JD Vance confronts Jewish GOP skeptics ahead of a potential 2028 run

Vance Faces Jewish Republican Doubters at Private Las Vegas Forum

Earthguardiansonline.com – Hours after wrapping up a campaign stop in Michigan where he attacked Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, Vice President JD Vance stepped into a closed-door conversation with one of the most consequential donor-activist blocs in American politics. The Republican Jewish Coalition gathered at the Venetian resort in Las Vegas on Monday night for what its organizers framed as an unscripted exchange — and the roughly 45-minute session quickly moved past pleasantries into the thorniest questions facing the party’s presumed 2028 standard-bearer.

The event was deliberately kept out of the press. Reporters were stationed one floor beneath the room where Vance sat across from Norm Coleman, the former Minnesota senator who chairs the RJC board nationally. No audience questions were permitted; the format was a moderated dialogue. Audio of the conversation was later obtained by a person present in the room.

A Coalition Under Strain

The RJC is not a peripheral interest group. Its membership skews heavily toward high-dollar donors and politically active activists who have historically played an outsized role in shaping the GOP’s presidential nomination process. The organization maintains close ties to Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who poured more than $100 million into Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. Whether Adelson herself was in the room Monday was not confirmed, though RJC leaders who spoke afterward offered glowing assessments of the evening.

Still, the coalition’s mood has shifted. In recent months, Vance has voiced a growing wariness about the depth of America’s commitment to Israel — a stance that has unsettled Jewish Republicans who had assumed the party’s next nominee would be an unambiguous ally of Jerusalem. Some activists have openly floated Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a preferable candidate. Senator Ted Cruz, himself a potential 2028 contender, recently declared that the party has not yet “coalesced” around Vance and promised a “full discussion” about the GOP’s foreign-policy identity before the next election cycle.

Both Rubio and Cruz were invited to Monday’s RJC gathering. Neither could attend, for reasons the organization did not detail.

The Elephants in the Room

Vance did not shy from the discomfort. At one point in the Coleman-moderated exchange, he acknowledged what he called “some of the obvious elephants in the room,” pointing to the measurable decline in public enthusiasm for the US-Israel relationship, particularly among younger Americans. He argued that Republicans must

“actually get out there and talk about the ways in which it is in the best interest of the United States of America.”

The remark landed against a backdrop of two major conflicts: Israel’s war in Gaza, launched after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks, and the more recent US-Israel military campaign against Iran. Across party lines, polling has shown a noticeable dip in support for Israel, a trend that worries the donor class the RJC represents.

Carlson, Rogan, and the Media Question

The conversation turned pointed when Coleman asked how Vance decides which media platforms to accept. The answer led directly to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who has argued the United States should abandon Israel as an ally. Coleman noted that Carlson, along with Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan, and Nick Fuentes, “have platformed antisemites.”

“I recognize a lot of people in this room might disagree with things that Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly or Joe Rogan has said,” Vance replied, before drawing a sharp line between Rogan and Fuentes, calling them “very, very different” people.

Fuentes, a White nationalist and Holocaust denier, was hosted by President Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 — a fact that has drawn scrutiny from conservative commentators. Vance defended his broader media strategy, insisting Republicans must

“be willing to go everywhere and bring our message anywhere and to any person.”

Not all attendees were satisfied with that answer. Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Gen Z Jewish activist in the room, told reporters afterward that Vance “totally deflected” on the Carlson question and predicted the former Fox host would “continue to dog” the vice president much as far-left streamer Hasan Piker has been linked to El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race. Carlson did not respond to a request for comment on the RJC appearance.

The Carlson-Vance dynamic has grown more complicated since Trump publicly fell out with the podcast host over the Iran war and labeled him “totally irrelevant.” Vance has nonetheless declined to formally disavow Carlson, even as Carlson himself has apologized for having backed the president’s Iran posture.

First Return Since 2022

Monday marked Vance’s first appearance at an RJC gathering since 2022, when he was running for Senate in Ohio and attended the event without taking the stage. Much has changed inside the party in the intervening years: a new president, two wars in the Middle East, a fractious media landscape, and a donor base that is watching closely to see which candidate will command its loyalty in 2028.

RJC CEO Matt Brooks told reporters earlier in the day that the organization chose a private format specifically to permit an “open and honest” conversation. Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who now sits on the RJC board, offered a more favorable read of the evening:

“The vice president really helped himself tonight. He answered a lot of questions that people had about where his heart is.”

Whether that reassurance is enough to quiet the skeptics in the room — or the donors who fund it — remains an open question as the party’s internal contest over its post-Trump foreign-policy identity sharpens ahead of 2028.