No Time for Small Talk: Vance Tussles With ‘The View’

The vice president was appearing on a network Trump administration officials have railed against, on a show the FCC chair had targeted. So JD Vance kicked off his appearance on “The View” Tuesday with a remark to show he was in on the joke.

“This is a show of MAGA Republicans, right? That’s what my media team told me,” Vance said with a laugh at the beginning of the interview.

Instead of a breezy, talk show gabfest to promote his book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” the appearance quickly became a sparring session. The six hosts peppered him with questions about some of the thorniest issues the Trump administration has faced. Vance bristled at some of the queries, taking exception to the framing, while the hosts regularly jumped in to push back against assertions he’d made.

“Why haven’t we seen the release of over 2.5 million additional Epstein file documents? It seems like you are someone that is on the right side of history on this,” host Sunny Hostin asked Vance, referring to a recent report from The New York Times that claimed the vice president was privately pressing the administration to release all the files.

Vance said the administration isn’t “holding anything back,” claiming some of the remaining files are duplicates of what’s been released, and other files would require a court order to be made public. The vice president copped to being a conspiracy theorist about the Epstein files, and said other Trump officials, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, also view him that way.

He also challenged the characterization that the administration only released the files because of pressure from Republican lawmakers, specifically Republican women like Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) and former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“The idea that Donald Trump runs around afraid of Republican congressmen, as opposed to the other way around, is kind of crazy,” Vance said.

Immigration was among the most contentious topics discussed. Host Ana Navarro asked about what she called the “internal struggle” of enforcing immigration policy that Vance wrote about in his book. Navarro called on the vice president to visit immigration detention centers where detainees have reportedly been denied proper medical care as well as adequate food and sanitation.

“I would urge you, as a Christian and as a father, to visit those detention centers where the children are being held, and make sure that the conditions are up to the values that we hold in this country,” Navarro said.

Vance addressed the need to “strike a balance” on this issue.

“We don’t want to dehumanize people,” Vance said. “Law enforcement is always inherently not a very pretty process, especially when you’re dealing sometimes with violent people, with people who are resisting arrest.”

Hostin jumped in and claimed the majority of people Immigration and Customs Enforcement have arrested do not have criminal records.

But even when pointed comments were made, the hosts or Vance attempted to inject levity to keep things from escalating to an argument. One such moment came when host Whoopi Goldberg turned the conversation to what she called the administration’s efforts to “stigmatize folks of color.”

“So you say that we’re anti-minority, right?” Vance asked.

Goldberg quickly rebuffed Vance’s assertion, saying with a laugh: “I didn’t say that, I asked… Don’t start any stuff with me, man, don’t get me in trouble.”

Vance’s appearance on “The View” came on the heels of the Trump administration moving to enforce the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time requirements for political candidates appearing on late-night and daytime shows. “The View” claims it qualifies for an exemption as a “bona fide” interview program. The network and administration have also tussled over comments made by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death last year, and the FCC moved in April to begin early reviews of broadcast licenses of a handful of ABC-owned stations — a move ABC said threatened to “chill critical protected speech.”

Vance is the third sitting vice president to appear on the show, which is known for its discussions about political “hot topics.” The vice president claimed the interview was not representative of the content in his book.

“The book is actually way less political than you might think if you were just watching this,” Vance said, “because obviously we’re getting into the issues today.”