00:00I'm not attacking Bibi Netanyahu. I'm not endorsing Bibi Netanyahu. I think the President's endorsement is ultimately what matters, and
00:07the President is going to make the decision about how he doles out that endorsement according to his preferences. But
00:13I'm going to be focused on the midterm elections here in the United States of America.
00:18Mr. Vice President, you've said that you don't endorse foreign candidates, but you have backed Orban and expressed support for
00:25the right in Germany. I'm wondering, going back to your comments in an interview this weekend, do you have concerns
00:30about Prime Minister Netanyahu's leadership?
00:33Well, look, I've endorsed one foreign candidate for election in my entire life. First of all, it didn't go particularly
00:41well, as much as I'm very much an admirer of the Prime Minister Orban.
00:45But fundamentally, that was in April, I think, of 2026. We're in the middle of an American election cycle where
00:51I'm very focused on getting candidates elected in the United States of America.
00:55As I said in that interview, I'm not attacking Bibi Netanyahu. I'm not endorsing Bibi Netanyahu. I think the President's
01:02endorsement is ultimately what matters, and the President is going to make the decision about how he doles out that
01:07endorsement according to his preferences.
01:09But I'm going to be focused on the midterm elections here in the United States of America. I'm not endorsing
01:16any more foreign candidates now or in the future. Next question.
01:20Mr. Vice President, Tanya O'Rourke from WCBO here in Cincinnati. Welcome home.
01:24Hey, Tanya. Good to see you.
01:26Good to see you, too. Knowing the type of fraud that's taken place within the SNAP program you guys have
01:31identified, is there a look at SNAP itself as a program to see why this was able to be a
01:39thing, why these people were able to defraud this program?
01:42Well, one of the challenges, Tanya, is because of the way that SNAP is administered, it can sometimes – and
01:48we're doing a lot of work to try to change this – it can sometimes be very hard to identify
01:52the fraud until after it's already happened.
01:54I mean, part of what helped us identify shoddy dread is the guy's posting Instagram videos, and we're able to
01:59connect the money that he's making with the money that he's then using to go and buy seats on private
02:04jets and all these other things.
02:06One of the things we have tried to do, and I'll give great credit to the state of Ohio for
02:10being a leader on this – a few other states should deserve credit as well – but if we go,
02:15for example, to the state of California, where we wire, meaning the federal government wires, billions of dollars directly to
02:22the state of California, they don't even know who's on their SNAP rolls.
02:25They don't know whether those people are legal residents of the United States of America.
02:29Sometimes they don't even know if they're real people at all.
02:31So there's no verification in certain states, and that's because this program is fundamentally a state-administered program.
02:39And so what we've tried to do is, to your point, try to get a little inventive and try to
02:44get ahead of the curve and anticipating and seeing the fraud before it goes out the door.
02:48But it would be a lot easier with state cooperation.
02:50Again, we have that in the state of Ohio.
02:52We don't have it in other states.
02:53And that has been a barrier to fighting fraud in some of these programs.
02:58Sometimes the states just don't want to cooperate.
03:00I'll take one more question, then we'll have to hit the road.
03:02Thanks, Mr. Vice President.
03:03My name's Naomi Lim.
03:05I'm with the Washington Examiner.
03:06Two quick ones.
03:07We're in your home state.
03:09What do you think you bring as a surrogate to help – you know, a Houston to help a Ramaswamy
03:14just because this is your home state?
03:16And then secondly, what would you say to criticism that you are cracking down on fraud, but there have been
03:21other members or former members of the administration that have been sort of criticized for pay-to-play, you know,
03:27like the likes of Kimberly Guilfoyle, the likes of Alina Harbus.
03:30How do you sort of reconcile those two sort of split screens?
03:33Well, what I'd say is that we want to fight fraud wherever we see it.
03:36What we're not going to do is go and attack somebody based on an anonymously sourced story.
03:41And some of those cases, you have to let the facts play out and see what the facts actually are.
03:46Look, if I see anybody trying to do pay-for-play within our government, within our administration, I can tell
03:52you I'm not going to have to call the president and encourage him to do something.
03:56He's going to call me and demand an answer to why we aren't doing more.
04:00But you've got to let the facts drive these things.
04:02There is no person who hates the idea of people enriching themselves fraudulently over access to the government than Donald
04:09J. Trump.
04:10I think he's been a great advocate, obviously, for our anti-fraud efforts.
04:14He's been the person who's driven most of our anti-fraud efforts.
04:17Fundamentally, the president is not going to stand for this, but we're not going to try people in the court
04:21of public opinion.
04:22We're going to let real facts develop.
04:24And that's one thing I'd say to the American people.
04:26I see a lot of stories about our administration, and sometimes my initial reaction to them is I really don't
04:33like that.
04:34And then when you read the details, you realize that a lot of what's being accused is, one, anonymously sourced,
04:41or, two, it's just completely fraudulent.
04:43There's no real evidentiary basis for it at all, which is why, again, we don't try people in the court
04:49of public opinion.
04:50We actually try people according to the real facts that are out there.
04:53But I can tell you, this attorney general and the entire administration, we reject pay-for-play.
04:58We reject anybody getting enriched off of their connections to the government.
05:02And if we see it happening, whether it's our partisan friends or our partisan enemies, we are going to do
05:08something about it.
05:09And then the second question about, you know, what do I bring as a surrogate?
05:12I mean, look, this is my home state.
05:14Obviously, I have a lot of friends here, a lot of people who I love and who love me.
05:19But I do think I understand this state probably instinctively better than I understand most states because of my connection
05:24to it.
05:25And I just do not think the state of Ohio wants to give Sherrod Brown a 50th year when he
05:31didn't do anything with his first 49 years in public service.
05:34I don't think that they want to give the governorship over to a person who lies about every single one
05:40of her positions,
05:40who pretends that she's a reasonable moderate when her entire life in public service she's been a far-left Democrat.
05:46So I think I can make that argument in a pretty compelling way.
05:50Obviously, I'm going to go try and do exactly that in about half an hour.
05:53But my message to the people of Ohio is very simple.
05:56This is a good state.
05:57Common-sense people, whether they're Democrats or Republicans or independents, the far-left has run and taken over the Democratic
06:05Party.
06:06Don't give these people power.
06:08They're going to cause more of the very problems that we've been fighting against.
06:11That's going to be my message.
06:13And I think ultimately it's going to carry the day in the state of Ohio.
06:15But of course, the voters will have to make that determination.
06:18Good to see you guys.
06:19Thank you all for being here.
06:20We'll talk soon.
