Vice President JD Vance's bid to distance himself from President Donald Trump ahead of the race for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination drew withering scorn from the hosts of Pod Save America, who branded his approach the weakest of any top contender's in the wake of the GOP's historic wipeout in the midterms.

According to Alternet, the assessment came during the latest episode of Pod Save America, filmed live in Washington, D.C. The former Obama administration staffers and liberal commentators celebrated the Democratic Party's massive electoral gains and examined what they mean for the future, before turning to the reactions of top Republicans expected to run for president in 2028 — including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and outgoing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, each of whom has advanced his own theory about what hurt the GOP most with voters.

The reaction that drew the most ire from the hosts came from Vance, who pinned the blame for the Republican losses squarely on the Iran war and claimed that his own personal data experts had singled out four factors polling showed were the most important for voters: "1) End the [Iran] war; 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation; 3) Put America First; 4) Change our relationship to Israel."

Dan Pfeiffer, a polling expert and former senior communications advisor for Barack Obama, took aim at Vance's gambit to try to become president in 2028, highlighting the vice president's poor record of winning elections on his own — specifically his 2022 campaign for the Senate in Ohio.

"JD Vance's strategy for running for president is so f——g stupid, right?" Pfeiffer said. "JD Vance has run for office once in his life. He underperformed every single other Republican on the ballot in Ohio [in 2022] at the time, and he thinks he's going to pull off some trick where he serves as Trump's vice president but also separates himself. It's like watching an elephant walk on a tightrope. Like, what are we doing?"

He added: "It's just like there is only one way in which JD Vance can become the Republican nominee. It is, 'Donald Trump picks him.' That is the only way. And the only way he can become president is, Donald Trump picks him and he gets lucky and Democrats nominate the wrong person."

Co-host Jon Lovett, a former Obama speechwriter, grimly joked that there was another way for Vance to become president, alluding to the possibility that Trump may die before the end of his current term.

Co-host Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council spokesman, said Vance's claim that Israel was a top-four issue for voters did not pass the smell test and amounted to a poor attempt to pander to anti-Israel conservatives who already hate him.

"There's absolutely no way that the number four issue from the smartest data scientists he knew was Israel," Vietor said. "Like we've all seen the same data. It was like 15 on the list."

He continued: "Obviously, it's wrapped up in the Iran war and inflation and cost of living. But this is JD Vance trying to play to the Tucker Carlson audience, to the Nick Fuentes audience, the kind of 'groyper' far-right. And those people hate him. They hate him. And that is not ever going to change. They hate him because of his identity. They hate him because of his ties to Peter Thiel and the fact that Peter Thiel basically created him in a little [venture capitalist] lab and then birthed him onto all of us. Like, it's not happening."

The barbs capped a round of post-mortems among would-be Republican contenders, each offering rival explanations for the scale of the party's midterm defeat as the 2028 cycle takes shape. With Vance blaming the Iran war and elevating Israel as a core voter concern, and Cruz and DeSantis advancing theories of their own, the rival post-mortems offer an early snapshot of the arguments competing to define the Republican nominating contest.