Trump staffers caught deleting JD Vance post that contradicted official policy

Vice President JD Vance and the second lady laid a wreath at the memorial for the Armenian genocide and posted a photo of it to their social media, only to have it quickly taken down and any other references to it deleted from the White House's social media.

Tuesday began with the vice president posting a photo of their ceremony. Vance is the first president or vice president to ever visit Armenia. The post was then deleted.

The travel press pool reported that they asked why the photo and tweet were removed from X. Vance's staff said that the tweet was posted in error by a staffer who wasn't part of the delegation.

"This is an account managed by staff that primarily exists to share photos and videos of the Vice President's activities. For the Vice President's views on the substance of the question, I refer you to comments he made earlier on the tarmac in response to the pool's question," the staffer said, according to the report.

But any comments from Vance on the tarmac have now also been removed.

"Even reporters' questions are being memory holed! It's like a Chinese Foreign Ministry press conference," said Josh Gerstein, the senior legal affairs reporter for Politico.

It was a video of Vance posted by the White House "Rapid Response 47" account in which a reporter asked why Vance felt it was so important to visit the memorial.

"Well, we're going to visit some important sites to Azerbaijan tomorrow ... I'm the first vice president to ever visit Armenia. They asked us to visit the site ... I wanted to go and pay my respects," Vance said, according to the post that was captured by Gerstein.

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) addressed the issue not long after, with a comment saying it was "disgraceful" to delete the post about visiting the genocide memorial.

It noted that deleting the post "sent six dangerous signals to Armenian and allied American voters." Among them was the accusation that Vance is "normalizing" President Donald Trump's retreat from U.S. recognition" of the genocide. Congress passed a resolution in 2019 officially recognizing the genocide, and former President Joe Biden also acknowledged it in a statement in April 2021.

Vance's press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, also posted videos and photos of the event, and those were also deleted.

"It would be a change of policy for Trump administration, which doesn’t recognize it unlike Biden," said Ragip Soylu, the Turkey Bureau Chief of the "Middle East Eye."

During a press conference on Tuesday in Azerbaijan, Vance gushed over President Ilham Aliyev, saying, "other than President Trump, the only leader in the world that has really good relations with both the Turks and the Israelis is President Aliyev. That means one, the food must be really good here, or two, he must be really charming. I can confirm that he's very charming."

Armenian victims asked the International Criminal Court in 2024 to investigate Aliyev and other top leaders for genocide.

University Network for Human Rights (UNHR) legal and policy director Thomas Becker wrote for Newsweek in 2023 that the conflict between the two was a second genocide for Armenians.

"Vance is a coward for deleting this post. How can anyone believe the U.S. is serious about protecting Armenia [and] deterring Azerbaijan today when Vance is too scared to even mention the Armenian Genocide out of fear of how Turkey [and] Azerbaijan would react," commented Alex Galitsky, policy director for the ANCA.

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