Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani says Vice President JD Vance has presidential potential yet also personality traits that make him a dangerous possibility as president, after Vance pinned GOP midterm losses on the Iran war.
Rudy Giuliani told viewers on his YouTube livestream Thursday that he sees real upside in Vice President JD Vance while flagging what he called clear risks in how Vance thinks and talks about power.
The Hill reported the former mayor’s remarks came one day after Vance posted a lengthy online statement blaming the Iran war for Republicans losing their House and Senate majorities.
Giuliani did not bury the lead. He paired praise with a direct warning about the kind of mind a president needs.
"I see presidential potential with you,"
he said, then added the sharper line.
"I also see certain dangers in your personality, which make you a dangerous possibility as president."
Giuliani tied his concern to Vance’s midterm post. He said a president cannot let fixed slogans run the show.
"To be president, you have to have the flexibility of mind, not to have slogans dominate your thinking,"
Giuliani said on the livestream.
"That’s the feeling I got from you yesterday when you said that the election was determined by the war."
He rejected the war-as-main-cause framing outright. Giuliani said the conflict “wasn’t mainly, mostly determined by the war” and called it “a sub part.” In his view, the economy decided the elections.
That puts the former mayor at odds with the vice president’s own account of what just happened to the Republican majorities.
On Wednesday, Vance wrote that the Iran war explained the defeat. He went further, inviting critics to defend the trade-off in plain terms.
"The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,"
Vance posted.
"If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest."
Some on the right criticized that statement. Giuliani’s response framed it as more than a postmortem dispute. He treated it as evidence of rigid thinking that could travel with Vance into a future White House run.
A Gallup poll released before the midterms gave both sides numbers to work with. Roughly 47 percent of voters said the war would be an “extremely” important issue when they cast ballots. Another 30 percent called it “very” important.
At the same time, half of respondents marked the economy as an extremely important factor. Giuliani leaned on that economic weight. Vance leaned on the war and on what he said the president had already acknowledged.
The two men are not arguing over whether the Middle East conflict mattered. They are arguing over whether it was the main driver or a secondary one after kitchen-table costs.
Vance is widely viewed as a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028. Observers already see the midterm defeats as a potential drag on those aspirations.
Last month the vice president said that if he runs in 2028, President Trump would endorse him. Asked about those comments, Trump did not lock it in.
"I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it,"
Trump said, while still offering a positive assessment.
"he’s a very talented person and he’s a very good person."
That leaves the endorsement question open even as Giuliani, a longtime Trump ally and former New York City mayor, publicly grades Vance’s temperament for the top job.
Giuliani’s critique stays inside the conservative family. He grants Vance talent and upside. He simply refuses to treat a single-cause slogan about the war as serious presidential analysis when voters also ranked the economy at the top of their concerns.
Republican voters who just lost the House and Senate will decide which explanation holds up. They will also decide whether flexibility or fixed talking points better fits the next nominee.
Primary contests reward clarity. They also punish leaders who freeze on one explanation when the country is weighing several at once.
