In Victoria Villarruel’s team they still remember the first day when they felt powerlessness firsthand, the final entry into the freezer of politics in which they remain trapped for now. It was November 16, when the vice president visited Entre Ríos for the first time. It was stipulated that the governor of that province, Rogelio Frigerio, would also attend the “Rice Festival”, the event to which he was traveling.
That was the symbolic place in which Villarruel had found some comfort during the year she spent involved in a cold war with the Casa Rosada: on a proselytizing tour around the country, where she took photos with governors, mayors or leaders of different colors. . The message conveyed by the images was clear. Milei does not do politics, Milei hates politicians, but she is someone willing to sit down, listen and, if possible, make alliances. But when he arrived at the event he got a surprise: Frigerio was not there. The governor had gone the day before, in what was understood to be a premeditated maneuver near Villarruel to, precisely, not cross it.
In what is quite a protocol rarity, the vice president left that province without exchanging a single word with the local leader. It made some sense: at that time the escalation among the members of the presidential ticket was increasing and was about to reach a critical point.
“Villarruel does not have any type of interference in the Government, he is close to the caste,” Milei said in an interview four days after that event, in what was the formalization of the war. And now history repeated itself, but, contrary to Marx’s maxim, again as a tragedy.
Villarruel started 2025 vacationing in Villa Allende, Córdoba. Last year he had also gone to that province in January, and had returned to the Senate with photos of a meeting with Governor Martín Llaryora, with his deputy, and with other local mayors. The contrast with what happened now is abysmal: he did not meet with the man from Córdoba, and only had lunch with the mayor of Jesús María, the radical Federico Zárate. While the Government attacks her with public criticism, shelving and threats, it seems as if Villarruel were a poisonous stain from which it is advisable to escape.
Against the ropes
The vice president is convinced that the Casa Rosada wants to make her resign. Although a priori it might seem like a conspiracy theory, the desire for this to happen is not too hidden in the libertarian universe. “He who does not adapt, leaves,” said the Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich. “Victoria, think about whether it is better for you to continue here,” said the driver Alejandro Fantino, a self-proclaimed militant journalist from Milei, who has already anticipated several resignations from the Government. Then, on the other side of the rift, Juan Grabois asked her to leave her position, and something unexpected happened: deputy Lilia Lemoine, Karina Milei’s informal spokesperson, joined the social leader’s desire while calling her a “leech.” ”.
In these days there were other advances against her. Consultant Fernando Cerimedo, one of the owners of “La Derecha Diario,” said on AM 750 that he had evidence that she and Macri had gotten together in March of last year in Villa La Angostura to “weave things” so that “ explode everything.”
The other owner of that medium, the Spanish Javier Negre, accused her of hiring a troll consultancy to favor her on the networks and insult Milei. Lawyer Alejandro Sarubbi Benítez, defender of Daniel “El Gordo Dan” Parisini, among others, spoke of “two folders” that he had in his possession with secrets from the vice president. And Nicolás Márquez, the presidential biographer, assured that he had moved to a “mansion” in Tigre and that he was about to buy another one even though his income did not allow it.
It all happened in a matter of days, almost as if it were a coordinated attack. That is an idea that at least the vice president has, a theory that she feeds every time she appears on the cover of some important media, docile with the Casa Rosada, in which articles appear daily that tell how her image would be plummeting.
Then came the final blow, which was delivered by Milei himself. In an interview with the entertainer Luis Majul he again did something that at this point seems almost routine: criticize the vice president every time she speaks. “He has had many statements and attitudes that are not in line with what 57 percent of Argentines voted for,” he said.
time out
The latest escalation between Villarruel and the rest of the Government demonstrates the complex political moment in which it finds itself. La Rosada had targeted him for not stopping a new increase in the senators’ allowances in time. There was so much pressure on this issue that she ended up giving in to the request, in what was the beginning of her latest chain of unforced errors.
Villarruel was trapped in her own narrative. At the end of August he had given TN the only interview since he came to office and, although that talk was passed down to posterity due to the nickname “Jamoncito” that he gave Milei, the truth is that the note was to defend the rise of the senators’ salaries, among other fundamental differences that marked the Government. Five months later, however, he did exactly the opposite, with the aggravating factor that he spent the first weekend of the year personally answering messages on the networks.
Among them, there were some who caused controversy: Villarruel complained of receiving “two chirolas”, of being the worst pay of all the officials, and also assured that with his salary as vice -almost 3 million pesos- he cannot afford no one “who lives honestly.” Not only did her usual critics of the Government come out to cross her, but as a result of this Milei revealed in the talk with Majul an alleged meeting that she had with her where the vice president would have asked her for a salary increase, something that she refused to give her.
Today Villarruel seems trapped and off guard, an idea that was also reinforced after she deleted the tweet she had made criticizing Bullrich’s actions in the case of the gendarme detained in Venezuela. Now the vice president is preparing to endure a year that promises to be very difficult. In the Senate he made a move that drew a lot of attention from within, which speaks to the fact that it is not only outside the Upper House that he is losing support.
In your corner
On Tuesday, January 7, she eliminated the delegation of powers to the Administrative Secretary, a position held by a woman appointed by her, María Laura Izzo. What seems like just a logistical issue is much more revealing. That decision caused powers that were delegated to this secretariat to be resumed by the vice presidency – some very sensitive, such as signing contracts in the Senate, a tool that politics usually uses for its daily functioning -, which reveals that it thinks that already You will not be able to keep this portfolio under your control. The thing is that this area, like others very important for the functioning of the Upper House such as the Legislative Chamber or the Pension Presidency, will be elected again in the first session of this year, scheduled for February 24.
The math doesn’t lie: the vice president suspects that neither her own nor others are going to vote for her people this time, at the same time that the Casa Rosada is going to try to get their own people involved. The Milei bring the war to Villarruel’s home, an open challenge that could be a turning point in this story. The election year poses another additional challenge for Villarruel. On the one hand, from the small table of the ruling party they are not going to give him any place on a ballot, nor a councilor in some small district. On the other hand, the “karinos” push an idea that could end up harming her: that the presidential sister, her great enemy, should run as a candidate for senator for the City of Buenos Aires. Although the two Milei say that this is not an outcome they are looking for, the possibility is open, and in fact Lemoine has been outlining it in public and private. For Villarruel, who in recent days joined the request for a “legal muzzle” for the cosplayer, it would be like having the wolf in the henhouse.
No matter how you look at it, the path seems more than thorny for the vice president. In her environment, in any case, they clarify that the possibility of leaving her position is not and never was in her mind, that they voted her to be in that place until 2027 and that’s what he plans to do. The goal seems to be still very far away, and this electoral space was characterized by expelling people and humiliating them in public almost as if it were a premeditated strategy to build power. Villarruel knows it: she, who once participated in this type of demolition operation, is the one who is now in the crosshairs.
