President Donald Trump on Thursday directed Vice President JD Vance to shift his focus away from the Iran war and instead devote himself to fighting what the president says is corruption and crime in Democratic-controlled cities and states.

Vance, who served as the lead negotiator for a short-lived truce in the eight-month old war, has been blunt in blaming the war — and the economic reverberations it has caused — for Republicans' sweeping losses in last week's midterm elections in the United States.