JD Vance Dunks On Marco Rubio Over Vanity Fair Photos | EUROtoday

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s efforts to make mild of a bombshell two-part Vanity Fair article that rattled the Trump administration this week drew a wisecrack from Vice President JD Vance.

On Wednesday, Rubio up to date his profile picture on X to one of many article’s divisive pictures by Christopher Anderson, which exhibits him in aspect profile.

Moments later, Vance responded to Rubio’s put up with a dunk.

“I guess I owe that guy $1,000,” he wrote.

Vance’s remark was an allusion to a joking alternate he’d reportedly had with Anderson on the White House final month through the photoshoot.

“I’ll give you $100 for every person you make look really shitty compared to me,” he advised Anderson, per The New York Times. “And $1,000 if it’s Marco.”

Anderson photographed a complete of seven members of President Donald Trump’s interior circle for Vanity Fair. In addition to Rubio and Vance, the unfold included White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, chief of workers Susie Wiles and deputy chiefs of workers James Blair, Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino.

The pictures, a few of which Anderson shot in excessive close-up, drew heated criticism from conservatives as soon as Vanity Fair unveiled them on-line this week. Many GOP officers, Wiles included, have additionally tried to discredit the content material of the journal’s two-part article, written by Chris Whipple.

Much of the eye was centered on a photograph of Leavitt by which markings from her obvious lip filler injections are seen. In an earlier put up on X, Rubio accused Vanity Fair of getting “deliberately manipulated” the pictures to make White House officers “look bad.”

Anderson, nonetheless, stood behind his work, noting that close-up pictures are a signature fixture of his political portraiture, as seen in his 2014 e book, “Stump.”

“It’s part of how I think about portraiture in a lot of ways: close, intimate, revealing,” he advised The Washington Post in an interview printed Wednesday. “I’ve photographed all political stripes just like this. You will find in my book pictures of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, beloved figures on the left photographed in the same way.”

Anderson, who beforehand photographed Trump himself in close-up for the duvet of The New York Times Magazine in 2017, additionally defended himself in a prolonged Instagram put up.

“It’s shocking to me that the world expects reality to be removed from a picture. My intention is not mockery or cheap shots,” he wrote Thursday. “I’d like to think I’m a stone-faced but critical observer.”

He went on to notice: “Celebrity photos are celebrity photos. Politicians are not celebrities. Let’s not mix things up.”