Zara Reyes: Hi. Quick question. When did the Vice President become a reply guy?
Cole Bryant: Oh we're doing it — yes, okay, I have thoughts.
Zara Reyes: August 6th. August 7th, somewhere in there. JD Vance hops on X — which NBC confirmed he mostly runs himself, not staff — finds Marc Thiessen's post mocking Gen Z over $20 burritos, and responds with a fat-shaming attack. On a Fox News analyst. A conservative.
Cole Bryant: He went after someone on his own side?
Zara Reyes: Thiessen is Washington Post, Fox News — this is not a liberal journalist Vance can write off. And the White House's reaction wasn't 'we need to talk to him.' Their internal word for the post was 'banger.'
Cole Bryant: Wait — the administration said that? About a fat-shaming post?
Zara Reyes: The Times and NBC both reported it. And that one word is the whole story to me — because it means the office didn't accidentally become this. It means someone in that building looked at a VP physically mocking a pundit over burrito prices and thought: yes, more of that. That's a strategy.
Cole Bryant: So this isn't him going off-script. This is — wait, that means there's no script he's breaking.
Zara Reyes: Okay but that's the part I want to slow down on — because there IS a script, and he broke it. Lent. He took X off his phone for Lent. Months.
Cole Bryant: Right — and then his reason for reinstalling it was, I'm not making this up, to be exposed to 'unfiltered raw opinions.' That's the framing. Which — dude, that's not a return, that's a manifesto.
Zara Reyes: No but here's what actually complicates your permission structure read — Susie Wiles reportedly told him to cool it. White House chief of staff. That's not nothing.
Cole Bryant: And then the White House denied the Times reported that. Which — wait, why deny that? If your VP is a loose cannon, you deny it. If everything's fine, you ignore it. Denying something boring means the boring thing is true.
Zara Reyes: That's actually the tell.
Cole Bryant: He tried, right? He actually removed the app. Wiles said slow down, he slowed down, and then within months the Thiessen fat-shaming post is the thing everyone's screenshotting. That gap between 'I'm returning for raw opinions' and immediately going after a Fox News guy over a burrito — that's not a strategy landing. That's a relapse. No, wait — I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's both. But it doesn't feel clean.
Zara Reyes: No, I think you're pointing at something real. The restraint happened. Someone got in his ear — Wiles, probably others — and it worked, briefly. Which means this isn't a guy who never felt the pressure. It's a guy who felt it, tried to comply, then couldn't.
Cole Bryant: So which is it? Because those are different stories. Permission structure means the White House greenlit the Thiessen post. Relapse means he went rogue and they called it a banger to save face. Which one are we saying?
Zara Reyes: Both. But look at WHO. That's the part that actually proves the calculation — because Thiessen isn't some random pundit. Marc Thiessen is a Fox News fixture. He's the Wall Street Journal op-ed type. And his original post was standard conservative economic messaging — mocking Gen Z for complaining about $20 burritos. That's the party line. Vance didn't just fat-shame him, he implicitly sided with the Gen Z grievance. Against his own coalition's talking point.
Cole Bryant: Wait — so he's siding with Gen Z? Against Fox News messaging?
Zara Reyes: That's the move. And it's not the only one. Terry Moran — former ABC News — Vance called him 'a leftwing radical' on X. Okay, fine, that's the expected enemy. But then Josh Kraushaar of Jewish Insider gets 'the biggest hack in Washington.' These aren't random. There's a target profile.
Cole Bryant: Jewish Insider is not a liberal outlet. That's — no, that's not the MSNBC guy.
Zara Reyes: Right. Picture a Fox News booker — it's like 7am, they're scrolling X, and the VP just called their regular contributor fat over a burrito post. That booker doesn't think 'loose cannon.' They think 'whose team is he actually on?' That's a relationship being recalibrated in real time.
Cole Bryant: Dude. Okay — so the Thiessen attack isn't punching at the media, it's punching inside the tent. That's a primary move.
Zara Reyes: That's the creator playbook, lowkey. Pick fights your audience agrees with, make the in-group feel the old guard is the enemy. He's also gone on record calling the press one of the 'least trusted institutions' — 'angry all the time,' 'fake.' That's not pushback, that's a brand position. He's running an account, not an office.
Cole Bryant: No — I mean, okay, maybe — but does this actually work for 2028? Because Thiessen has a Washington Post column. Kraushaar has readers who are, like, exactly the donor class Vance eventually needs.
Zara Reyes: Genuinely unresolved. And the Armenian genocide post thing — the White House deleting his own VP's post — that's the piece that blows the whole 'everyone's aligned' story open. We'll get there and it makes this messier.
Cole Bryant: Okay the genocide post is the thing that — wait, that's the one that actually breaks the 'everyone's coordinated' frame for me. February 2026, the White House deletes Vance's own post because it used the word 'genocide' — about the Armenian genocide — and called it a staff error. That's the first time the whole administration had ever said that word in that context.
Zara Reyes: A staff error. On the VP's personal account that NBC confirmed he writes himself.
Cole Bryant: Right — so either someone else typed it, which breaks the whole 'he writes his own posts' thing, or he typed it and they panicked and lied about it. And I mean, neither version is the permission structure working cleanly. That's the institution improvising.
Zara Reyes: Which means it's both. That's the actual calibrated read. The 'banger' call on the Thiessen post — that's real permission. The genocide deletion — that's real scrambling. Both happening inside the same White House, probably within months of each other.
Cole Bryant: So Wiles says slow down, they delete a post, they call the next one a banger — those are three different signals from the same building. That's not a strategy. That's three different people with three different risk tolerances.
Zara Reyes: And that's actually scarier than a clean permission structure, lowkey.
Cole Bryant: No, yeah — because at least a strategy has an off switch. This is — wait, so on 2028: burning Thiessen, burning Kraushaar, going after conservative media — does that primary math actually work without the donor class? Like genuinely, I don't know the answer.
Zara Reyes: Unresolved. The counterargument is that being willing to eat Marc Thiessen alive on X is exactly what a MAGA primary electorate rewards. The problem is you still need Fox News to not be actively hostile when the general comes. And Thiessen has that column, those relationships.
Cole Bryant: So the defensible claim is — it's not undisciplined and it's not fully coordinated. It's a VP who absorbed the creator-economy playbook, got institutional cover some of the time, and the Armenian genocide deletion proves even the institution is winging it. Nobody's fully in control of this account. That's the thing that's actually unresolved.
Zara Reyes: Fine. Maybe it's messy. Maybe Wiles is losing this particular fight. But JD Vance, sitting Vice President of the United States, fat-shamed Marc Thiessen on X over burritos. And the official record from the White House is 'banger.' That's it. That's the institution's answer. Whatever his internal state is — relapse, strategy, creator arc, all of it — the office already weighed in.
Cole Bryant: The second-highest office in the country called a fat-shaming post a banger. Out loud. That's — I mean, that's the sentence.
Zara Reyes: That's the sentence. Put it in the history books.
Cole Bryant: My detail I'm not over? The White House called it a banger. Yours?
Zara Reyes: Thiessen is a Fox News fixture and Vance still did it. Goodnight.
