Former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), who served as president of the Heritage Foundation from 2013 to 2107, defended Vice President JD Vance, a potential 2028 GOP presidential candidate, on social media on Friday.
[NOTE: The Wall Street Journal‘s conservative columnist Kimberley Strassel has called Vance a “sensitive bunny,” and recently wrote a column titled, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, by J.D. Vance.”]
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, by JD Vance by @KimStrassel https://t.co/MA9dKZ2zRR via @WSJopinion
— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) July 24, 2026
DeMint wrote: “Vance Derangement is a condition that looks remarkably similar to the Trump Derangement Syndrome that afflicted so many in 2016 and some now find it safer and more convenient to aim their fire at the VP rather than at the president whose agenda he is working diligently to advance.”
Veteran of the conservative legal movement Gregg Nunziata, who served as Chief Nominations Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, policy counsel to the Senate Republican Policy Committee, and later as general counsel and domestic policy adviser to then-Sen. Marco Rubio, responded to DeMint: “I’m hard pressed to think of someone who did more damage to the American right as a productive force in our politics than Senator DeMint. His fingerprints are all over so much decline and so many self goals.”
I’m hard pressed to think of someone who did more damage to the American right as a productive force in our politics than Senator DeMint. His fingerprints are all over so much decline and so many self goals https://t.co/o8pZ8Q6Vzy
— Gregg Nunziata (@greggnunziata) August 15, 2026
[NOTE: In January, Nunziata wrote The Guardian column, “JD Vance: ‘despicable toady for Trump’ – and 2028 candidate in all but name.”]
DeMint, a leader of the pre-MAGA Tea Party Movement, is the founder of the Senate Conservatives Fund PAC, and the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), which has bolstered the political careers of Republicans such as U.S. Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO). Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows leads CPI.