In the span of 24 hours, US Vice President JD Vance flew home from failed peace talks with Iran and watched the Hungarian prime minister he personally campaigned for lose power in a landslide. Back home, polls show he is the most unpopular vice president in modern American history.
It has not been a good week to be JD Vance.
Sunday exposed a pattern hardening across his first year in office: a string of high-profile diplomatic and political bets that went sideways, piling onto a domestic political slide that began long before Islamabad.
The negotiator who couldn’t close
Vance arrived in Islamabad on April 11 as Washington’s lead negotiator in the highest-level direct talks between the US and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. After 21 hours of negotiations, he boarded Air Force Two and flew home without a deal.
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“The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement,” Vance told reporters before departing. “They have chosen not to accept our terms.”
The core US demand — that Iran commit to abandoning its nuclear weapons program — remained out of reach. Iran’s lead negotiator, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Washington had failed to earn Tehran’s trust. Iran’s foreign ministry cited the Strait of Hormuz, nuclear guarantees, sanctions relief, and reparations as the primary unresolved issues.
Read: US-Iran Nuclear Talks Collapse in Islamabad as Tehran Rejects Key Demands
The entire US negotiating team — which also included special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — left no members behind in Islamabad to pursue further talks. Pakistan, which hosted and mediated the negotiations, urged both sides to maintain the ceasefire. President Donald Trump responded to the breakdown by threatening a full naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The kingmaker who backed the loser
Hours before the Iran talks collapsed, Orbán conceded defeat in Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary election — a vote Vance had flown to Budapest to personally influence less than a week earlier. Appearing alongside Orbán at a campaign rally dubbed the “Day of Friendship,” Vance told reporters he was “here to help” the long-serving prime minister secure a fifth term, calling Orbán’s leadership a model for the continent.
The gamble did not pay off. With 97% of precincts counted, opposition leader Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won 138 of 199 parliamentary seats on 53.6% of the vote, against Fidesz’s 37.8%. Magyar declared, “Tonight, truth prevailed over lies. Together, we liberated Hungary.”
Vance’s Budapest trip had already drawn international ridicule. He appeared at an Orbán campaign rally while accusing the European Union of committing what he called “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference” he had ever witnessed, while actively campaigning for a foreign leader days before their national election. Magyar fired back: “No foreign country may interfere in Hungarian elections. This is our country.”
Read: Vance Rallies for Orbán in Budapest…While Accusing the EU of Interference
“Hungary has chosen Europe,”European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on X, adding, “a country reclaims its European path.”
Here come the numbers
The foreign policy stumbles pile onto a domestic political slide that began long before Islamabad. According to polling aggregated by CNN, Vance’s net approval rating has dropped from positive 3 points at the start of his term to negative 18 — a 21-point collapse that CNN data analyst Harry Enten called historically unprecedented for a vice president at this stage in office.
A CNN/SSRS poll conducted in late March placed his approval at 37%, with 62% disapproving — a net rating of negative 25. A Civiqs survey through April 8 showed 57% of Americans hold an unfavorable view of the vice president.
“JD Vance is not doing too hot to trot at this point,” Enten said, adding that Vance appears to be “dragged down along with the president of the United States.”
His odds in the 2028 Republican presidential primary have also slipped, falling from 53% six months ago to 37% as of late March, according to prediction market Kalshi.
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