Vance’s defining act in office wasn’t a policy — it was a phone call. When Trump erupted at Netanyahu over Lebanon escalation, telling him “you’d be in prison if it weren’t for me,” the vice president’s most consequential recent public act was calling a woman convicted of assaulting Capitol Police on January 6 an “innocent grandmother,” while declining to rule out paying her from the $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — a fund built entirely from Trump suing his own government and settling with himself. Vance was the deciding vote breaking Susan Collins’ Medicaid-cut tie in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” He is, functionally, the tiebreaker for policies that have already pushed 4 million Americans toward losing food assistance and left rural hospitals scrambling. A vice president’s job is sometimes to be the last check before a bad idea becomes law. Vance has instead been the deciding vote that makes bad ideas final.