and settler killings of Palestinians continue.

“When I asked about it, somebody told me that it was a political stunt, that it had no practical significance. It was purely symbolic,” Vance said. “I mean, look, if it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt and I personally take some insult to it.

“The West Bank is not gonna be annexed by Israel,” he added. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy, and if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that. But we certainly weren’t happy about it.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar claimed that the opposition had staged the vote to “embarrass the government” during Vance’s visit, adding that the bill did not have the support of the government. Last month, Sa’ar himself publicly floated annexing the West Bank.

“As much as it’s our wish or aspiration, we have decided not to bring it [at] this stage to the Knesset, because now on the table, we have huge efforts to [do] everything that Trump’s plan will be successful, and we will invest in that,” Sa’ar said Wednesday.

As President Donald Trump’s supposed “ceasefire” sets in, violent raids and assaults have continued in the West Bank, where the Israeli government has approved dozens of new settlements over the last two years, sparking increased violence against Palestinian residents. There have been more than 1,000 violent settler attacks since the beginning of 2025, according to Al Jazeera, putting this year on track to be the most violent year in the West Bank on record.

Israel has violated the terms of Trump’s fragile peace deal since the start, launching a wave of airstrikes at the Gaza Strip over the weekend, killing dozens of people, including children. The Israeli military said it was responding to violence from Hamas, after individuals in the Rafah area fired guns and an anti-tank missile at IDF forces. But Hamas said it had not violated the agreement.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is still going rogue.

The infamous MAGA hard-liner was on Tucker Carlson’s show on Wednesday night explaining why she “hates” her own party.

“These people are so fake,” Greene told Carlson. “The only reason that they kiss up to Donald Trump, our president, the only reason they kiss up to him, is because they’re terrified of a Truth Social post, because they’re terrified of their own constituents that fully support MAGA, that fully support America First, and fully support everything that Donald Trump has laid out now for years and years.

“Americans got to the point where electing Donald Trump was a referendum on the Republican Party,” she said. “And I very much feel that because many times I hate my own party, and I blame Republicans for many of the problems that we have today.”

This is par for the course lately for Greene, as she becomes perhaps the most outspoken individual Republican in Congress—no Truth Social post can muzzle her. She has come out against her party’s obstruction of the Epstein files, her party’s decision to shut down the government instead of improving health insurance, and the funding and enabling by both parties of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

“You don’t HATE your government enough,” she said earlier this month in response to the shutdown. And she’s still going.

“I blame them for being so America last to the point where they are literally slaves to all the big industries in Washington, the military industrial complex, Big Pharma, health insurance industries, you name it,” Greene said later in the Carlson interview. “They are literally slaves to them, and they love foreign war so much.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called out the erosion of American soft power and international legitimacy in the age of Donald Trump, noting that the U.S. president’s actions have caused former economic strengths to become economic weaknesses.

“This decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship with the United States is now over. And as a consequence, many of our former strengths as a country … strengths based on close ties to America, have become our vulnerabilities,” Carney said during a Wednesday night speech to students in Ottawa. He also noted that Canadian manufacturing sectors and businesses were “under threat” due to Trump’s tariffs.

“Our relationship with the United States will never again be the same as it was … we have to take care of ourselves, because we can’t rely on one foreign partner. We have to take care of each other because we are stronger together,” he said.

These are harsh and alarming words to hear from the leader of what has been this country’s closest geographical and political ally for decades. But Carney’s view is entirely warranted. Trump has stoked conflict and disrespect by calling for Canada to be the 51st state, imposed harsh tariffs on Canadian goods, and overall tarnished what was once a fruitful relationship—all under the guise of his “America First” ideology. Now, Carney is thinking “Canada First.”

“Now, above all, we will build Canadian,” Carney continued. “Our upcoming budget will move forward with our Buy Canadian policy—prioritizing Canadian steel, aluminum, lumber, manufactured goods, and technology for Canadian projects.”

It isn’t just Canada. Countries throughout Europe have shifted away from the United States as they can no longer expect consistency and good faith negotiation from the Trump administration. So far “America First” has been more isolating than liberating.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was caught by his own words Wednesday night after CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called out Republicans for some shutdown hypocrisy.

Johnson initially thought he was making a good point by invoking a statement by Democratic Representative Katherine Clark, who spoke of using the shutdown as leverage despite knowing “that families will suffer.”

“It was pretty shocking today to hear them say that. They usually don’t say the quiet part out loud,” Johnson told Collins. But the CNN journalist then played a montage of Johnson’s fellow Republicans making similar statements, including then-vice presidential nominee JD Vance last year and President Donald Trump just last month.

“Some people might look at that and say, ‘Well, how is what Democrats are doing now different than what Republicans have argued before?’” Collins asked Johnson, who quickly claimed that those instances were “different times and different circumstances.”

Johnson insisted that the current shutdown was the first time that the government was shut down despite a clean continuing resolution being presented, and that Republicans have a clean record in that regard. But even if Vance’s statements last year could be claimed as “different circumstances,” Trump’s statements were only last month.

Trump has also publicly threatened to lay off federal workers, using their jobs as well as their backpay as leverage against the Democrats to get what he wants during the shutdown. Meanwhile, recent polls are not looking very good for the president, showing that as this standoff drags on, Trump and his fellow Republicans are taking a hit with the public.

Indiana Senate Republicans aren’t falling in line behind President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme to keep control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

Molly Swigart, a spokesperson for Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, put it simply when speaking to Politico Wednesday. “The votes aren’t there for redistricting,” she said.

Four people familiar with the matter spoke anonymously with Politico, and two of them suggested that Bray and his leadership team were holdouts on mid-cycle redistricting. “If Bray would personally release his leadership to support this, there would be enough votes for this to pass,” one of those people said.

The White House reportedly conducted a dial-in poll, which revealed that the majority of Republicans supported the redistricting effort. But one Republican claimed their colleagues had been confused by the poll’s instructions, and that the White House had not provided specific guidance on how to proceed with redistricting.

Three of the people who spoke anonymously with Politico said that Governor Mike Braun was inclined to call a special election in order to redraw the state’s congressional district maps to scrounge up extra GOP seats. In September, Braun had floated the idea of lawmakers returning for a special session in November, and warned that there could be “consequences” for breaking with Trump’s wishes.

A spokesperson for Braun told Politico that the governor was “confident” that he could secure a majority of state Senate Republicans to “ensure fair representation in Congress.”

The Trump administration has previously urged Indiana to follow the lead of other states’ redistricting efforts and deliver Trump one or two additional Republican House seats. In August, Vice President JD Vance visited with more than 55 Republicans at the Indiana state House, pressing them to approve a new map, and Trump met privately with the Republican heads of the Indiana House and Senate in the Oval Office.

Trump’s redistricting efforts are widespread across the country. On Wednesday, North Carolina Republicans passed a new congressional map that diluted the voting power of Black residents and merged districts to make them more conservative, likely giving the GOP another seat in Congress.