The RINO establishment is mobilizing to derail Vice President JD Vance’s potential 2028 Presidential campaign.
The swamp learned Vance is a fighter.
And Vance roasted one critic with this massive smackdown.
How a Burrito Became the Most Talked-About Food in Conservative Politics
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh lit the fuse recently when he posted on X that grocery prices are “still rising” and demanded that addressing the problem “should be the number one priority of every elected leader,” adding a pointed call to “end the stupid foreign wars and focus on this issue.”
The debate really caught fire when Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet posted a tweet that racked up 3.6 million views, responding to Walsh’s original complaint about conservatives not addressing high grocery costs.
Kolvet shared what a TPUSA college student told him: “A burrito shouldn’t cost $20.”
Former Babylon Bee managing editor Joel Berry jumped in to say his wife made homemade burritos for a family of eight for under $20, suggesting the real crisis might be “an ‘I don’t know how to cook’ crisis.”
That set off a full-blown fight on X between commentators, politicians, and anyone with an opinion about dinner.
Walsh reentered the debate saying he made burritos for his own family of eight and the cost ran well above $20, warning that conservatives “better come up with an answer that is not just ‘learn how to make cheap burritos.'”
RINO former Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) eventually waded in and told people to “stop whining” and “get a job.”
Then neoconservative commentator Marc Thiessen decided to weigh in.
Thiessen, who served as a speechwriter for the late Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and has been publicly critical of Vance’s role in the Trump administration’s Iran peace negotiations, dismissed the student’s complaint with a two-line post: “Cry me a river. The burritos in the college cafeteria are included in your meal plan.”
Thiessen also asserted that burritos “only cost $20 when you buy it on Door Dash because you’re too lazy to walk over to Chipotle or Taco Bell (where you can get one for $3.99).”
And that is when Vice President JD Vance decided he had seen enough.
“I’m surprised to hear Mark say this. If you’ve ever met him in person, it’s quite obvious the man has never missed a burrito,” Vance posted on X.
The Burrito Was Just the Tip of the Spear
The food fight was funny. The backstory is something else entirely.
Thiessen is a former Bush speechwriter best known for defending the least popular elements of Bush’s foreign policy, including the Iraq War and CIA torture programs. He now writes a column for the Washington Post and makes regular appearances on Fox News.
In a Washington Post op-ed, Thiessen assessed that Vance, who has long opposed US military intervention in the Middle East, is actively undermining his boss’s position on Iran, writing that “perhaps it’s time for the president to take the advice of those who have delivered him success in Iran — not those like Vance who have failed him.”
Thiessen wrote that “the ceasefire and memorandum of understanding negotiated by Vice President JD Vance” had “driven Trump into a strategic cul-de-sac of negotiations, Iranian violations and U.S. retaliatory strikes, followed by more negotiations,” and that “by elevating a deal as the definition of victory, Vance has given Iran a veto over America’s ability to declare victory.”
Worth asking: who exactly has been handing out the foreign policy advice that got us here?
Back in January, before the Iran War, Thiessen wrote that “there is no downside to striking the regime,” adding that “Trump has already done so twice, and each time, Iran was unable or unwilling to retaliate,” and that “the Soleimani strike came at a time when Iran was much stronger than it is today.”
Federalist CEO Sean Davis posted a screenshot of that January op-ed and responded to Thiessen’s recent criticism of Vance with a pointed reply: “Tell us more about garbage advice from failed experts, Marc.”
That is the pattern with the interventionist crowd. They predict a clean, quick result. When it doesn’t come, they find someone else to blame. Vance, who has been pushing for diplomacy and a negotiated end to the conflict rather than open-ended military escalation, is now the convenient scapegoat for the same people who said there was no downside to striking in the first place.
Vance, for his part, recently said he is “happy” to take responsibility for the Trump administration’s efforts to end the conflict with Iran, telling Fox News that negotiations have involved setbacks alongside progress but that the administration remains committed to securing an outcome that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
His remarks came weeks after President Trump jokingly suggested Vance would be the one to blame if negotiations ultimately failed.
The Grocery Numbers Tell a Story the Pundit Class Would Rather Not Discuss
Thiessen’s “cry me a river” response to a college student complaining about food costs isn’t just tone-deaf. It runs straight into a wall of data.
According to the Urban Institute, 19.6 percent of working-age adults paid less than the full balance on grocery-related credit card debt, and 8.7 percent did not always make the minimum payment — meaning over one in four working-age adults used credit cards to purchase food and experienced repayment challenges.
Nearly one in ten working-age adults used Buy Now, Pay Later options to pay for groceries, and among them, one in three missed a payment. Nearly one in five working-age adults reported paying for groceries with savings not intended for daily expenses.
Over the past five years, grocery prices have jumped 32 percent, making food affordability a top concern for millions of Americans, the Urban Institute found.
“There is a substantial portion of people all around us who are having trouble being able to afford groceries and meet their basic needs,” Kassandra Martinchek, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, told The Washington Post.
That’s not a fringe complaint from someone who doesn’t know how to cook. That’s a documented financial crisis hitting working-class families across the country.
In 2026, price increases have reaccelerated due to the Iran war, which has driven up energy costs and pushed consumer prices to their highest level in more than three years, according to CBS News.
So when a college student says a burrito costs too much, and a former Bush administration speechwriter who cheered on the conflict that’s driving up those prices tells that student to “cry me a river,” it’s not hard to see why Vance’s response landed the way it did.
The interventionist foreign policy crowd has never had to pay the tab for the wars they promote. Ordinary Americans do, at the pump and at the grocery store. Vance knows that. The voters who sent him to Washington know it too. And one well-aimed line about burritos made the whole thing impossible to ignore.
Sources: Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Urban Institute, CBS News, The Federalist, Semafor, American Enterprise Institute