Ever since former President Donald Trump revealed Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate, Trump's haters in the media have been working hard to sow dissension and stir up problems within the 2024 Republican ticket.

That subversive effort continued this week when former Trump aide turned critic Anthony Scaramucci suggested that Vance is "in trouble" with Trump for attracting too much attention for himself, according to Newsweek.

Of course, as the Trump campaign offered as a reminder, Scaramucci's pronouncements should be viewed with skepticism as coming from someone who lasted less than two weeks in his brief role as White House communications director before flaming out and transforming into a bitter critic of the former president he once supported.

Vance is "in trouble" for garnering more attention than Trump

On a recent episode of the podcast "The Rest is Politics U.S.," co-host Scaramucci told fellow co-host Katty Kay, "I'm still of the position that JD Vance is in trouble with Donald Trump."

He observed that Vance has "negative approval ratings and Trump absolutely hates that. He wanted this guy to take a deep back seat and there's one thing that people are doing in the media that's driving Trump crazy about JD Vance, and they're praising him."

"He came out of the Sunday shows and they're saying: 'Well JD Vance is on message and he's saying the right things about the issues and JD Vance is leading the charge for the campaign,'" Scaramucci continued. "You can't do that to JD Vance, because he'll get blown up."

Differing takes on Vance's current standing with Trump

Scaramucci went on to recount a conversation with an unnamed former Trump Cabinet official who once said they knew they were in trouble and garnering too much attention if Trump referred to them as "president" or said something like "You're getting more famous than me."

He reiterated that, in his view, Vance doing a good job in his media appearances and receiving compliments for his performances by media figures was "no bueno for Donald Trump and the way Donald Trump thinks."

Kay chimed in with a slightly different take that involved Trump being initially unhappy with all of the negative publicity that Vance initially received over past comments and manufactured controversies but said she was hearing that Trump is happier now because Vance has been a "very good defender" of Trump and has kept the focus on the former president instead of himself.

"The official line from the campaign at the moment is that Trump is happy with Vance -- let's see if he manages to last," she added.

Vance's approval/favorability rating is in negative territory

It is unclear what Scaramucci was talking about when he claimed that the media was praising and complimenting Sen. Vance, because the former president's running mate has endured relentless attacks and criticism from the overtly biased media since the day he was announced as Trump's vice presidential pick.

One thing Scaramucci was correct about is Vance's negative approval rating, as FiveThirtyEight's polling average for Vance's favorability currently has the Ohio senator at a net -9.5 points, with just 33.2% of Americans having a favorable view of him while 42.7% hold an unfavorable view.

According to The Independent, that makes Vance the least popular vice presidential candidate in modern history and places him lower than Republican Sarah Palin's -2 rating in 2008 and Democrat Tim Kaine's -4 rating in 2016.

As for the rest of what Scaramucci had to say on the podcast episode, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung dismissively told Newsweek, "Nobody is going to listen to someone who barely lasted more time than an expired ham sandwich as White House communications director."