While President Trump is away, JD Vance is venturing into some foreign territory himself.
The vice president embarked on a media blitz this week to promote a new book he’s written about his faith as speculation ramps up about his ambitions for a presidential run in 2028. On Tuesday morning, he dropped by ABC’s talk show, “The View,” and batted back many a pointed question from the six women who host the show.
“What are you willing to excuse in the name of power?” was one representative question that went mostly unanswered.
The vice president’s outing to “The View” on Tuesday was an early preview of how he might comport himself on the campaign trail and the ways in which he would defend against his role in some of the most polarizing aspects of his boss’s second term. He was pressed on the Trump administration’s rough deportation tactics and its use of “subhuman” detention centers, as one host put it. He defended the president’s longtime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein (“he narc’d on him to the police”) and Mr. Trump’s initial reluctance to release the Epstein files (“the idea that Donald Trump runs around afraid of Republican congressmen, as opposed to the other way around, is kind of crazy”).
The hard-edge, attack-dog demeanor that the public has seen from Mr. Vance in the past was gone. He was performing far outside the comforts of his usual MAGA media bubble and he toggled his behavior accordingly. He was warm and self-deprecating. The interview ended with one host giving him a “View” branded onesie for his new baby, due in July. Still, it got awkward at points.
The most intense exchange came late in the hour, when Whoopi Goldberg asked about race.
“What did Black people do to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color?” she asked. “And you know how hard it is, you have folks of color in your family.”
“Sure,” he said.
About the removal of Black history and “Black heroes” from museums and national monument sites around the country, she wondered, “how does that sit with you?” Mr. Vance furrowed his brow and squinted skeptically. “What exactly are you talking about, Whoopi?” he asked. The audience began to boo.
Two more hosts jumped in. Sunny Hostin pointed out that “Black voter districts are being dismantled, Black leaders are being sidelined from our ranks. Where do Americans of color fit in this vision, because it doesn’t seem like we fit?” Ana Navarro said that “since October of last year, there’s been something like 6,668 refugees allowed into the country, all but three were white South Africans.”
“I’m very skeptical of that number, because we have a lot of different immigration pathways in the United States of America,” Mr. Vance replied. Then he insisted that “everybody is welcome in our political coalition.” (Ms. Navarro is correct that the vast majority of refugees allowed into the United States under Mr. Trump — more than 6,000 — are white South Africans.)
One topic that did not arise was the president’s war on ABC. In December 2024, the network agreed to pay $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Mr. Trump. In April of this year, Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, both demanded that ABC fire the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he made about Mrs. Trump having “a glow like an expectant widow.” And then, last month, the network accused the Federal Communications Commission of threatening its station licenses as part of a campaign of “unconstitutional retaliation and coercion.”
Mr. Vance is also scheduled to sit down with Megyn Kelly, whom the president recently attacked as an overrated, “Low IQ person.” She has been among the most searing critics of his war with Iran. “MAGA is not what it was,” she said last month. The month before that, she asked of Mr. Trump: “Can’t he just behave like a normal human?”
Mr. Vance’s book tour coincides with the administration’s drawdown of that conflict. The vice president, who is expected to sign the new cease-fire with Iran in France later this week, has been the face of the peace negotiations and is sure to get many questions about it, especially while the president is himself in France at the Group of 7 summit. While some members of the MAGA base are happy that the fighting seems finally to be coming to a close, more hawkish types are growing fitful in the absence of any clear details about what a deal might entail.
The vice president will also face questions about his ambitions for the 2028 presidential race. On Sunday, he and his wife, Usha Vance, were asked about that during an interview on “CBS Sunday Morning” (another network that paid the president millions of dollars to settle one of his lawsuits).
“I have no doubt that the president of the United States is going to be very supportive of anything that I ultimately decide to do,” Mr. Vance said. “But we really just haven’t talked about what that thing will be.”
He said that in his conversations with the president, “I never bring it up. But sure, the president brings it up a lot, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately. You know, the president’s a political animal. He loves this stuff. He’s very fascinated by it.”
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