The thing with Trump is that there's no "intellectual" side to him. Reportedly he has never actually read anything. So he has almost zero knowledge about anything, like history of geopolitics, political ideology, religion or philosophy. Someone like Putin can expound on the history of Russia for hours, which I'm sure Trump couldn't on the USA. Putin also had to go through very intense schooling for his intelligence service job. I think he's a lawyer too? So what could these two really talk about, you know what I mean? They are not on the same level intellectually, so any smart person has to talk to Trump as to a child, giving him constant ego boosts. Maybe Trump is good on economics, I know nothing about it so can't tell. Someone like Vance is probably way more cultured and sophisticated in his thinking.