By Yiannis Damellos
August 31 2026
There was a time when the vice president of the United States had fairly straightforward duties. He might preside over the Senate, attend cabinet meetings, travel abroad, reassure allies, or occasionally stand beside the president looking presidential. Well, what do you know? Those days are apparently over cause JD has acquired a new and considerably more hazardous portfolio as Interpreter-in-Chief.
Oh boy, that's why when a good employee of yours says "I got a family to attend to, kids to look after and a husband who wants more," you tell them "wait a minute, who told you you can actually leave? Who's gonna do your job, now, missy?" I guess the girl was committed to leaving, being outsmarted by a human printer in a bogus shop of political horrors, and guess who got the job?
JD. His new job is to explain what the president meant when the president said something that sounded like something else. He is the new Interpreter-in-Chief. Trust me, no one knows what Trump really means except God Himself, yet JD, as a Catholic, is closer to God and has internal info that no one else possesses in the White House.
For example, on Monday, Vance was asked about Donald Trump's extraordinary social-media post showing Iran's Kharg Island being blown to smithereens in an AI-generated video. Kharg is not some obscure patch of desert. Before the war, it handled about 90% of Iran's oil exports.
The Pentagon, however, said the United States had not attacked Kharg Island, and Iran called Trump's post “laughable.” Because when they saw it, they could not stop laughing; even the Supreme Leader, whose father was blown to pieces recently, literally fell off his throne and hurt his arm- yes, the only one left.
So naturally the vice president stepped forward. “The president likes to switch it up on social media a little bit,” Vance explained. Like, that was the understatement of the year, but ah. Switch it up? Is this what American strategic communications have become? That was rhetorical, just kidding. Anyway, let's see who switched it up.
The president says he destroyed an Iranian oil terminal. The Pentagon says he didn't. Iran says the whole thing is ridiculous. And the vice president literally switched it up, explaining that the president was merely “switching it up.”
But Vance was not finished.
Trump, he explained, would be the first to say he does not announce military actions on social media. Really? All these "we are going to blow to pieces, destroy one of the oldest civilizations in the history of the world, etc. What was that?
JD says Trump was merely sending a message. Boy, JD is good, and definitely he can replace Leavitt, no questions asked. Wait, this last thing about the message raises an interesting question. What is the difference between announcing that you have bombed something and posting a computer-generated video of yourself bombing it while insisting that you haven't actually bombed it?
Apparently, the answer is: interpretation. And this is where Vance's new job becomes indispensable for disseminating the messages sent by an old man in a House with a fancy new ballroom. Trump speaks. Vance interprets. The Pentagon corrects. Iran laughs. The White House interprets the correction. The president posts again. And somewhere in Washington, an exhausted civil servant reaches for a dictionary and discovers that the word reality has been removed.
You almost have to admire the Iranians. Imagine living in a country at war with an American president who can wake up one morning, pick up his phone and announce—or appear to announce—the destruction of one of your country's most important economic assets. Then you discover that it wasn't destroyed. Then you discover that the video showing it being destroyed was generated by artificial intelligence. Then you discover that the vice president says it was only a message. Then you discover that the message was apparently intended to tell you what America might do if America decided to do what America just appeared to say it had already done.
At some point, the Iranian national security apparatus must simply have stopped taking notes. And maybe that's the purpose of all this bogusness. To make the Iranians turn soft. To make them think.
“What's happening?”
“Trump posted something.”
“Did we get bombed?”
“No.”
“Is the island still there?”
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“Vance says it's a message.”
“What does the message say?”
“We don't know.”
“Then why is it a message?”
“Because Trump posted it.”
And there you have the foreign policy doctrine of the social-media age. The event is the message. This is not entirely new. Actually, it fits McLuhan's theory like a glove. Governments have always used ambiguity, propaganda, deception, and psychological warfare. The difference is that now the commander in chief can personally manufacture the visual evidence before breakfast.
The old military maxim was that wars are fought with steel. Trump appears to have discovered that they can also be fought with pixels. And the pixels can be considerably more explosive.
There is something almost wonderfully primitive about the whole thing. For centuries, rulers sent ambassadors carrying letters sealed with wax. Then came radio, television, diplomatic communiqués and carefully choreographed presidential statements.
Now the president sends a meme. And the vice president explains what the meme meant. Which makes Vance perhaps the most important translator in the world. Not English into Farsi. Not Farsi into English. Trump into reality. And I've got to give it to him cause that's a difficult language to master. There are no reliable dictionaries. The grammar changes hourly. A statement can mean its opposite before lunch. And the word "shit" is a no-no, cause it's got multiple meanings, and JD has other things to tend to except Presidential Linguistics and Semantics.
And the Interpreter-in-Chief has another problem.
He has to explain not only what Trump said, but what Trump meant after everybody discovered that what Trump said wasn't true. That requires extraordinary linguistic flexibility.
“Did the United States attack Kharg Island?” asked the reporter. “No, answered the Interpreter-in-Chief.
“Did the president say it was attacked?”
“Yes.”
“Was he lying?”
“No. He was sending a message.” The man is a natural. He should never be VP. He should have always been the Interpreter-in-Chief.
Anyway, the annoying journalists realized there was a lot of laughing involved, and they did not let it go away that easily.
“What message?”
“That we could attack it.”
“Will we?”
“I don't know.”
Here is the point at which the Supreme Leader could not take it any longer and ordered a hookah with Egyptian tobacco and lemonade. That press conference was funnier than Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. And it wasn't even the end of it, courtesy of Trump's usual victims — the president's press team, you know, the collateral ones.!!!
“Then why show it being destroyed?” they asked.
“Because the president likes to switch it up on social media.”
At this point, even George Orwell might have asked for a cigarette.
One almost feels sorry for the Iranians. Almost. Because Iran has its own history of propaganda, repression, proxy warfare and brutality. Nobody gets a medal simply for being the other side of an absurd American news cycle.
But imagine the psychological strain of being America's adversary when the American president has transformed the smartphone into a strategic command post. You could be forgiven for asking whether the next American attack will arrive by bomber, missile or notification.
“Breaking: Your oil terminal has been destroyed.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Then why does it say it was?”
“Message.”
“From whom?”
“Vance.”
“No, I mean who destroyed it?”
“Nobody.”
“Then what is the message?”
“Please remain calm.”
That is the strange new geography of power: reality on one side, the presidential feed on the other, and JD Vance standing in the middle with a dictionary. Perhaps this is what happens when the world's most powerful military meets the world's most powerful social-media personality. The missiles remain real. The oil remains real. The casualties remain real. But increasingly, the announcement of reality has become a separate form of warfare. And that is the genuinely frightening part hiding underneath the comedy.
Because somewhere between the AI explosion, the presidential post, the Pentagon denial and the vice president's interpretation, we are being asked to accept a new proposition: That a government can create strategic effects not merely by doing something, but by making the world wonder whether it has done it. The Iranians called it laughable. For once, they may have identified the joke perfectly. The only question is whether anyone remembers to laugh before somebody presses the real button.
And somewhere tonight, JD Vance will presumably go home. He will take off his suit. He will sit down. His wife will ask him how his day went. And JD will say, “Fine.”
She will ask, “What did the president mean today?”
JD will stare into the middle distance. “Which time?” And JD Vance, the new Interpreter-in-Chief, will finally understand the terrible truth. His job is not to explain what Trump means. His job is to make sure nobody notices that Trump doesn't have to mean anything at all.
JD. His new job is to explain what the president meant when the president said something that sounded like something else. He is the new Interpreter-in-Chief. Trust me, no one knows what Trump really means except God Himself, yet JD, as a Catholic, is closer to God and has internal info that no one else possesses in the White House.
For example, on Monday, Vance was asked about Donald Trump's extraordinary social-media post showing Iran's Kharg Island being blown to smithereens in an AI-generated video. Kharg is not some obscure patch of desert. Before the war, it handled about 90% of Iran's oil exports.
The Pentagon, however, said the United States had not attacked Kharg Island, and Iran called Trump's post “laughable.” Because when they saw it, they could not stop laughing; even the Supreme Leader, whose father was blown to pieces recently, literally fell off his throne and hurt his arm- yes, the only one left.
So naturally the vice president stepped forward. “The president likes to switch it up on social media a little bit,” Vance explained. Like, that was the understatement of the year, but ah. Switch it up? Is this what American strategic communications have become? That was rhetorical, just kidding. Anyway, let's see who switched it up.
The president says he destroyed an Iranian oil terminal. The Pentagon says he didn't. Iran says the whole thing is ridiculous. And the vice president literally switched it up, explaining that the president was merely “switching it up.”
But Vance was not finished.
Trump, he explained, would be the first to say he does not announce military actions on social media. Really? All these "we are going to blow to pieces, destroy one of the oldest civilizations in the history of the world, etc. What was that?
JD says Trump was merely sending a message. Boy, JD is good, and definitely he can replace Leavitt, no questions asked. Wait, this last thing about the message raises an interesting question. What is the difference between announcing that you have bombed something and posting a computer-generated video of yourself bombing it while insisting that you haven't actually bombed it?
Apparently, the answer is: interpretation. And this is where Vance's new job becomes indispensable for disseminating the messages sent by an old man in a House with a fancy new ballroom. Trump speaks. Vance interprets. The Pentagon corrects. Iran laughs. The White House interprets the correction. The president posts again. And somewhere in Washington, an exhausted civil servant reaches for a dictionary and discovers that the word reality has been removed.
You almost have to admire the Iranians. Imagine living in a country at war with an American president who can wake up one morning, pick up his phone and announce—or appear to announce—the destruction of one of your country's most important economic assets. Then you discover that it wasn't destroyed. Then you discover that the video showing it being destroyed was generated by artificial intelligence. Then you discover that the vice president says it was only a message. Then you discover that the message was apparently intended to tell you what America might do if America decided to do what America just appeared to say it had already done.
At some point, the Iranian national security apparatus must simply have stopped taking notes. And maybe that's the purpose of all this bogusness. To make the Iranians turn soft. To make them think.
“What's happening?”
“Trump posted something.”
“Did we get bombed?”
“No.”
“Is the island still there?”
“Yes.”
“Then what happened?”
“Vance says it's a message.”
“What does the message say?”
“We don't know.”
“Then why is it a message?”
“Because Trump posted it.”
And there you have the foreign policy doctrine of the social-media age. The event is the message. This is not entirely new. Actually, it fits McLuhan's theory like a glove. Governments have always used ambiguity, propaganda, deception, and psychological warfare. The difference is that now the commander in chief can personally manufacture the visual evidence before breakfast.
The old military maxim was that wars are fought with steel. Trump appears to have discovered that they can also be fought with pixels. And the pixels can be considerably more explosive.
There is something almost wonderfully primitive about the whole thing. For centuries, rulers sent ambassadors carrying letters sealed with wax. Then came radio, television, diplomatic communiqués and carefully choreographed presidential statements.
Now the president sends a meme. And the vice president explains what the meme meant. Which makes Vance perhaps the most important translator in the world. Not English into Farsi. Not Farsi into English. Trump into reality. And I've got to give it to him cause that's a difficult language to master. There are no reliable dictionaries. The grammar changes hourly. A statement can mean its opposite before lunch. And the word "shit" is a no-no, cause it's got multiple meanings, and JD has other things to tend to except Presidential Linguistics and Semantics.
And the Interpreter-in-Chief has another problem.
He has to explain not only what Trump said, but what Trump meant after everybody discovered that what Trump said wasn't true. That requires extraordinary linguistic flexibility.
“Did the United States attack Kharg Island?” asked the reporter. “No, answered the Interpreter-in-Chief.
“Did the president say it was attacked?”
“Yes.”
“Was he lying?”
“No. He was sending a message.” The man is a natural. He should never be VP. He should have always been the Interpreter-in-Chief.
Anyway, the annoying journalists realized there was a lot of laughing involved, and they did not let it go away that easily.
“What message?”
“That we could attack it.”
“Will we?”
“I don't know.”
Here is the point at which the Supreme Leader could not take it any longer and ordered a hookah with Egyptian tobacco and lemonade. That press conference was funnier than Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. And it wasn't even the end of it, courtesy of Trump's usual victims — the president's press team, you know, the collateral ones.!!!
“Then why show it being destroyed?” they asked.
“Because the president likes to switch it up on social media.”
At this point, even George Orwell might have asked for a cigarette.
One almost feels sorry for the Iranians. Almost. Because Iran has its own history of propaganda, repression, proxy warfare and brutality. Nobody gets a medal simply for being the other side of an absurd American news cycle.
But imagine the psychological strain of being America's adversary when the American president has transformed the smartphone into a strategic command post. You could be forgiven for asking whether the next American attack will arrive by bomber, missile or notification.
“Breaking: Your oil terminal has been destroyed.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Then why does it say it was?”
“Message.”
“From whom?”
“Vance.”
“No, I mean who destroyed it?”
“Nobody.”
“Then what is the message?”
“Please remain calm.”
That is the strange new geography of power: reality on one side, the presidential feed on the other, and JD Vance standing in the middle with a dictionary. Perhaps this is what happens when the world's most powerful military meets the world's most powerful social-media personality. The missiles remain real. The oil remains real. The casualties remain real. But increasingly, the announcement of reality has become a separate form of warfare. And that is the genuinely frightening part hiding underneath the comedy.
Because somewhere between the AI explosion, the presidential post, the Pentagon denial and the vice president's interpretation, we are being asked to accept a new proposition: That a government can create strategic effects not merely by doing something, but by making the world wonder whether it has done it. The Iranians called it laughable. For once, they may have identified the joke perfectly. The only question is whether anyone remembers to laugh before somebody presses the real button.
And somewhere tonight, JD Vance will presumably go home. He will take off his suit. He will sit down. His wife will ask him how his day went. And JD will say, “Fine.”
She will ask, “What did the president mean today?”
JD will stare into the middle distance. “Which time?” And JD Vance, the new Interpreter-in-Chief, will finally understand the terrible truth. His job is not to explain what Trump means. His job is to make sure nobody notices that Trump doesn't have to mean anything at all.
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