JD Vance's history-making trip to Armenia just picked up an asterisk. The vice president on Tuesday became the first in his office to visit the country, laying a wreath at Yerevan's Armenian Genocide Memorial—then briefly went further than his boss ever has, via a now-deleted post on X that referred to the 1915 mass killings there as the "Armenian Genocide." The wording, which would've marked the Trump administration's first formal use of the term "genocide," vanished soon after, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Vance's office blamed the post on a staffer snafu, and the White House insists there's been "no change of policy," which to date under President Trump has avoided the "genocide" label. "This is an account managed by staff that primarily exists to share photos and videos of the vice president's activities," Vance's office said in a statement, per the New York Times. Armenian-American advocates called the deletions—Vance's, and one from an official Trump administration account referencing his visit—an act of "denial." California Rep. Laura Friedman accused Vance of trying to placate Turkey, as Ankara has long pushed back on foreign governments using the term "genocide."
On the ground in Armenia, Vance laid roses, wrote "Memory eternal" in the memorial book, and signed a civil nuclear deal with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, even as the administration's language retreated online. It's not the first time the US has used the word "genocide" to refer to the deportations and systematic killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces during World War I. The AP notes that President Biden did so in 2021, drawing harsh pushback from Turkey. "[We] will not be given lessons on our history from anyone," the nation's foreign minister said at the time.
On Tuesday during his memorial visit, Vance himself tried to hedge when asked directly about the term, noting he simply wanted to "pay my respects." "They asked us to visit the site," he said. "Obviously, it's a very terrible thing that happened a little over a hundred years ago and something that's very, very important to them culturally." He also called Armenia "a very important partner for us in the region."
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