JD Vance on Thursday defended Donald Trump’s insistence that children should have fewer dolls, claiming families will be happier once they know there are more U.S.-made weapons should their kids go to war.
The vice president made the stunning remark after Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked whether President Trump’s admission last week meant that American families “need to make some sacrifices” in light of the ongoing trade wars.
“We do need to become more self-reliant, and that’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not always going to be easy,” he said in the Thursday interview. “What I’d ask people is not whether they want two dolls or five dolls or 20 dolls for their kids. I’d ask American moms and dads, would you like to be able to go into a pharmacy and know that the drugs your kids need are actually available to you?”
“As an American parent, would you like to—God forbid, if your country goes to a war and your son or daughter is sent off to fight—would you like to know that the weapons that they have are good, American-made stuff, not made by a foreign adversary?” Vance added.
His comments came more than a week after Trump said during a Cabinet meeting that “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls” due to his global tariffs, “and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.” Trump reiterated those remarks during a Meet the Press interview last week, saying children should have fewer dolls and pencils.
“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls,” he said. “They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”
Vance said in the Fox News interview that the real source of pain for families was Joe Biden’s economy—even as Trump’s tariffs threw the stock market into chaos.
“The president has been very honest with the American people: you don’t get back to peace and prosperity by doing the same thing that you’ve done for under the Biden administration, or frankly, that we’ve done in this country for 40 years,” Vance said. “We’ve got to take this country in a different direction.”
Even if that meant some immediate financial trouble for families, Vance conceded.
“These are long-term, big plays,” Vance said. “I think they’re going to make Americans richer and more prosperous. But, yeah, this stuff doesn’t happen overnight, as the president has said.”
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