Vice President J.D. Vance is watching his future political prospects dim as he continues to stand by President Donald Trump. A disastrous foray into Iran, an economy in turmoil, an administration riddled with the kind of corruption that will rebound for decades
in court cases and investigations. Faced with the prospect of becoming even more entrenched as an avatar for the failures and broken promises of Trump’s second presidency, Vance is embarking on a media tour to try and remind people that they supposedly liked him at some point, starting with an appearance on The View.
The ladies of The View have long been some of the favorite foils of Trumpland, and it turns out the hosts of ABC’s flagship talk show came prepared to spar. Vance seemed unprepared to actually defend the actions of his government.
The hosts repeatedly questioned the vice president about Trump failing to follow through on his campaign promises — on everything from the economy to the Epstein files — instead focusing on his own self-enrichment and self-aggrandizement.
“One issue comes up time and time again, and it’s the economy. Inflation is up, wages are down, gas prices are starting to drop at news of this Iran deal, which we will get to,” host Alyssa Farah — who worked in the first Trump administration — asked. “What can you say to voters who trusted you to lower costs on day one, and will they be satisfied by November?”
Vance responded that that would ultimately “be up to the voters,” and bragged that the skyrocketing price of oil and gas — triggered by Trump’s war with Iran — has begun to come down. When the hosts referenced the president’s recent “I love the inflation,” comments, a response to recent economic reports showing sharp spikes in consumer inflation, Vance defended the president.
“What he said is that he loves the fact that the inflation is going to come down when this war is over,” Vance claimed. “What he said is, ‘I love the inflation, because it’s going to come down when the war is over.’”
Trump did not, in fact, say that.
“Are you his interpreter or are you his vice president?” Joy Behar asked.
The hosts also questioned Vance on the president’s lavish spending on monuments to himself, half-assed restoration projects in Washington, D.C., and elaborate events for his corporate supporters like the UFC fight he hosted at the White House over the weekend.
“All these things, why is he doing them when everybody knows that Americans are struggling? What is he spending all this money for,” Behar asked, noting that Trump has referred to the growing financial and affordability crisis as a “hoax.”
Vance once again claimed that Trump was being misunderstood, and that his boss had actually claimed that the accusation that Republicans were causing the affordability crisis was a hoax.
“Lets talk about my book, I’m here to sell books!” Vance exclaimed at one point, after being repeatedly pressed on the Trump administration’s various attempts to bury the Epstein scandal and the president’s reluctance to embrace the transparency promised during his campaign.
And boy, did they talk about his book.
“As someone who has admitted to chasing ambition — which you write about in the book in the past — but now says your faith brought you back to your priorities,” co-host Sara Haines said. “I have to kind of use your own words that sit with me from 2016: ‘Fellow Christians. Everyone is watching when we apologize for this man.’ […] So help me find the words to explain to my children what they’re witnessing [from the administration] right now.”
Vance defended his switch up from anti-Trumper to loyal soldier. “There’s a certain point where you say, you know, I made predictions about this, I ended up being wrong, and in politics, and anything, I think it’s important to say, you know what, I got some things wrong, and I was wrong about him,” he said.
Haines wasn’t done, though. “I can tell my kids why it’s important to have borders. It’s much harder to explain when I see someone dragged out of a house who isn’t a violent criminal,” she said, while co-host Ana Navarro suggested that Vance visit the border in person to see how children are being treated in detention centers.
Vance demurred that there were only 30 seconds left in the segment, to which Navarro responded that he was the vice president and could go long.
In one moment, Haines asked Vance what he was “willing to excuse in the name of power.”
The answer to an increasing number of Americans is “everything.” Vance has quite publicly capitulated to the president’s every whim throughout his first 18 months in office, even as reports emerge of his private panic and frustration over the state of affairs.
Vance at one point insisted that his new book was actually “way less political than you might think.”
“You said you were a lapsed Catholic,” the vice president said to Behar. “I’m a bad Catholic. I think all of us, that’s why we need grace as Christians, is because we recognize that there are certain things we’ve got to work on.”
But for all his preaching, Vance doesn’t seem all that willing to accept that there are things he needs to work on when it comes to his own politics, and he’s absolutely not ready to diagnose what Trump — sitting at a sub-40 approval rating less than two years into his term — should do differently.
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