- 4 months ago
JD Vance takes aim at Newsom in EXCLUSIVE interview- 'Cheap imitation Trump' Fox
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00:00Mr. Vice President, it's great to see you here.
00:02Good to see you, man.
00:03Mid-City Steel, La Crosse, Wisconsin, the middle of America, to celebrate the big, beautiful build.
00:08Of course. Yeah, we're thrilled to be here.
00:10And this is one of these businesses, the steel manufacturer, employs a lot of good people, uses a lot of technology.
00:15So people, I think, sometimes assume that manufacturing is sort of old, dirty, doesn't use technology.
00:21This is a good business. It's an example of leaning into American investment, American innovation.
00:26Obviously, the people here have great jobs. And, you know, you know my story, Will, but I grew up in a town where we were shedding manufacturing jobs because politicians had made stupid decisions.
00:36We're now adding manufacturing jobs and adding productivity in this economy thanks to the things that the president and the Republican Congress have done.
00:43So we're here to talk about it, here to talk about the benefits of the working families' tax cuts and obviously fire people up a little bit and just, you know, it's good.
00:50It's good to get out of Washington. I'm glad to be here.
00:52Glad to have you in Middle America. You bring up Middletown, Ohio.
00:56It's a lot like La Crosse, Wisconsin. It's not unlike my hometown of Sherman, Texas, all about 40,000 to 50,000 people manufacturing towns.
01:04And there's a lot of excitement today, but it hasn't always been that way, to your point.
01:07Whether or not it's been job loss, an opioid crisis, a cultural malaise and a sense of loss of purpose, I believe, is deeply rooted in what's happened in Middle America.
01:16What do you think that's done to America?
01:18Well, I think it was very bad for our country. And all these problems are very connected, right?
01:23You take a dad who's got a good middle-class manufacturing job, is able to support, you know, family, a couple of kids, and then that job disappears.
01:31Well, now the family is feeling financial stress that it wasn't 10 years ago, it wasn't 20 years ago.
01:36So sometimes families dissolve in the wake of that. That stress affects the kids.
01:40Some of those people turn to drugs. And all this stuff is very connected.
01:44And if you look at what the president is trying to do, it's also all connected.
01:48And I think that it's why it's leading to this very early days of an American renaissance, because you bring jobs back.
01:54You have people hope, optimism. You give them a little extra money to spend in their pocket.
01:58Maybe some of those people go and start a business.
02:00But then simultaneously, we're focused on the southern border, because we don't want this poison to come into these communities and destroy people from fentanyl and other related problems.
02:10So I kind of think in the same way that America's decline was a problem of interconnected issues, I think this American renaissance led by the president is also interconnected.
02:20And we're trying to work on all these different problems, because if we solve all these problems, it leads to a virtuous cycle.
02:26Well, the big, beautiful bill is big. It is interconnected as well.
02:30It is.
02:31What would you say to the people that are sitting right on the other side of this curtain?
02:34By the way, there is a beautiful bridge being built right on the other side of this curtain.
02:38But what would you say to them about the big, beautiful bill and how it begins to address the depth of what you just laid out, those problems?
02:44Well, I'd say, look, it's all connected.
02:45And we're going to talk to, obviously, in a little bit to the crowd that's assembled.
02:48And we're going to say a few things.
02:49Number one is you've got the biggest amount of money for border enforcement that we've seen in our country's history.
02:53Those criminal cartels that are bringing the fentanyl into places like Wisconsin, that are killing people by the bushel.
03:00We are now going to war against those cartels in a way that we've never done before because of that big, beautiful bill.
03:05We've also got incredible working families tax cuts to reinvigorate the economy here in Wisconsin.
03:11So you've got the child tax credit going up.
03:14You've got no tax on overtime, no tax on tips.
03:1627 percent of Wisconsin workers worked an overtime shift in the last year.
03:20Five percent of Wisconsin workers rely on tips, either in part or entirely.
03:25So this is going to mean a lot more money in people's pockets.
03:28And, of course, if they've got more money in their pocket, they can spend it on American-made products.
03:32And that's the final point is the president of the United States, this is not the main part of the working families tax cuts.
03:39We're going to make it easier to save and invest in the United States of America.
03:42The tariffs, of course, are separate.
03:44But it's all connected because if we make it easier to build things in the United States of America, we're also making it harder to build things overseas.
03:52This generation of failed American economic policy where we rewarded companies for putting factories in Mexico or in China or somewhere else.
04:00No, we've got to reward people for putting factories right here in middle America, right here in Wisconsin,
04:05employing good American workers to make great American products.
04:08That's the whole purpose of President Trump's economic agenda.
04:12And, again, it's already bearing real fruit.
04:14But it's going to, I think, lead to a great American renaissance over the next three years.
04:18I saw this this morning, that in 74 out of 100 metro areas in the United States, half of all starter homes are unaffordable.
04:27Yes.
04:27For the average American worker.
04:29You're the first millennial vice president.
04:30You have personal experience with people of this generation not being able to make that leap, that first economic leap into adulthood, homeownership.
04:38Is the system rigged?
04:40Oh, the system is absolutely rigged.
04:42I mean, look, you go back to the four years of the Biden administration.
04:45From 2021 until 2025, when we took over, the average price of a new home doubled.
04:51That's 100% increase in four years.
04:53That priced millions upon millions of young Americans out of the housing market.
04:57Now, there's a little bit of good news here, because even though we've only been in power for about seven months, you've already seen home prices flatten off a little bit.
05:05They've gone up, depending on what metric you believe, about 1%, maybe less than 1%.
05:10That's a big, big improvement.
05:12But there's so much more that we've got to do.
05:14And this is why the president of the United States goes after Jerome Powell for being too late.
05:18Because, of course, the housing crisis in this country is really two things.
05:22Number one, that the prices are too high.
05:25We've made some progress on that.
05:27In some ways, more importantly, the interest rates are too high.
05:30So even if you can afford the top-line dollar value of a home, if the interest rates are way too high because the Federal Reserve isn't doing its job, that also makes the American dream of homeownership unaffordable.
05:41So we're really working on both of those things.
05:43We had a lower interest rates.
05:44We had a lower housing prices.
05:46We've made, again, progress.
05:48But it's early, and we realize there's a lot more work to do.
05:51Absolutely the system is rigged.
05:52You've been a longtime critic of the system.
05:54But now I'm the vice president of the United States, and one could argue you are the system.
05:59So how do you fix a rigged system?
06:00Well, we inherited a rigged system.
06:02But I think that in seven months, we've already made a lot of progress to fix this.
06:06If you go back to, again, 100% housing price increase in four years under Joe Biden, we've already seen that level off under Donald Trump.
06:14Now, to fix the rigged system, you ask that question, you've got to understand the root causes here.
06:19Why did housing get so unaffordable for American citizens?
06:22Two big problems.
06:23Number one, I already talked about interest rates were too high.
06:26Number two, you had way too many people in this country who are competing against American citizens for scarce homes.
06:34And that's the illegal immigration problem.
06:36Why is housing leveled off over the past six months?
06:39I really believe the main driver is you've had negative net migration into the United States for the first time in 60 years in this country.
06:46You cannot flood the United States of America with 20, 30, 40 million people who have no legal right to be here.
06:53Have them compete against young American families for homes and not expect the price to skyrocket.
06:59It's as simple as supply and demand.
07:00You increase the demand, you're going to increase the price.
07:04And the final thing I want to say here is we're working on issues right now in the White House every single day because we want to make it easier to build homes, too.
07:12Because in the same way that getting illegal aliens out of this country means fewer people competing against young American families,
07:18we also want to increase the housing stock in this country by making it easier to build.
07:22So we're working on all this stuff.
07:24But, man, we've got to be honest, the system was rigged against Americans, especially young Americans for a very long time.
07:31We're making progress to unrig it, but it's going to take some time.
07:34You brought up tariffs.
07:35You brought up bringing manufacturing back home.
07:37I had dinner.
07:38I had the opportunity to have dinner a week or two ago in Texas with several big corporate CEOs across the country.
07:44And I did hear concern about tariffs.
07:47I heard concern not from people who necessarily vote Democrat, but people that are involved in the economy.
07:52Their concern was uncertainty.
07:53And their concern was that we might see inflation in the fourth quarter of 2025 or the first quarter of 2026.
08:00What would you say to those CEOs?
08:01Well, let me say a couple of things.
08:03So, first of all, I understand the point about uncertainty.
08:05The president has been very clear here.
08:08The countries have a tariff rate.
08:09If they open up their market, that tariff rate might go lower.
08:12But people at this point, I don't think that there's uncertainty about this.
08:15The president has delivered very clear guidance to the market about what tariff rate each particular country is going to pay.
08:24Obviously, in threatening higher tariff rates, he was able to get some markets opened up for our country.
08:29But I think at this point, it's pretty clear which countries are going to be paying which tariffs.
08:33And, again, on this concern about inflation, I've heard people say many years now that Donald Trump's tariffs are going to cause inflation.
08:42They didn't cause inflation during the Trump administration.
08:45We keep on defying economists' expectations.
08:47They keep on saying inflation is going to be 3%, 4%, 5%.
08:50It ends up being 2%, which is exactly where you want it.
08:52So we're very sensitive to this.
08:54We're obviously monitoring this stuff.
08:56But I think the evidence is that what these tariffs have done is caused a lot of capital to flow into our country, a lot of new facilities being built in our country.
09:04And, you know, we don't see the evidence yet.
09:07And I've been skeptical from the very beginning that President Trump's tariffs are going to cause prices to rise.
09:12What they're going to do is cause people to come back into our country.
09:15And the final point on this, Will, is the president said this better than anybody.
09:18You know what your tariff rate is if you build in the United States of America?
09:22It is zero.
09:23You don't pay a tariff if you build in the United States.
09:26So why not employ American workers?
09:29Build your products closer to the people who are going to be consuming those things.
09:32That's the whole point of President Trump's economic vision is more for America, more in America, more by American workers.
09:40And if we do that and pursue that policy, it's going to make everybody better off.
09:44It's very fair and very accurate.
09:45The doomsday predictions have been consistent and consistently wrong.
09:48Yes.
09:48Well, they remain wrong.
09:50Time will tell, perhaps later into this year.
09:52Let's return to culture for just one moment.
09:54Sure.
09:54You spent a lot of time talking about Europe, the migration crisis of Germany, of England.
10:00You've talked about free speech.
10:02Why is it so important for you to focus on Europe?
10:04Well, I think in some ways the problems of Europe mirror the problems of America.
10:08And anything that I've said about Europe, I've said 10 times and is even as true or more true in the United States of America.
10:14We, of course, had a wide open southern border under Joe Biden.
10:17I think the Europeans have got to learn the hard lessons.
10:19What happens is you get higher crime.
10:21You get less cultural cohesion.
10:23You get more just problems that come from importing millions and millions of low-wage foreigners into your country.
10:30The Europeans have got to learn that lesson in the same way that I think the United States had to learn that lesson.
10:34You've seen in the same way that the Biden administration went after social media companies to censor their fellow citizens,
10:40you've seen the very same thing happen in Europe, where rather than debate ideas, you have certain European leaders who would rather censor their fellow citizens.
10:48So I think fundamentally there's so much cultural similarity between us and Europe.
10:53Obviously, the United States was born out of a European country, the United Kingdom.
10:57I think it's important to recognize those cultural similarities.
11:00And importantly, what's happening in Europe does affect the United States and vice versa.
11:05And so I think it's important for us to step back and say, look, the West, right, that's Europe and America together.
11:11We got too comfortable with open borders.
11:14We got too comfortable with censorship.
11:15And I think the president has shown that if you go in the other direction, if you close down your borders and actually give free speech to your people,
11:22you can really energize the culture in these countries.
11:25Europe is the bedrock of Western civilization.
11:26Right.
11:27It's the foundation of Western civilization.
11:28And that seems to be not just questioned but under threat.
11:31Have you seen the story out of England where the English flag has simultaneously become controversial and patriotic?
11:38Some in that country see it as a sign of protest.
11:40Others see it as a sign of patriotism.
11:42And that's a little reflected in what's happening here in America.
11:46Yeah, that's exactly right, Will.
11:47Again, so much of what happens in Europe happens in America and vice versa.
11:51You know, sometimes we're on the leading edge of a trend.
11:53Sometimes they're on the leading edge of a trend.
11:55But I remember back in the crazy BLM summer of 2020, I had a buddy of mine say, you know,
12:00I was going to put the American flag out today, but I'm worried that some BLM person is going to ransack my house
12:06or, you know, come and vandalize it in some way because they see the American flag somehow as this controversial symbol.
12:14It's not a controversial symbol.
12:16Nothing should be less controversial than the American flag.
12:19It's the one thing that whether you're a Democrat or Republican should unite us all together.
12:23We should all love our country, be proud of our country.
12:25So, again, some of these trends where you have Americans worried about flying the American flag
12:31because they think their house is going to get vandalized, first of all, that's crazy.
12:35Second of all, you see the same things happening in Europe, and I think we just have to be on guard against this stuff.
12:40It's okay to be proud of your country.
12:42It's, in fact, a good thing to be proud of your country, and we should push back against the crazies who say
12:47we should be so ashamed of our culture and of our heritage that we shouldn't be willing to fly a flag.
12:53It's craziness. We've got to call that craziness out.
12:56I'd encourage our European friends to follow suit.
12:58You brought up how interconnected every single one of these problems are from culture to the economy.
13:02But if I could say to you, you could snap your fingers, politics be damned,
13:06and you could fix one problem at the root of all of this in America.
13:10Oh, man.
13:10You forwarded mass migration. You forwarded immigration.
13:13You could talk about the family unit.
13:14But what would be the root unit you would snap your fingers and fix?
13:18It's probably the migration problem.
13:20And I think, again, the President of the United States has shown in just a few short months what you can do.
13:24We've got illegal border crossings effectively at Zebra.
13:27We've got net migration negative in this country for the first time.
13:31And why do I say that?
13:32First of all, I think it's very hard to feel, you know, like you're part of the same country
13:38when your leadership brings in tens of millions of people uninvited.
13:42So that sense of shared American identity, the sense that we're part of the same American family,
13:47I think that gets destroyed when you import 20, 30 million people without any democratic check on it.
13:52So that's number one.
13:53Number two, I think it's terrible for the wages of working class people.
13:56When you see this in every place where you bring in low-wage immigrants,
14:00it's bad for the wages of Americans who just want to work a good job
14:04and earn a good wage in their communities.
14:06And the third thing that I point out is crime and drugs.
14:09We know that while most, of course, even illegal immigrants are not bringing in fentanyl,
14:13they are used by the cartels as vectors to traffic this illegal poison.
14:18And so it makes the opioid problem worse.
14:20It makes wages worse.
14:21And it makes our sense of common American identity worse.
14:25I think the migration issue really is the root of what went wrong during the Biden administration.
14:30By the way, it's why the Democrats are so obsessed with it.
14:34If you ask yourself, like, what does the modern national Democratic Party believe in?
14:38What do they fight most aggressively for?
14:40They fight most aggressively to continue to flood the United States
14:43with millions and millions of low-wage immigrants.
14:46The fact that that is the reason for existing for the Democratic Party
14:50should make all Americans sort of step back and say,
14:53what the hell is wrong with these people?
14:54Zoran Mamdani is the leading candidate for mayor in New York City.
14:58Yes, your Meemaw, by the way, I think, was a lifelong Democrat.
15:02She was.
15:02What do you think it says about the left that Zoran Mamdani is a leading candidate
15:07for a big political office as a Democrat?
15:09And what would your Meemaw say about modern Democrats?
15:11I think Meemaw would say this is crazy.
15:14I think that she would say the modern Democratic Party doesn't represent her at all.
15:19By the way, there are two things that Meemaw, yes, she was a lifelong Democrat.
15:22She believed in standing up for working people.
15:24She believed in good wages for a good job.
15:26Her husband was a union Democrat for 40 years, and that's really where it came from.
15:31But one, she thought politicians ought to have a sense of humor.
15:35Democrats, the one thing they should learn from President Trump is to laugh at themselves a little bit.
15:40They don't have to be so serious.
15:42They don't have to get offended at everything.
15:44Sometimes it's actually a good thing to have a sense of humor about our political process.
15:48And the second thing is, Meemaw, she was a Democrat who loved this country
15:52and felt gratitude for this country.
15:54She had multiple relatives who served in World War II, who served in World War I.
15:58She remembered that war like it was yesterday.
16:01She would tell me about World War II and her brother and her dad going off to fight in the Pacific.
16:06Does Mondami, when you hear him speak, is this a man who feels gratitude for the United States of America?
16:11Is this a man who feels grateful for all of the opportunities, the incredible bounty of this country?
16:16I don't know the guy, but my sense is he's had a very good life in this country.
16:20It would be nice for him to occasionally show a sense of gratitude instead of just attacking the United States for all of its problems.
16:27You bring up humor.
16:28Gavin Newsom sure thinks he's a comedian these days on social media, and so does much of the left.
16:33His polling numbers have gone way up since he started mimicking President Trump on social media.
16:38What do you make of Governor Newsom?
16:40I make of Governor Newsom that you said he's mimicking Donald Trump, and I think that's exactly right.
16:44The lesson of Donald Trump, the lesson of President Trump in American politics is you've got to be authentic to yourself.
16:50And when I see Gavin Newsom trying to act like Donald Trump, that's the opposite of authenticity.
16:55He's not trying to be Gavin Newsom, whoever that is.
16:58He's trying to be a fake carbon copy of Donald Trump, and it just doesn't work.
17:03You can't mimic the king.
17:06You can't mimic the master.
17:07You ought to just go and be yourself, and I think the American people would like that a lot more than a cheap imitation of the President of the United States.
17:13Two more questions.
17:14One important to our country.
17:15One important to you and me.
17:16This story I know you're aware of out of Minneapolis, where this school shooter at a Catholic school killed two young children, trans-identified.
17:26The latest in the news is he may have actually regretted his transition.
17:30There's a conversation today.
17:32The mayor of Minneapolis says it's hate to focus on his identity.
17:36There are others that say it's necessary to tell the truth.
17:40What do you make of this story?
17:41And, by the way, what do you make of the response of so many that seem to reject the prayers of those that want to reach out?
17:48Yeah.
17:49It seems to be a real antagonism to spirituality.
17:52Well, I think there are a lot of things here.
17:54And the first and most important thing, again, I really do see us as one American family.
17:58And you have to think about those parents and those kids and what they've gone through, and especially the kids who lost their lives.
18:07This is the most heartbreaking thing imaginable.
18:10And we should be praying for those kids.
18:12We should be thinking about those families.
18:14We should be doing everything that we can to try to help them.
18:16I mean, I took my five-year-old two days ago to his Catholic school, where he became a kindergarten, his first day of kindergarten.
18:22And then the very next day, you see something like this happen.
18:25This is just an unbelievable tragedy.
18:28And we have to remember that there are a couple of families who yesterday had the worst day of their lives.
18:32And it's not going to get much better from here because of what this evil person took from these families, which is these two beautiful kids.
18:41That's my first response to it.
18:42My second response to it is I'm praying every single day, multiple times a day, that while two deaths is tragic, three deaths is even more tragic.
18:50And I hope it stays in tune because there still are some kids who seem to be in pretty serious condition at hospitals.
18:56And we're praying for their swift recovery.
18:58And I think on the broader stuff, I mean, look, clearly this person was a mentally deranged human being.
19:03Clearly, it was a transgender individual.
19:05We're going to learn a lot more.
19:07And I think the FBI and local authorities, I ought to try to get to the bottom of this.
19:10But you don't go and shoot up innocent children unless you are a clearly screwed up person.
19:16And so that's obviously true.
19:17But I do think that, look, we are so soon after this tragedy, I guess it's going to air this afternoon, but we're so soon after this tragedy that I think that it would be nice if we as a country could unite, say our prayer for these innocent victims, say our prayer for the kids who are still recovering, that they make a full recovery, focus on the investigation and getting to the bottom of this thing.
19:39And not immediately make it about politics.
19:42And my final point on this is when I see far-left politicians say, how dare you offer thoughts and prayers?
19:47You need action.
19:48You know, I don't care about your prayers.
19:50I care about what you're going to do to prevent this from happening.
19:52Why does it have to be one or the other?
19:54Why can't you pray for the speedy recovery of these kids who literally just got shot yesterday,
19:58while at the same time committing to making sure this doesn't happen again or that it happens as infrequently as possible?
20:06I don't think there's anything inconsistent about saying a prayer to God for these innocent, beautiful kids,
20:12while also thinking constructively about how we're going to prevent this from happening the next time.
20:16You can do both of those things.
20:17You can hold both of those thoughts in your head at the same time.
20:22And, Will, if you are a politician or you're a media commentator and two beautiful babies just got murdered while praying
20:29and your politics force you to contend prayer in response to it, you ought to get new politics because something very wrong has gone on inside your soul.
20:38All right.
20:39Lastly, on a lighter note, I'm disappointed to see your blue tie.
20:41I, as a specific rebuke to you and the Ohio State Buckeyes today, chose a burnt horn tie.
20:47This weekend, we have number one versus number two, the University of Texas versus Ohio State.
20:53Let's just revisit what has to be one of your most embarrassing moments as vice president.
20:57I can't even imagine.
20:58What is it like to drop the national championship trophy?
21:02It's awful.
21:03Let me tell you, it's awful.
21:04And my friends gave me hell for it.
21:06And it's one of those moments I'll never live down.
21:09I didn't break it, though.
21:10It was made of solid, good steel, I guess.
21:12I did analyze it play by play.
21:14The base fell off.
21:15I could give you a whole back story about it.
21:17I didn't know that there's, so it's not the base fell off.
21:20The base is meant to come off.
21:22Right.
21:22You're not meant to lift it up by the base, which is the mistake that I made.
21:25You're supposed to just take the trophy out of the base.
21:27So anyway, that was the first error that led to a series of problems.
21:31But I looked at the line yesterday, and I think Ohio State were 12-point dogs to Texas.
21:36No, it's your favorite.
21:36I believe you're favored by three.
21:38You're at home.
21:39You're number two.
21:40Okay.
21:40We're number one.
21:41I thought I, I, I, I, somebody sent me a line.
21:45That's what I said, because we're at, we're in Columbus.
21:47Somebody sent me a line that had us minus 11.5.
21:50And I was like, that sounds crazy to me.
21:53I think it's going to be a good game.
21:54You guys have a hell of a team.
21:55Obviously, Archie Manning has good genes, as the president would say.
21:59So hopefully he doesn't have too good of a day in Ohio Stadium.
22:02You have a prediction?
22:03I have one.
22:04Oh, man.
22:05Texas Longhorns by a million.
22:0834-23 Buckeyes.
22:11All right.
22:11I can't wait to see you afterwards.
22:12That's a confident prediction.
22:13All right.
22:13Thank you, Mr. Vice President.
22:14Good to see you.
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