JD Vance Takes On The Women Of ‘The View’

Vice President JD Vance sparred with the ladies of “The View” on immigration, affordability, and the Jeffrey Epstein files during an intensely one-sided interview on ABC on Tuesday.

“So this is a show of MAGA Republicans, right?” he joked to “The View” hosts as he sat down among them. They greeted his joke with laughs, pointing out that he is much taller than they expected.

Then they immediately plunged into different lines of attack, starting with affordability. Vance kept his cool, smiling throughout the interview, pushing back on many of their questions and politely calling out statements he disagreed with. Notably, the hosts did not bring up the war in Iran, nor did they bring up the most highly discussed item of the week: the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran.

“President Trump has called affordability a hoax,” noted Joy Behar. “He said that, not me. He is pouring money into this ballroom and the reflecting pool, the Arc de Trumpe, I call it, and a White House cage match. All these things. Why is he doing them when you just — everybody knows that Americans are struggling. What is he spending this money for?” 

“I have to defend the president on the hoax point,” responded Vance. “The idea that Republicans caused the affordability problem is a hoax. If you go back to the Biden administration, it was up to 9% inflation. It’s at 3.5%. Too high. We’re doing everything we can to bring it back down to 2.5%, where most people would like to see it.”

“We inherited an affordability problem,” he added. “It’s going to take a little bit of time. There’s a lot more work to do. The president knows a lot of Americans are struggling. He ran on that. He talked about it. We have done things and made good progress on that point.” 

When the hosts pushed Vance, arguing that Trump said he loves inflation, Vance responded: “What he said is, he loves [that] inflation is going to come down when this war is over. That’s what he said.” 

.@VP on coming to appreciate @POTUS: “I said that Donald Trump’s economic policies would not lead to wage growth — they did in the first term… I said that we couldn’t bring back any of those factory jobs… you saw manufacturing boom during that administration.” pic.twitter.com/ZcWlyVQpHN

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 16, 2026

He repeatedly stressed that, while he knows the ladies of “The View” don’t share this view of American politics, the American people “inherited a mess” and are focused on fixing it.

“Sometimes it takes a long time to fix a mess,” he said. 

The Epstein files received a heavy amount of attention, and co-host Sunny Hostin referenced a recent report claiming that Vance had strongly advocated for the release of the Epstein files and floated having Tucker Carlson interview Ghislaine Maxwell “to clear the president’s name.”

“You were rebuffed by your people,” she claimed. “Why?”

Vance didn’t directly address the claim, noting: “Don’t believe everything that you read in any newspaper, whether it’s a Right-leaning paper or Left-leaning. There are things true, false, and missing context.”

“Number one, I am frankly a conspiracy theorist on the Epstein stuff,” he explained. “That is one thing that’s true. Some people called me a conspiracy theorist. Because I think that it’s crazy that you have this guy who is clearly a sex predator who is hanging out with a lot of wealthy and powerful people. That bothered me.”

VANCE: “One of the things you see in the Epstein emails is that Jeffrey Epstein hated Donald Trump, and that Donald Trump literally reported Jeffrey Epstein to the police.” pic.twitter.com/FK5q83o9z2

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) June 16, 2026

The vice president pointed out that no one knows exactly what went on with Epstein unless they were there themselves. But he pushed back strongly against the notion that the White House wasn’t committed to full transparency. 

“One of the things you see in the Epstein emails is that Epstein hated Donald Trump,” he noted. “Donald Trump literally reported Jeffrey Epstein to the police. That’s one of the things that came out of the files.” 

Joy Behar cut in here, insisting that Trump was best friends with Epstein and signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act under duress. Vance again pushed back, noting that Trump was friends with Epstein but ultimately threw him out of his club when he found out that Epstein “was a creep and reported him to the police.”

“That’s something the media misses when it reports the story,” Vance said. “They tell the fact that they knew each other, which the president admitted. They ignore the fact that he narced on them.” 

He also smacked down the notion that Trump only released the Epstein files because he was forced to by Republicans.

“You know the Republican Party probably better than I do,” he said. “The idea that Donald Trump runs around afraid of Republican congressmen as opposed to the other way around is kind of crazy. Because the Republicans control the House and Senate, particularly the Senate, you need the Republican sign-off.”

“I was in there in the meetings,” Vance added. “He was very frustrated that the Democrats were making this about him when he is like, ‘I threw the guy out of my club. I’m the guy who reported him to the police or one of the people who reported him to the police.'”

“The president was frustrated about that. Absolutely. He eventually came to say, ‘Let’s get everything out there. Let’s have this out in the public.’ He actually called the senators. I was there. He called the senators and said, ” Pass this bill. I will sign it.”

“The View” hosts also challenged Vance on his faith and his former criticisms of Trump from 2015 and 2016.

“What happened?” questioned Joy Behar.

“A little humility,” he responded. “I think when you make predictions and those turn out to be false, you gotta ask yourself, what made me wrong about that? What did I not understand or appreciate? For example, I said that Donald Trump’s economic policies would not lead to wage growth. They did in the first term. That was actually a major, major thing.”

“I said that we couldn’t bring back any of the factory jobs because I had given in to the idea that those jobs were disappearing,” he added, noting that under Trump, the United States saw a manufacturing boom.

As the hosts attempted to interrupt him, he continued: “Let me finish. There’s a certain point where you say, I made predictions about this. I ended up being wrong. In politics and anything, I think it’s important to say, you know what? I got things wrong. I was wrong about him. He was a very successful president.” 

Sara Haines pressed Vance again about his faith, saying, “What are you willing to excuse in the name of power?”

.@VP dismantles the lunatics on The View when they try to deny that countries were sending violent criminals to cross Biden’s open border pic.twitter.com/LES5hVlowH

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) June 16, 2026

The vice president responded that one of the things that he under-appreciated about Trump is that “so many of the things people said about him weren’t true,” pointing to the false allegation that Trump said all Mexicans are rapists. 

The hosts began to clamor about Venezuelan Dictator Nicolas Maduro and illegal immigration, but Vance pushed back again.

“If you go back to caravans happening …, we know those things were funded,” he said. “They were supported by the government. I don’t know how you define support or not support. If people are encouraged to come into our country after having spent time in prison by their own government, I think that’s a problem.” 

“Law enforcement is always inherently not a pretty process,” Vance said, responding to the host’s criticisms of ICE enforcement. “Especially when you are dealing sometimes with violent people, with people who are resisting arrest. Some of the people that I have been told by the media were completely peaceful, had never violated any laws, you look into the record and find out they were violent or they did have a criminal record. They had a sex trafficking conviction.” 

Sunny Hostin jumped in here to argue that the majority of people ICE is rounding up are not criminals, accusing the Trump administration of endangering children. 

“You talk about the children,” Vance said. “Here is what I would say. Do we know that during the last administration we had tens of thousands of children who were sex trafficked by the cartels, brought into our country in profoundly dangerous and predatory conditions — “

“Talk about this administration,” Hostin interrupted him to say.

“Unless you enforce the border, you invite that conduct,” he responded. “You think that our immigration policies are inhumane based on the reporting of one person with a political bias. What I’m telling you is that it’s inhumane to allow cartels to sex traffic people across the border.” 

Disgusting.

When Vice President @JDVance tried to shed light on the tens of thousands of innocent children trafficked across Joe Biden’s open southern border, Sunny Hostin and her cohosts tried to deflect and shut down the conversation.

“Let’s talk about this administration.”… pic.twitter.com/vQSiZne9W7

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) June 16, 2026

The hosts then turned to race, as Whoopi Goldberg challenged Vance to explain what black people did “to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color.”

“You know how hard it is. You have folks of color in your family. When you see things … them doing all kinds of removal of information of black heroes, how do you — how does that sit with you?” Goldberg asked.

She claimed that museums were hiding stories of slavery, black history was being erased, black voters were facing discrimination, and black leaders were being sidelined. Co-host Ana Navarro chimed in to add that there have been only three black refugees allowed into the country in recent years.

“I’m very skeptical of that number,” Vance responded. “We have a lot of immigration pathways in the United States.”

Vance stressed that everyone is welcome in the Trump administration’s political coalition, noting that even if someone didn’t vote for Trump, they are welcome in the country as long as they are American citizens.

“Look at Washington, D.C., one of the most democratic and one of the blackest by share of population blackest cities in the United States of America, has seen a radical decrease in violent crime and sexual assault and in murders,” he pointed out. “We have tried to take the crime issue seriously in part because we believe everybody, whether you are black or white or rich or poor, deserves to live in a safe neighborhood.”