Vice President JD Vance tapped Cliff Sims last month as his national security advisor last month, picking a longtime GOP operative with close relationships across the party’s ideological spectrum on foreign policy. 

The hire bolsters Vance’s foreign policy operation at a time when intraparty fissures are widening over the lack of diplomatic or military progress in the war with Iran and the broader question of American engagement abroad.

Sims will be leading Vance’s foreign policy team alongside Andy Baker, one of the vice president’s closest aides and a deputy national security advisor. 

Sims is a longtime political ally of President Donald Trump, a friend of several members of the Trump family — including Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. — and has longstanding personal and professional relationships throughout the president’s orbit and in Republican politics. 

In addition to being a Vance confidante, Sims, 42, has advised or worked with Trump, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, most recently serving as chairman of the CIA’s external advisory board. 

Sims is known in Republican foreign policy circles as a China hawk. He led several China-related efforts during his tenure as director of message strategy for the White House and deputy director of national intelligence for strategy and communications at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Sims and Ratcliffe co-authored numerous op-eds from late 2021 to early 2022 where the two claimed the Chinese Communist Party poses the greatest threat to U.S. national security. 

After serving as deputy director of national intelligence under Ratcliffe in the first Trump administration, Sims was appointed by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as a commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2024, serving a two-year term. Later that year, he took over as executive director of the Trump 2024 presidential transition, also leading the CIA’s transition process from the Biden administration to the current one. 

“Cliff served as one of my deputies when I was DNI and I saw firsthand his exceptional judgment and command of the most sensitive national security matters,” Ratcliffe told JI. “He has been a fearless advocate for President Trump’s foreign policy, and one of my most trusted advisors. Vice President Vance made an outstanding choice in selecting Cliff as a national security advisor.”

Unlike with China, Sims’ views on Middle East policy are not as clear. 

Two sources with direct knowledge of his ideology in the region, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Jewish Insider that Sims believes that some issues can be solved through U.S. military action without engaging in extended military intervention, which he opposes.   

Both sources said that Sims and Vance are closely aligned on foreign policy, especially regarding China. 

One source argued that Sims’ experience in political communications and speechwriting will be an asset for Vance with messaging on the war in Iran amid the ongoing negotiations to pursue a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.

Vance’s decision to tap Sims has been a source of reassurance to some in the pro-Israel community who have been concerned about Vance’s foreign policy worldview and relationships with antisemitic podcasters like Tucker Carlson.  

Sims’ hiring won praise from two of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board members who worked with Sims at the conservative public affairs firm, Watchtower Strategy, that they cofounded last year.

Jeff Miller, a leading Republican lobbyist and the board chair of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, told JI that Sims “knows the president’s and vice president’s foreign policy inside and out.”

“I’ve seen firsthand his talent and competence and he’s going to be a great asset to the White House, and not just on U.S.-Israel issues, but across the whole national security landscape,” Miller said of Sims. 

Dan Conston, former president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House GOP super PAC, similarly celebrated Sims joining Vance’s team.

“Cliff has talked often about his support for Israel’s unconditional right to destroy Hamas, particularly after the Oct. 7 attacks, and his belief that Iran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon,” Conston told JI. “Like the president, Cliff’s always going to put America’s interests first, and where Israel’s interests and U.S. interests align, Israel couldn’t ask for a better friend.”

Before joining the second Trump administration, Sims also ran a strategic advisory firm and served on the board of POLARIS National Security, a nonprofit that supports political candidates who prioritize defense concerns. The group was founded by Morgan Ortagus, who briefly served on White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s team last year before joining U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz’s staff in New York. Ortagus is a close ally of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and other hawkish Republicans.

An Alabama native, Sims is also a lifelong Baptist who participated in Christian missionary work in Europe, Africa, Asia and North and South America. He wrote a book, released in May 2024, using stories about his time in the West Wing and his personal upbringing to offer reflections on how Christian Americans should use their faith as a compass to navigate the current hyper-partisan nature of U.S. politics. 

He also is the author of a 2019 tell-all that led to a temporary falling out with the president, in which he detailed how several of Trump’s foreign policy decisions framed parts of his worldview. The book initially sparked the president’s ire despite its positive portrayal of him for exposing the chaotic nature of the first Trump administration, one source told JI.

Sims wrote in the memoir, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House, that Trump’s unemotional reaction to Palestinian protests in response to his decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem was a significant life lesson, while praising the president’s move.

“The president had done nothing wrong. He had taken a stand and made good on a promise that [former presidents] Clinton, Bush, and Obama had all bailed on. I was proud of what he had done — we all were,” Sims wrote. “But I could not help but feel uncomfortable as he calmly watched a mob carry a stuffed Trump through the streets hanging on a cross.”

“I find it difficult to explain what it feels like to watch that level of hatred being displayed on TV screens all over the world while standing right next to the person at whom the hatred is being directed. And yet the president was the calm in the eye of the storm,” he continued. “I learned something important from the president that day — something that I have tried to make a core operating principle in my life: you have to make peace with being misunderstood.”

Sims came back into the fold and mended his relationship with the president in early 2020, just prior to joining Ratcliffe’s team at ODNI, a source with direct knowledge told JI. Trump agreed to the rapprochement after Kushner and Trump Jr. urged him to consider resolving their dispute and defended Sims’ 2019 tell-all for portraying the president positively.