‘In solemn remembrance of the lives lost, we honour the resilience and enduring spirit of the Armenian people,’ US Vice President JD Vance wrote in the guestbook of the Armenian Genocide memorial after he visited the site during his working trip to Armenia.
Not only did Vance avoid clarifying when, by whom, and how those lives were lost, but he also became a centre of online controversy after his post explicitly using the term ‘Armenian Genocide’ was deleted.
The US recognised the mass murder of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War as a genocide in 2021 under President Joe Biden’s administration. However, his successor Donald Trump has pulled back on this recognition, in particular, avoiding the term genocide. This has left Armenian society confused if the US still can be counted among the countries that recognise the genocide.
The fact Vance’s tweet was posted and then deleted has only drawn further attention to the administration’s retraction of the recognition.
Vance refusing to take responsibility and throwing an unnamed staff member under the bus was no surprise for a thoroughly immoral administration, but the lack of professionalism is still startling.
And what about Vance’s tribute at the Genocide Memorial — does that still count as recognition, but only as an atrocity and not a genocide?
The US refuses to clarify its position, but one can surmise that the retraction was either done because Turkey requested it or because the Trump administration (or its nepo-hire Ambassador Tom Barrack) wants to please President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
And to be more cynical, we wonder if genocide recognition will become a talking point in the next US elections, used to attract votes from the Armenian community.
At the end of the day, the atrocity remains, and the pain endured by survivors and their descendants cannot be erased, no matter which political figure or country recognises it as such.
Recognition goes beyond simply acknowledging events — it also signals a bold stance against any genocide.
Yet, it seems in 2026, we are farther from that point than any time in the past. Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, Ethiopia, the list goes on and on.
Perhaps one of the most famous statements about the Armenian Genocide can be attributed to Adolf Hitler, who allegedly said in 1939, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’.
Apparently not JD Vance.
