J.D. Vance struggled to defend the Trump administration’s decisions when journalists asked him basic questions during a round of TV appearances, with one host getting so frustrated with Vance’s word salad, he cut the interview short in the middle of one of the vice president’s sentences.
Vance appeared on several Sunday morning shows. During an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week, the host asked Vance about Trump Border Czar Tom Homan, whom the FBI says accepted a $50,000 bag of cash from an undercover agent in a bribery investigation near the end of the Biden administration. Homan allegedly pledged to grant government contracts related to immigration in return for the money.
“The White House border czar, Tom Homan, was recorded on an FBI surveillance tape in September 2024 accepting $50,000 in cash. Did he keep that money or give it back?” Stephanopoulos asked Vance.
Vance tried to spin the story as a “ridiculous smear” and painted Homan as a target “because he’s doing the job of enforcing the law.”
Homan has denied the allegations. “Look, I did nothing criminal. I did nothing illegal,” he said during a Fox News interview, but he did not explicitly deny accepting the cash. The Trump DOJ also concluded no criminal wrongdoing took place, but when Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Attorney General Pam Bondi about what happened to the cash, she refused to answer.
“He was recorded on an audiotape in September of 2024, an FBI surveillance tape, accepting $50,000 in cash. Did he keep that money?” Stephanopoulos pressed Vance.
“Accepting $50,000 for doing what, George?” Vance said. “I am not even sure I understand the question. Is it illegal to take a payment for doing services? The FBI has not prosecuted him. I have never seen any evidence that he’s engaged in criminal wrongdoing.”
Vance went on to call the line of questioning a “left-wing rabbit hole.” After that comment, Stephanopoulos quickly ended the interview.
“It’s not a weird left-wing rabbit hole. I didn’t insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50,000, as was heard on an audiotape recorded by the FBI in September 2024, and you did not answer the question. Thank you for your time this morning.”
“No, George, I said that I don’t —” Vance started to say, but the show cut away to a commercial break.
Earlier in the interview, Stephanopoulos asked Vance whether he agreed with President Donald Trump‘s assertion that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker “should be in jail” for “failing to protect” ICE officers in his state.
“I’ve seen the law. And when you have a group of people where the police call off the safety for ICE officials, I’ve understood that, and I’ve read it today in numerous journals, that that’s illegal,” Trump said.
“President Trump has said that he should be in jail. Do you think Governor Pritzker has committed a crime?” Stephanopoulos asked Vance.
Vance tried to dodge the question by saying that Pritzker “has certainly failed to keep the people of Illinois safe.” (Meanwhile, violent crime in Chicago in recent months hit its lowest point in four decades.)
“I asked if you agree with President Trump that Governor Pritzker has committed a crime,” Stephanopoulos responded. But Vance kept dodging the question.
“George, you’re going to keep on asking this question. I’m going to keep on telling you that Governor Pritzker failed to do his job,” Vance said. “He should suffer some consequences. Whether he’s violated a crime, ultimately, I would leave to the courts. But I certainly think that he has violated his fundamental oath of office. That seems pretty criminal to me. I’d leave it to a judge and jury to decide whether he’s actually violated the crime.”
Over on NBC’s Meet the Press, Vance faced questions about recent layoffs of more than 1,000 federal employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including those who are leading the nation’s response to measles and workers who would respond to an Ebola outbreak. (Some of those layoffs will be reversed, the administration announced later, blaming a coding error for the wrongful terminations.)
“During the 2019 shutdown, under the first Trump administration, which lasted 35 days, no federal workers were laid off. Why are these firings necessary?” host Kirsten Welker asked the vice president.
“We have to lay off some federal workers in the midst of this shutdown to preserve the essential benefits for the American people that the government does provide,” Vance said.
Except usually during a shutdown, including the last government shutdown under the first Trump administration, federal employees are furloughed, meaning their work and compensation temporarily stop until the shutdown ends. That’s very different from layoffs.
Vance tried to say that the layoffs were done “to preserve the essential benefits for the American people that the government does provide.” Except how is that the case? If the workers would not be paid during the shutdown anyway, what immediate cost savings would layoffs bring?
Vance even tried to blame Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for the erroneous firings, despite Schumer having no authority over federal worker layoffs. “The government shutdown inevitably leads to some chaos,” Vance said. “We are figuring out how to take money from some areas and give it to other areas. That chaos is because Schumer and the far-left Democrats shut down the government.”
According to a recent Ipsos poll, Americans mostly — by a slim margin — blame congressional Republicans for the shutdown (67 percent), followed by Democrats (63 percent) and Trump (63 percent).
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