Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley accused Vice President Vance Tuesday of not taking a clear stance on Israel — slamming him for trying to “be both.” “Right is right.
Page A6From§Eachthe milkman edition — 2 September 2026
Republican elder orders vice president to choose: Israel, or Tucker Carlson.
As it ran on the front
Look, this is not complicated, and I don't know why it's being treated like a soap opera. The Republican Party stands with Israel. Full stop. Always has. That's not a debate, that's a bumper sticker, and if Nikki Haley wants to stand up and remind the sitting vice president which side of that bumper sticker he's supposed to be reading, that's just party discipline, that's healthy, that's — okay, technically she told him to 'choose a side,' which, if you think about it for more than four seconds, means there currently are sides. Within the party. About Israel. Which — that's not what I meant to say.
Here's the actual argument, and it's a good one: courting Jewish Republican donors is smart coalition politics, plain and simple, the same way any candidate courts any bloc, and there is nothing remotely strange about a vice president doing donor outreach in an election year. None. It happens every cycle. It is not, in any way, an admission that the party has a Tucker Carlson-shaped hole in its foreign policy that needs papering over with a fundraising circuit before anybody notices — I did not just say 'papering over,' strike that, I meant 'reinforcing.'…
…(cont) Because the truth is Tucker Carlson doesn't loom over anything. He's a media figure with opinions, like anybody else, and the idea that a sitting vice president has to publicly triangulate around one podcast host's foreign policy views instead of just having his own is a media narrative, cooked up by people who want to make this into a bigger deal than — actually, Politico ran that 'still looms' framing, and The Hill ran the 'choose a side' quote, so I suppose two separate outlets independently noticing the same tension isn't nothing. Fine. Maybe it's something.
But the headline isn't 'party in disarray.' The headline is 'coalition management,' which is a normal, boring, unremarkable part of governing, and if it takes an ultimatum from a former UN ambassador to remind everybody which team they're on, well — that's called leadership. I'll stand by that. Mostly.
“Same club, different loyalty test — it's not policy, it's who keeps the microphone. Either way, the check for the base's tax break and the check for the ally's aid package both stay exactly where their donors want them.”
“Our vice president stands firmly with our allies, full stop, that's not up for debate. I mean, obviously any adult can watch a podcast and still — wait, why would he have to publicly choose at all? Never mind, moving on.”
The receipts
Vice President JD Vance’s answer to a question about conservative pundit Tucker Carlson left some in the audience disappointed.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.