Statements made by Vice President JD Vance in the now infamous Signal chat indicate that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top Trump administration officials were working, perhaps without the President’s full knowledge, against the key tenets of Trump’s ‘America First’ mission.
Though Vance vowed a willingness to “keep these concerns to myself,” the Vice President offered a full-throated set of objections to the Houthi strikes and their timing — as revealed in detail in the chat.
Vance asserted that the strikes, even if successful, would be more conducive to helping Europe than America — because Europe relies on the Houthi-threatened Suez Canal traffic far more than the U.S. does.
The strikes also, in Vance’s estimation, raised the risks of an oil price surge, guaranteed to hurt Americans at the pump and for what?
We have the entire Signal Chat!
— Kaecey
Looks like it was Michael Waltz that added the journalist (if added at all).
It also proves JD Vance was against the attack. That it goes against the message of their campaign. pic.twitter.com/ipjfQpExko(@AmericanVsGov) March 26, 2025
Vance’s strike reluctance and his staying true — at first — to his MAGA-aligned vision of a primarily self-interested America (and not an America as the keeper of world order) is powerfully expressed in the following chat contribution from the Vice President:
3 percent of US trade runs through the suez. 40 percent of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.
I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc
Vance attributes to Trump the goal of sending a “message,” but suggests it might be a message that conflicts with Trump’s other topline messages — such as that America wants to stop being Europe’s bodyguard.
When Vance says he doesn’t like America “bailing out Europe again,” Hegseth — despite Vance’s presentation of the data (3% vs. 40% Suez trade) — insists the attack is largely in America’s interests.
The Defense Secretary cites “Restoring Freedom of Navigation” as “a core national interest” — even if, evidently, that navigation is not primarily used for and by American business.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz told Vance “it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes.”
But why? That’s the question MAGA U.S. Congressman Thomas Massie (R-VW) asked after the attacks, when he said the airstrikes are “not America First” and that the Signal chats proved there was “no urgency” (echoing Vance) and that therefore Congress should have been notified.
Hegseth told Vance: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this.”
So America is, under Trump, still the “world’s police officer” — as journalist Zeeshan Aleem puts it at MSNBC — despite all the administration’s proclamations against a globalist outlook and its denigration of interventionist neocons.
The Vice President offered a clear America First-aligned objection, but Hegseth, Waltz and company went ahead anyway with a strike against a Houthi group that had been quiet since December — all to help Europe’s trade and “send a message” about American military might.
Massie is concerned that, as he told Responsible Statecraft, “long term, our meddling in the Middle East makes more enemies for us, whether it’s, you know, supplying all the bombs that are being dropped on Gaza, or whether it’s being in Afghanistan for over two decades, we’re creating new enemies that we don’t need to have.”
Expressing his concern, Massie described specifically what the America First movement vowed not to do. Vance attempted to nudge the chat group back toward that view and agenda, but having promised to “keep his views” to himself, he found his nudge pushed aside as the bombs fell.
