JD Vance attacks Marco Rubio over mortifying Vanity Fair photos

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s efforts to downplay an explosive two-part Vanity Fair article that rocked the Trump administration this week prompted a joke from Vice President JD Vance.

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

“Guess I owe that guy a thousand dollars,” he wrote.

Vance’s comment was an allusion to an exchange of banter he had reportedly had with Anderson at the White House last month during the photo session.

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

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

The photos, some of which Anderson took in close-up, drew heated criticism from conservatives once Vanity Fair released them online this week. Many Republican officials, including Wiles, have also attempted to discredit the content of the magazine’s two-part article, written by Chris Whipple.

Much of the attention focused on a photo of Leavitt showing the marks of her apparent lip filler injections. In a previous post on X, Rubio accused Vanity Fair of having “deliberately manipulated” the images to make White House officials “look bad.”

Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

Anderson, however, stood by his work, noting that close-up images are a signature element of his political portraiture, as seen in his 2014 book, “Stump.”

“It’s part of my way of thinking about portraiture in many ways: close, intimate, revealing,” he told The Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday. “I have photographed all political sectors in this way. In my book you will find photographs of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, beloved figures of the left photographed in the same way.”

Anderson, who previously photographed Trump himself in close-up for the cover of The New York Times Magazine in 2017, also defended himself in a lengthy Instagram post.

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

He went on to note, “Celebrity pictures are celebrity pictures. Politicians are not celebrities. Let’s not mix things up.”