Republican Congressman Refuses to Back Vance in 2028 Over Israel Remarks

“When people want to refuse to take responsibility for their own failures, what weak people do is they blame the Jews, and that’s exactly what he did,” Fine said.

By United with Israel staff

Florida Republican Rep. Randy Fine has declared that he will not support Vice President JD Vance in the 2028 Republican presidential primaries, accusing him of betraying President Donald Trump, scapegoating Israel and American Jews for the GOP’s sweeping midterm election losses, and prolonging the war with Iran through failed diplomacy.

In an interview with the Jerusalem Post published Monday, Fine sharply criticized the vice president and warned about the growing influence of anti-Israel voices within the Republican Party.

“I won’t endorse JD Vance in the 2028 primary,” Fine told the Post.

“Given the things that he said about Israel and everything else, I thought it was important to say I found Vance’s message to be abhorrent and wrong.”

The confrontation follows Vance’s controversial assessment of last week’s midterm elections, which saw Democrats capture both chambers of Congress.

In a lengthy statement posted Wednesday on X, Vance attributed the Republican losses primarily to the continuing war with Iran.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote.

The vice president identified four priorities that he said could win back disaffected Republican voters: ending the Iran war, reducing inflation and living costs, putting American interests first, and changing Washington’s relationship with Israel.

His explicit call to “Change our relationship to Israel” provoked criticism from pro-Israel conservatives who viewed it as an attempt to shift responsibility for the Republican defeat onto the Jewish state.

Fine went further, accusing Vance of blaming American Jews for the party’s failures, although the vice president had not explicitly singled out Jewish Americans.

“When people want to refuse to take responsibility for their own failures, what weak people do is they blame the Jews, and that’s exactly what he did,” Fine said. “And I find it inexcusable.”

The congressman also accused Vance of betraying Trump by distancing himself from policies he had helped implement.

“I thought his comments were a betrayal of the president,” Fine said.

Speaking separately on LiveNOW from FOX on Sunday, Fine compared Vance’s rhetoric to the political atmosphere in Germany before the Nazis came to power, saying it “smacked of the kind of thing you would read in 1932 Germany.”

The dispute has exposed growing Republican divisions over Israel, Iran and the direction of the party’s America First movement.

Vance has long been associated with the party’s noninterventionist wing, which opposes prolonged American military involvement overseas and questions the costs of Washington’s commitments to foreign allies.

Although he defended Trump’s decision to strike Iran, Vance had expressed reservations about a prolonged conflict and subsequently became a leading figure in diplomatic efforts to end the fighting.

Fine argued that the problem was not the decision to attack Iran, but the failure to bring the war to a decisive conclusion.

“People aren’t angry that we stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Fine said. “People are angry about the consequences of trying to negotiate with people who are not honorable.”

“JD Vance is the reason that the war in Iran is not over because he led us astray in claiming that we could do a peace deal,” he charged.

Fine specifically criticized an earlier memorandum of understanding negotiated with Tehran, accusing Vance of placing misplaced confidence in the Iranian regime.

“Remember the idiotic MOU? Well, that was him. How’d that work out?” Fine asked.

The congressman also raised concerns about conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, one of the most prominent Republican-aligned critics of the Iran war and America’s close relationship with Israel.

Carlson has repeatedly argued that Washington was drawn into the conflict by Israel and has accused the Trump administration of subordinating American interests to those of the Jewish state.

His rhetoric has drawn accusations of antisemitism from pro-Israel conservatives, while his friendship with Vance and the vice president’s reluctance to publicly distance himself from Carlson have become sources of friction within the party.

Asked about the political forces surrounding Vance, Fine singled out Carlson’s influence.

“That comes from the Tucker Carlson wing of the Republican Party, and it’s disqualified,” he said.

Fine also warned that hostility toward Jews and Israel had become increasingly acceptable in American political discourse.

“One would think October 7 would have created great sympathy for the Jewish people,” he said. “Instead, those who have always hated us feel emboldened to say the most ridiculous things.”

Rejecting any suggestion that Israel or American Jews were responsible for the Republican defeat, Fine insisted that the party needed to examine its own failures.

“We have to make a hard assessment about why things went badly, but it ain’t because of Israel, and it’s certainly not because of the Jews,” he said.

Fine has instead expressed a preference for Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz as possible presidential candidates in 2028, highlighting the growing divide between the party’s traditionally pro-Israel establishment and its noninterventionist wing ahead of the race to succeed Trump.