JD Vance Says He Has to Be ‘a Little More Precise’ When Speaking for Trump

READING, PA — Sen. JD Vance knows he’s gotten ahead of Donald Trump on a number of issues. During an exclusive interview with NOTUS on Saturday, he acknowledged that he has to do a better job of not speaking for the former president.

“Certainly one thing that I’m going to try to do is, like — and I’m 99% successful — is not speak for him on an issue where we haven’t actually talked about it,” Vance said on his plane, following a town hall in Reading, Pennsylvania. “I think that, you know, he very clearly has made clear he doesn’t support a national abortion ban. And, you know, I just got to be a little bit more precise in how I describe that next time.”

Vance said in late August that Trump would veto a national abortion ban. But when the topic came up during the only debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump said he actually “didn’t discuss it with JD.”

In addition to abortion, Vance has also gotten ahead of Trump on a $5,000 child tax credit and rolling back the Affordable Care Act’s protections for preexisting conditions.

While they clearly have had some policy differences, Trump and his running mate seem to agree on the vast majority of issues, and Vance said he doesn’t believe the former president is annoyed with him over his freelancing on some policy ideas.

It’s certainly not always easy to stay in line with Trump, particularly when the GOP nominee changes his positions.

For example, on the deduction caps for state and local taxes, which Trump imposed in 2017 to mitigate the costs of his tax cut bill, Vance praised the caps during a March interview with Politico. But just a couple of months later, Trump called for the SALT caps to be eliminated — or, at least, raised — leaving Vance in an awkward position.

“Look, he’s the nominee. He sets the agenda for the party,” Vance told NOTUS on Saturday. “What I would say is that, I think President Trump is acutely aware that there’s a give-and-take in the legislative negotiation process, and there are things that are going to happen that are going to be great, and there’s some things that are going to happen that are going to happen that will be necessary to get certain laws passed.”

Either way, Vance said, it’s Trump who “determines the agenda of the next administration.”

“So it doesn’t, frankly, really matter whether I criticize it or praise the SALT or love the SALT or hated the SALT; he’s the one who sets the agenda,” Vance said.

One of the items on Trump’s agenda appears to be providing free access to in vitro fertilization treatments. But in the theme of a “give-and-take in the legislative negotiation process,” the majority of Republicans in Congress appear to oppose such a policy. A recent vote in the Senate saw the bill receive a vote of 51-44, falling short of the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.

Vance was campaigning at the time of the vote and has never said how he would have voted if he were present. Interestingly, Vance said he would have joined the majority of his Senate GOP colleagues by voting against the legislation. But he said he would have voted no because of the bill’s “failure to consider religious liberty exceptions.”

“It was not a serious legislative proposal,” Vance said.

He claimed Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “just wanted to put something on the floor to force Republicans to vote against it because we do care about religious liberty.”

He said he opposed the bill because “I don’t think that it actually produces any real protection for IVF.”

He added that “the biggest concern” on IVF is “just that it’s really expensive.”

Trump hasn’t exactly shown much concern about the cost of his proposals. Between lowering the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%, removing taxes on tips and overtime pay and letting people deduct the cost of interest on car loans, economists predict that Trump’s economic plan would “reignite” inflation and would add $7.5 trillion to the national debt.

But Vance said a “big part” of the deficit reduction plan for the next Republican administration is “unleashing American energy” and “lowering interest rates.”

“That lowers debt service,” Vance said, referring to the interest that the United States pays on its own debt. But he also mentioned “lowering some of the explosion in discretionary spending.”

Vance also tried to walk back some of his comments on addressing Obamacare and setting up “same risk pools” for insurance. The idea of different risk pools is that they would charge sick people more for coverage.

But Vance said a second Trump administration would “protect preexisting conditions,” declining to go into specifics on a health care plan.

“We certainly want to make sure everybody has access to health care,” he said. “We’re just going to have different ideas for how to do it.”

Asked if he was concerned he had done any damage by discussing changes to Obamacare — the 2017 GOP effort to replace the health care law led to Democrats winning 41 seats in the House — the vice presidential nominee was dismissive.

“I don’t know. I don’t worry about it,” he said before claiming, “President Trump helped save Obamacare.”

“I actually do think there’s a very critical argument that without some of his reforms” — Vance mentioned Trump removing the individual mandate and shoring up the exchanges — Obamacare would have entered a “death spiral.”

“I think the takeaway from that is that we’re going to protect preexisting conditions,” he said.

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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.