On July 15, Vice President JD Vance advanced a troubling narrative on the Joe Rogan Podcast echoed a rhetorical framework that has become closely associated with Tucker Carlson’s commentary on Israel than Donald Trump, who is the one whose policies he should be defending, not undermining.

The central narrative he constructs in this interview is one that closely resembles Tucker Carlson’s ideas on Israel that has spent the last few years developing. Vance does not repeat Carlson’s language verbatim. Instead, he echoes many of the same assumptions about Israeli influence, American foreign policy, and the motivations of pro-Israel policymakers.

First, Vance advances an all-too-familiar accusation about Israel in that it supposedly possesses extraordinary influence over American politics. This is a source of a conspiracy theory that is often leveled against Israel and distorts what is really going on. According to this narrative, there are pro-Israel advocacy groups, donors, and lobbying organizations that exercise a level of political power that far exceeds that of other interest groups. What he leaves out is that almost every nation invests in efforts to influence public opinion in line with its national interests. The implication that Vance advances is that Israel is especially guilty of influencing our elected officials to prioritize Israel’s preferences because they are unable or unwilling to resist this influence.

Second, certain Israeli officials secretly finance American influencers and media campaigns. Here, the term is “secretly. “This is a conspiratorial accusation that apparently only applies to Israel. That description would be accurate when discussing Qatari, Russian, or Chinese influence on these formats. Applying conspiratorial language selectively to Israel suggests that Israel alone exercises hidden and uniquely sinister control over American public discourse. Here, he........

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