Vice President JD Vance backed his “friend,” Elbridge Colby, at the beginning of the latter’s confirmation hearing for the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy position.

There was some apprehension among Republican senators regarding Colby’s previous statements on the Middle East, particularly Iran, though Vance’s public backing of him demonstrated how seriously the administration wants him confirmed.

“In so many ways, Bridge predicted what we would be talking about four years down the road, five years down the road, 10 years down the road. He saw around corners that very few other people were seeing around,” Vance said in opening remarks Tuesday at Colby’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“If you look at his long career in defense policy, he has said things that, you know, frankly, alienated Democrats and Republicans. He’s also said things that I think both Democrats and Republicans would agree with,” Vance continued. 

This was the second time Vance introduced a Trump nominee at their confirmation hearing, after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

Colby’s more isolationist views have played well among the MAGA base and Republican senators who are closely aligned with the president’s worldviews. However, more traditional foreign policy hawks, many of whom back U.S. aid to Ukraine, were not as thrilled with Trump’s selection of him for the position.

Colby has long stressed the threat China poses to the United States and has called for the U.S. to turn its attention away from other areas of the world to the Pacific region.

“There is a very real threat” that “a war could happen” with China during Trump’s term in office, he acknowledged during the hearing, given Chinese leaders’ public acknowledgment that they want their military prepared to launch an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.

Colby is a former Pentagon official who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development in Trump’s first term.

Like many of the recent Trump administration appointees and officials, he declined to comment specifically about Russia’s war in Ukraine and who is culpable for the conflict. He declined to say whether he viewed Russian President Vladimir Putin as a war criminal and whether he believed war crimes had been committed in Ukraine.

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Colby said he didn’t want to affect the Trump administration’s efforts to end the war.

With Democrats on the committee likely to unanimously oppose Colby, his nomination may require the support of all Republicans to advance to the full chamber.