Vice President JD Vance’s ex-Marine cousin gave another blistering interview to detail why he spoke out against his lifelong party and the vice president, who he spent summers with as a kid.
Nate Vance, 45, told the BBC he is “pretty Republican” and even backs efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency to cut spending, but said he had to draw the line at his relative’s treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.
“It’s very strange for me, like, I’m pretty Republican, but I think this one issue we’re doing wrong,” he said of fractured U.S.-Ukraine relations. “And if it’s wrong, I should say something.”
Nate, who volunteered to fight Russia on the front lines for three years, did exactly that in an interview with Le Figaro. He told the French newspaper he was “disappointed” his “good” and “intelligent” cousin had so rapidly pulled support for Ukraine based off an argument where he was widely regarded to be the instigator.
Nate was particularly peeved the Trump Administration had a shouting match with Zelensky in front of news cameras broadcasting live, calling the meeting “an ambush of absolute dishonesty.”
The former Marine suggested Monday that alienating Ukraine may be more costly for the U.S. than it would be to continue offering military aid and intelligence sharing—two things the White House halted after its meeting with Zelensky went awry on Feb. 28.
Nate, who is five years older than the VP, said his first cousin was wrong to demand that Zelensky show gratitude to a Trump Administration he feels has worked against the Ukrainian cause.
“[It] would be odd for Donald Trump and my cousin to ask for his deference, because they’ve been actively working against his initiatives for the past three years,” Nate said of Vance’s viral “have you said thank you even once” line.
He also did not appreciate the way Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend, Brian Glenn, a reporter for the far-right “Real America’s Voice” YouTube channel, asked Zelensky about his decision to not wear a suit to the Oval Office meeting.
“I’m kind of attached to the Ukrainian issue,” he conceded, “but looking at that, if it were some other completely neutral issue, and I saw White House officials and kind-of-hack journalists that are political, belittling a foreign leader, I’d be like, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ Right? Why are we doing that? There’s a certain level of decorum that I expect from political leaders, especially in front of cameras.”
Nate, a native Texan who says he spent summers with the VP at their grandparents’ home in Middletown, Ohio, also suggested he found MAGA outrage over Zelensky not wearing a suit to be ridiculous.
“Everyone knows why he does that, and it’s kind of a symbolic thing,” he said of Zelensky’s wartime garb. “Who cares, right? Who cares? That is a silly hill to die on. And speaking of which, why, you know, why is Elon Musk in the Oval Office wearing a baseball hat and a T-shirt all the time?”
Nate said he pulled himself off the front line in Ukraine shortly after Trump’s election win. He does not know if he was on the radar of Russian intelligence, but he feared his relation to the VP meant he may be used as a bargaining chip if he were captured.
He responded to a number of people on X Sunday and Monday to answer questions and prove that he is, indeed, the VP’s cousin. He went as far as dropping family photos, including one where a 27-year-old Vance is smiling along with Usha and other loved ones for a family portrait between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
