Megyn Kelly Show: w/ Vice President JD Vance (Transcript)

No, I mean, the President, he is just, if Washington is an insincere place, I think you said that and said it well, he is the polar opposite. He just says what’s on his mind. He doesn’t care how anybody’s going to react to it. What you see is what you get.

And people always ask, “Well, what is he like in private?” He is in private exactly like he is when he’s in front of a camera. And I think that, you’re right, it kind of, there are some members of the press who kind of like him for it than some members of the press who don’t. And then I think for most members of the press, it’s a little bit of both.

MEGYN KELLY: Right.

JD VANCE: Like, they admire the game, even if for some political reason, they can’t, they just can’t admit that they actually like him. But most of them actually do.

MEGYN KELLY: They hate themselves for life.

JD VANCE: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, look, there was a moment in the Oval Office, I wasn’t even in there, but, you know, I was in the West Wing, and somebody sent me where he was talking to Kaitlan Collins, who’s the CNN anchor. And I have a decent relationship with Kaitlan Collins, which is unusual given that she’s from CNN. But the president, she’s asking a question. The president says, “Why don’t you ever smile?”

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah.

JD VANCE: And it’s actually so perceptive. Even if you’re asking a tough question, even if you take your job very seriously, like, why does it always have to be so antagonistic?

Media Bias and Authenticity

MEGYN KELLY: Well, I laughed because I saw online everybody was calling him sexist for saying that. And I literally said the same thing about Kaitlan Collins a year ago on my show. She never smiles. Every once in a while, you have to smile. Roger Ailes used to tell us that every once in a while, you can remember, smiles show the viewers that you…

JD VANCE: Have a heart, have some fun, right? Like life. You can’t always take yourself too seriously. You’re going to have a heart attack. And that’s too much of the Washington press corps. And of course, they don’t act like that when the other guys are in power. So it is, there is a political bias angle to it.

But I just, I think that the press would have a much higher, like, the media is one of the least trusted institutions in the United States of America. More people would trust them, more people would like them if they actually express the range of emotions. Like, I’m not saying you have to agree with everything that me or President Trump do, but nobody is angry all the time. And when you come across as angry all the time, it’s just fake.

MEGYN KELLY: And also fake confused or befuddled about, for example, the lowest crime rate in 125 years.

JD VANCE: Absolutely.

MEGYN KELLY: The New York Times. “We may never know.”

JD VANCE: Yes.

MEGYN KELLY: How it happened.

Crime Rates and Policy Impact

JD VANCE: Yeah. Okay, so just on this one, lowest crime rate in 120 years, a massive drop in murders. That is human beings who are fellow citizens, in some cases our family and friends who are walking around America’s cities, who, but for the pro law and order policies of the Trump administration, would literally not be with us.

Like, that’s one of those things where when you measure it in human lives, you realize how powerful and important this is. There are many, many dozens of people in most of America’s major cities who are walking around right now who get to go home to their kids, who get to play with their dog, because we have actually brought some common sense back to our crime policies.

But just going back to the media, okay, so I remember this question I got from a New York Times reporter. I was doing one of these long form interviews and she asked me, you know, she said, “Well, you know, sometimes you give these speeches and you’re happy, go lucky. And, you know, you play around with your kids and you’re obviously very happy when you’re doing that. But sometimes you’re really annoyed or really angry. Like, what is the real JD?”

And I remember thinking to myself, what human being isn’t sometimes pissed off at what’s going on in the country, but also can laugh about it? What human being doesn’t enjoy playing with their kids, but maybe gets annoyed when they’re dealing with some bullshit at work?

The idea that you have to be one dimensional is, I think, one of the reasons why the media is so broken, and it’s one of the reasons why they can’t tell the true stories that are out there.

You asked about the crime. Okay, why is the crime rate so low? There are a lot of reasons. One is that we’ve empowered local law enforcement. Another reason is because we’ve deported a lot of criminals in the United States that should have never been here in the first place because they were illegal aliens.

So the media cannot even express an ounce of nuance. It’s never, “Oh, well, maybe this, we disagree with this, let’s have a conversation about that.” But like, let’s tell the truth about the fact that there are Americans who are alive today because of Donald Trump’s crime and immigration policies. They can’t do that. It’s always just shouting angry all the time. “You’re Gestapo. You’re the fascist.” And it’s just crazy.

And it does the American people a real disservice. It’s frankly why, you know, you probably have, I don’t know, five times as many viewers, 100 times as many viewers as the average CNN show. Because people are fed up with the bullshit. Yeah, sorry, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say that you’re allowed, you know.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah, no. Our YouTube feed on a monthly basis beats all of CNN, just our show, 100%.

JD VANCE: That doesn’t surprise me at all.

MEGYN KELLY: And we know why.

JD VANCE: Yes.

Immigration and Deportation Policy

MEGYN KELLY: Let’s talk about the illegal immigration. So this year we’ve had 2.2 million self deportations and about 675,000 actual deportations under the Trump Vance administration. That’s about, let’s call it 3 million, the self deportations. We’re assuming we’re going to have more on the front end than the back end because people who are willing to take the deal are going to take it now and go.

JD VANCE: So.

MEGYN KELLY: So unfortunately, it could be that that number could go down. And people who really want those 10 to 12 could be as many as 20 million illegals who are here, most of whom came under Joe Biden. They want them all gone. But at this pace, it’s not going to happen. So to those people who think this is going too slowly, what do you say?

Immigration Enforcement and Legal Challenges

JD VANCE: Well, I say a few things. First of all, there are ways in which it will accelerate. You’re right. There may be some front end self deportations that you can’t replicate in years two and three. There also may be some people who wanted to do it in year one but couldn’t get in the line, couldn’t, you know, I mean, self deporting two and a half million people, that’s a lot just bureaucratically. So I think those numbers will continue. They may taper off a little bit.

Number two, all of the immigration enforcement officers that we hired because Biden gutted immigration enforcement, most of them are in training right now. Most of them have not even hit the streets. There are a lot of ways in which we are doing a slow ramp of immigration enforcement because we inherited a deportation operation that was so broken.

And then the third thing that I’d say is the left has fought us so aggressively, but many of our victories are starting to bear fruit. I mean, like just yesterday or the day before, you had a left wing judge who said that we could not end temporary protected status for illegal Haitian immigrants. Now this is a program that was put in place illegally, I believe, in the Obama administration. And now a judge is saying that we can’t end it. Well, we’re going to appeal, we’re going to win.

But some of this stuff has taken where judges have tried to stop us from deporting illegal aliens that’s had to work its way through the appeals process. Some of those cases, I believe, are at the Supreme Court right now. So it just takes time to do this in the proper way, to do it in a legal way. It’s taken time, especially when the left is fighting us so aggressively. But it’s going to keep on happening. I mean, the president has been very clear. We’re not going to stop enforcing our immigration policies. We’re going to keep doing it. But I think, frankly, we’ll probably be in a better position to do it a year from now than we are today. And we’re certainly in a much better position today than we were a year ago.

MEGYN KELLY: That’s such a, because the legal landscape will have been cleared.

JD VANCE: Exactly.

MEGYN KELLY: Of some of these hurdles thanks to the Supreme Court.

JD VANCE: No, look, I mean, Megyn, sometimes Steven Miller is one of my closest friends in the administration. He and I go way back. Sometimes we’ll exchange messages and it’s like, can you believe this judge did this? It’s going to delay this thing another three months or another six months. But then you realize, okay, three months, six months. But we keep on winning these cases, right? So, yes, you have radical judges who are slowing things. They’re not going to be able to stop things so long as we in the administration maintain our posture on it. And we’re going to.

Judicial Activism and Animus

MEGYN KELLY: Do you find it shocking? Like the judge who issued that order saying you cannot end temporary protected status is the same judge who tried to stop Trump’s ban on transgenders serving in the military. And both times she said it’s animus. The administration either hates transgender people or now in this case, it hates black people from Haiti. And both times, I mean, she was overruled on the first case. She’s likely to be overruled on this case. But you’re a lawyer. Do you find it shocking how opinionated, how personal these judges make it?

JD VANCE: Yes, I do. And there was the one judge who was like, the administration should read the Declaration of Independence. I guarantee you that our president in the Trump administration is aware of the Declaration of Independence and has actually read it. I don’t think Biden could have cited the first 10 words of the Declaration of Independence.

So there is this weird judicial animosity towards the administration. But we kind of knew we were going to do this. I mean, I remember during the transition we talked through, okay, we know there are some far left judges who are going to do nationwide injunctions, which, by the way, I think are illegitimate, but set that to the side. And we know we’re going to have to power through this stuff. We’re only a year into a four year term, so we are making progress.

But you know, Megyn, this animus point is really interesting because I think to the extent that there are still, and I’m fundamentally optimistic about human nature, there are still some good faith people on the far left who are trying to, who hopefully would try to understand where we’re coming from. Here’s what I would say.

So I got an email from a classmate of mine a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t respond to it, but I did read it and it was basically like, you know, it was a plea to sort of stop the chaos and to calm down the chaos. And I read it and I thought, okay, this is a good human being, even though I disagree with his politics. And of course we don’t want immigration enforcement to be chaotic. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve encouraged state and local officials to work with us.

But fundamentally, the question is, are we allowed to do what the American people elected us to do? Biden lets in call it 20 million illegal aliens. If the courts tell us that we’re not allowed to deport the people that the American people elected us to deport, that’s fundamentally not about even immigration anymore. That’s about democracy. Are the American people still sovereign if one administration can do something and the other administration can’t do what the American people elected them to do in order to reverse it?

And if you think about even, there’s another layer to it which is nobody elected Joe Biden to open the border. If you actually look at what Joe Biden said on immigration during the 2020 campaign, he sounded a lot more like a moderate, even conservative Republican. And then of course, they got into power and they open the border. So doesn’t it cast into doubt the legitimacy of our system if one president running on reasonable immigration enforcement opens the border and then another president is not allowed to close it and deport all those people who came?

I think that’s fundamentally what’s at stake here is do judges control, does the far left control the American constitutional republic, or do the people. And I believe the people are sovereign, which is why we’ve pursued the policies that we have.

The Minneapolis Situation

MEGYN KELLY: The example of Minneapolis has been troubling to both sides. The left has used it to say ICE is out of control and the Trump administration is out of control. And the right is frustrated that by some accounts, we appear to have bent the knee there.

JD VANCE: Yes.

MEGYN KELLY: In other words, Homan’s out, Homan’s in. Now we’re only focusing on the criminals. He says we’re focused on the non criminal illegals. I realize they’ve all committed crimes by coming here illegally. But my point is the far right, definitely, or the right, I think, wants all illegals gone.

JD VANCE: Of course.

MEGYN KELLY: And actually the polls show that the majority of the American people still want that. They want all the illegals gone, not just the ones who committed additional crimes upon getting here. And I think a lot of us are wondering, what is the plan for getting them? Because it seems that the left has effectively exercised its veto by its terrible behavior in Minneapolis.

JD VANCE: Yeah.

MEGYN KELLY: Such to, you know, Homan is very focused on getting the illegals out. All of the reforms he’s announcing are with respect to getting the illegals who have committed additional crimes and notification of them before they leave the local jails, which would be great. That would be a compromise of sanctuary city policy there. We don’t yet have an agreement on that in Minneapolis, which is the biggest area. Maybe we’ll get it. But the point is simply, what about all the others?

JD VANCE: Yeah, yeah. So I actually, I kind of like that our side is so insistent on this issue. I like the pressure. I like people saying, we recognize you’ve done a lot, now do more. I think that’s kind of how this should work. Is that fundamentally, you know, the president and I and the entire administration, we work for the American people. And so I hear these complaints, I hear these criticisms.

I guess I’d say a couple things. So first of all, again, you have an entire legal landscape, but also a deportation enforcement mechanism. All of these additional ICE officers that we brought in as part of the one big beautiful bill that’s getting online.

MEGYN KELLY: Now, they’re not going to Minneapolis.

JD VANCE: Well, some of them will. Some of them.

MEGYN KELLY: Homan just announced a drawdown of 700.

JD VANCE: So Homan announced a partial drawdown, but because the local authorities are cooperating with them and this is why it’s important to segregate. What are we talking about, immigration enforcement or everything else? We’re not drawing down immigration enforcement. We’re drawing down some of the federal officers that were helping the guys doing immigration enforcement.

And this is what I think, frankly, the far left and also some of our guys on the right didn’t fully appreciate when Homan says we’re drawing 700 people down. Those are the people who were protecting the ICE officers as they went out and did deportations and immigration enforcement. Most of the people that we have in Minneapolis, they’re not doing immigration enforcement. That’s true. Even after the 700 drawdown, most of them are protecting the immigration officers from the mob that’s forming around them.

So as we get more and more cooperation from Minneapolis and from the state of Minnesota, and we are. We are starting to get real cooperation from them. And in a way that we haven’t, we don’t want people there doing effectively police work so that they can protect our immigration officers. We want the immigration officers to go and do their work, and if they get into a problem, they can call local police.

As that happens, I think you’re going to see some of that law enforcement shifting to the local police, which is exactly what we wanted. And by the way, well, before the Peretti shooting or the Renee Goode shooting, that’s what we were asking. Because if you look at, even in very blue places like Memphis, Tennessee, or a number of other cities, you see the system working as it should. An immigration officer goes in, arrests an illegal alien, that person gets processed and deported. And if, God forbid, you have a mob forming, the ICE officers can call the local police and say, hey, these guys are threatening us. They’re harassing us, they’re maybe even assaulting us.

The reason why Minneapolis was so chaotic is because we had to have all these extra officers doing the job the local police wouldn’t do. If the local police are willing to step up a little bit, I think that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. And, you know, I don’t want to give this talk of surrender, because I know that we haven’t surrendered. But if they’re in Minnesota doing the very thing that they said they refused to do, I don’t think that’s a surrender on the part of the Trump administration, especially as we continue on immigration enforcement.

E-Verify and Employer Accountability

MEGYN KELLY: What about the secret option of E-Verify, where we go after the employers and we find them, if we find out that they’re employing illegals?

JD VANCE: Yep.

MEGYN KELLY: It seems there’s been a relationship reluctance to do that, even by the Trump administration, because there are a lot of employers who, let’s face it, like employing cheap labor through illegal immigrants.

JD VANCE: Yes. So, you know, I supported E-Verify legislation when I was in the Senate. It’s been an issue. I actually campaigned on it when I ran for the Senate. It’s funny, I’ve never talked to the president about E-Verify specifically, but it would require an act of Congress, and that is something that, look, I would like to believe that Congress would support E-Verify legislation. I frankly don’t know that we have the people that would make it happen.

But look, if Congress wants to do it, then they should do it. And then of course, that would give us some additional immigration enforcement tools. We would love that. But fundamentally that is something that Congress has to fix. We’ve done a lot, by the way. We’ve made it harder for employers to hire illegal aliens. We’ve made it harder for illegal aliens and frankly some legal visa holders to get access to the benefits that should go to American citizens. So there’s a lot that we can do administratively, certain things like fully verify. You do need Congress.

Congressional Outlook and Midterm Concerns

MEGYN KELLY: You mentioned Congress. It’s not looking so good for the Republicans to hold onto the House. We’ll see, at least in the midterms. I mean, now some people are worried about the Senate, which would really be calamitous for the right.

JD VANCE: Yep.

MEGYN KELLY: What will happen if the Democrats do win control of the House? Only will anything change? I mean, I realize you’re going to have an investigation coming your way every two weeks, but we haven’t had a lot of legislation pushed through the first year just given the 60 vote threshold in the Senate. So realistically, what do you think would change?

Iran Policy and Nuclear Weapons

JD VANCE: Well, so first of all, I hear the criticisms out there that the administration is too focused on foreign policy. I just have to defend the president. I don’t think that’s true. I think that certainly when you’re the President of the United States, you do have to conduct foreign policy. We’re the most powerful country in the world. But what I see him every day, he’s laser focused on how do we make the American people more prosperous and more secure in their own country.

That’s what our immigration policy is about, which we’ve taken a raft of crap over. That’s what our crime policy is about. That’s, you know, even the foreign policy stuff. Much of the president’s foreign policy has been focused on reshoring industry, on using tariffs to force people to reinvest in the United States of America. So the global criticism, I just don’t think people look, the President is going to have to engage in foreign policy. But this President, I think is much more focused on the home front than any president in my lifetime. And he’s gotten a lot. I mean, look, $18 trillion in new investment. The country’s finally starting to re-industrialize.

MEGYN KELLY: 18 trillion other countries who are investing.

JD VANCE: Into the United States, investing in the United States of America. That has been the exact opposite for building companies our entire lives, Megyn. It has been American money building factories overseas. Now it’s other money coming in to build factories for American workers and the American people. That’s big, by the way. We’re not going to see the full benefits of that for years, maybe even a decade. But that’s the sort of investment in the country that really pays long term dividends.

Now, Iran specifically. Like what should we do with Iran? Okay, a couple of things. First of all, it’s the President’s decision. He will ultimately decide how we handle this particular Iranian situation. Just like he decided on Operation Midnight Hammer. What he has been very clear on, if you go back to 2015, 2016, 2021, 2025, the President has said consistently, we can’t let these people have a nuclear weapon.

Now why, why does that matter to America? Number one, the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. Like you think it’s bad when we have a domestic terror attack where a couple of people die and you’re right, what happens when the same people who are shooting up a mall or driving airplanes into buildings have a nuclear weapon? That is unacceptable. And it’s not just them. Because if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, you know, who gets a nuclear weapon like the next day? The Saudi Arabians and then somebody else in the Gulf Arab state. And so you have nuclear proliferation on a global scale.

The biggest threat to security in the world is a lot of people having nuclear weapons. So what the President said is Iran’s not going to get a nuclear weapon. We’re going to work with China and Russia and any country, whether they’re friend or whether we’re a little more competitive to try to draw down the amount of nuclear weapons that exist in the world. I think that’s the most important thing you could do for peace and stability.

And the question is, what do you do to enforce that red line? Okay, Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. That is the stated policy goal of the President of the United States. It’s so funny. Sometimes you have people who are saying, well, the President’s too belligerent. And then sometimes you have people who say, well, the President, he’s talking about diplomacy and he’s talking about negotiating with the Iranians. We shouldn’t negotiate, we should just bomb them.

What the President’s going to do is he’s going to keep his options open. He’s going to talk to everybody. He’s going to try to accomplish what he can through non-military means. And if he feels like the military is the only option, then he’s ultimately going to choose that option. I can’t, I’m not, obviously, even if I knew what we were going to do, I would not tell you and your many millions of listeners.

But I feel like people have to remember that this is not about like, I grew up in the Iraq generation. I literally, I enlisted in the Marine Corps as an idealistic young kid right after 9/11. I went to Iraq in 2000, I enlisted in 2003. I went to Iraq in 2005. I am very cognizant that the Middle East leads to quagmires. Trust me, so is the President of the United States. And we’re hearing that. We know that’s out there, but more importantly, we know the history. And the President does not, he has no interest in repeating the history of Iraq.

What he does want to make sure is that there’s a totally separate issue, which is you don’t let crazy people get nuclear weapons and then lead to a nuclear arms race all over the world.

Iranian Protests and Regime Change

MEGYN KELLY: But this is this, I mean, you tell me whether this is about nuclear weapons right now or not. But what we’re seeing in Iran is these protests on the street. Not as much anymore because, because they’ve been killing a lot of the protesters. But it’s, should we go in there and help the protesters get rid of this regime? Like get rid of the Ayatollah, which, let’s face it, it’s much different in Iran. The regime goes well beyond the Ayatollah. It’s not like Venezuela, where Maduro. It’s a lot more complex.

Even if we got rid of the Ayatollah, there’d be a whole bunch of others just like him, part of the regime. And so the last thing most Americans want to hear is what we heard in Venezuela, which is now we’re running Iran.

JD VANCE: Yeah, the President is very aware of all this stuff, Megyn. But I’ll tell you, you know, protests, counter regime. I mean, look, in a perfect world, would I love it if a bunch of freedom loving Iranians who, by the way, are amazing, they’re brave people. If you know anything about the Persian people, they’re like an incredible group of human beings. If they took over their own country and had a government that was much more friendly to the United States of America, would that be a good thing? Absolutely, that would be a good thing.

But fundamentally, what the President has always been focused on, even with this most recent round of protests, you saw, I think his most recent truth, or at least one of the more recent communications he made about Iran, it’s nuclear weapons based. We are still focused on this question of ensuring they don’t get a nuclear weapon. And here’s a good thing. Because of what happened last summer, I feel 100% confident that even if the Iranians were rushing towards a nuclear weapon, they couldn’t get one during the Trump administration.

But we’re not worried about the next three years, worried about the next 30 years. We have to make sure that you don’t, look, what I really worry about, I think this is, you know, obviously I disagree a lot with Bill Clinton, but Bill Clinton fundamentally decided, you know what, we’re just going to let North Korea have a nuclear weapon. We’re not going to do anything to stop it. What happens if 30 years from now, the number of nuclear countries, it’s less than 10, maybe about 10. What if it goes to, what if every military in the world has a nuclear weapon? What if a crazy person gets elected in some random outpost of the world that you and I couldn’t even find on a map? And now all of a sudden a crazy guy has access to nuclear weapons.

Nuclear proliferation, that is very much a bad thing. And something in America first foreign policy should focus on. That is certainly where the President is.

MEGYN KELLY: Most worried about when it comes to defending the homeland. The President has been looking northward to Greenland and to Canada, but he’s been very focused on Greenland.

JD VANCE: Yes.

Greenland and National Security

MEGYN KELLY: And you tell me what we got that made him say, okay, now I’m happy because he gave that speech at the UN like, we need to have Greenland and we need to own it because no one would defend something on lease.

JD VANCE: Yeah.

MEGYN KELLY: But then by the end of the UN Summit, he came out saying, yeah, that we’re satisfied, but we seem to only have gotten permission that we might have had already to build more military bases on a couple of their outposts.

JD VANCE: No, we definitely have gotten much more than we initially had. So first of all, again, it’s important to define the interest here. Greenland is very important to America’s national security. Our entire missile defense system, by the way, would be inoperable if the Russians or the Chinese controlled Greenland.

So God forbid, I don’t think it’s going to happen, to be clear, but God forbid some foreign country launches a missile, an ICBM, at the United States of America. We couldn’t defend ourselves if a foreign country controlled Greenland. And by the way, the Chinese and the Russians have both expressed an interest in controlling Greenland.

Okay, so what is the defensive mechanism for Greenland? You have a population of about 60,000 people on a massive territory that’s like the size of my hometown and I didn’t grow up in a big town. And then on top of that, you have Denmark, which has been one of the better NATO allies, to be clear, but has still radically under invested in security compared to the Russians and the Chinese.

So the President has said very simply, we are on the hook for this island. It’s one of those unwritten rules that everybody knows that if the Chinese or the Russians affected one of our critical missile defense systems, we would necessarily defend that, but we’re not getting anything for it. This is an unfair situation. The United States has no ownership over this island and we don’t get any of the benefit.

So let’s actually rewrite the rules here a little bit and say if the United States is going to protect the entire world’s missile defense system, primarily our own, but other people benefit from it, we should get some benefit from the bargain.

Now, it’s interesting because I actually was sitting in this room one of the rare times I’ve used this ceremonial office for official business. Me and Marco and a lot of the leaders from Denmark and Greenland had a great conversation. And it’s funny when you see—

MEGYN KELLY: Is this one where they ran for their cigarettes when they exited the building?

JD VANCE: Maybe I think they did.

MEGYN KELLY: They were stressed.

JD VANCE: I did not follow up. I did not see what they did afterwards. We had a good meeting. It’s so funny to me because the Europeans, they’re so friendly in private and they’re willing to make a lot of accommodations and then publicly they attack us. And they say we’re not going to work with the Americans, we’re not going to do anything with the Americans.

I’m sorry, it’s all bogus. We all know, everybody knows that this situation is going to come to a resolution. I think it’s going to be a resolution that’s good for Europe. Most importantly, it will be a resolution that’s good for the United States of America. But the idea that they haven’t made any accommodations or concessions to the United States? It’s not true.

A New World Order

MEGYN KELLY: Are we at the beginning of a new world order where we move away from Europe and toward anything else, maybe even potentially Russia, if we can get past what’s happened here? I mean, there’s a real question about that, given some of the speeches you’ve made to the European Union, some of the speeches that President Trump has made.

JD VANCE: Yeah.

MEGYN KELLY: What’s happening culturally in Europe? What’s their crackdowns on free speech? And they just look less and less like we do. And there’s a real question about whether there’s a massive shift happening now in terms of world alliances long term.

JD VANCE: Well, it’s definitely, I think, a new world order. I think the president has sought to it. There’s a new world order in trade, there’s a new world order in globalization and the way that we invest in our economy versus foreign supply chains. There’s a new world order. And that the president is willing to shake up some old alliance structures.

I mean, NATO, I think, is much different because of the president’s leadership than it was 10 years ago, sort of coasting. It was effectively a protectorate of the United States of America. Obviously, you saw what happened in Venezuela. So, yeah, the president is putting a stamp on world history. But fundamentally, in an America first way. That is the orienting focus.

And so when people say, well, you can’t work with Putin on anything because you disagree with the Ukraine invasion, well, the president said very clearly, Putin should not have invaded Ukraine. We’re going to try to work and bring that to an end. But there might be some areas of cooperation, too.

His attitude is not, you’re our friend, you’re our enemy. We’re going to go to war with our enemies and we’re going to give our friends everything without asking questions. His attitude is we’re about alliances. And you could have a country where we have a 90% aligned interest, but we’re going to disagree on 10% of issues. Meanwhile, we may disagree with Russia on a lot, but we may agree on some things. And I do think that is a fundamental reorientation.

The other thing that’s much different, Megyn, about the president’s foreign policy and just the way that he does business. And it’s, look, there’s a lot that I’ve learned from him, but this is nearly at the top of the list of the things I admire about the President of the United States is he will talk to anybody.

When he was thinking about who to make as vice president, he was talking to the gardener at Mar-a-Lago. He told me that. And I said, well, sir, what did the gardener at Mar-a-Lago say? This really matters to my life. But when people say you shouldn’t talk to this person, right? You shouldn’t talk to Kim Jong Un of North Korea because that gives him something for nothing. No, I’m going to have a conversation. We’re going to actually conduct diplomacy. If we have to use the military, he’s obviously not afraid to do it when he feels like he needs to. But the willingness to just communicate and break down barriers is very important.

This is, by the way, Megyn, one thing I would say about the Iranians that is just really weird to me and I don’t understand their system and I frankly think that it makes diplomacy with them extraordinarily difficult. Is the person who makes the decisions in Iran is the supreme leader. Okay, the president, our senses, doesn’t have a lot of juice, doesn’t really matter. The foreign minister seems to talk to the supreme leader and that’s mainly the person that we’ve communicated with.

But it’s a very weird country to conduct diplomacy with when you can’t even talk to the person who’s in charge of the country. That makes all of this much more complicated and it makes the whole situation much more absurd. He can pick up the phone and call Putin, he can pick up the phone and call Xi. Even countries that we have very hostile relations with, he can pick up the phone. North Korea, he met the guy at the 38th parallel.

It is bizarre that we can’t just talk to the actual leadership of a country. It’s really, it makes diplomacy very, very difficult.

Chinese Students and University Access

MEGYN KELLY: Why are we letting 600,000 Chinese students into our universities? It was 300 and change. Laura Ingraham asked President Trump about this and he said, oh, you need to do business with China. It seemed like some sort of a deal had been cut where we gave them a bone of allowing double their students. Nobody wants this.

JD VANCE: No, it’s not. The President’s view is we don’t want to create an unnecessarily antagonistic relationship with China. There are certain some disagreements, there are some things where our interests collide, but we can protect our intellectual property in the President’s view, without creating an unnecessary conflict with the Chinese.

MEGYN KELLY: One of these Chinese students is one lost by an American.

JD VANCE: What the President is trying to do is, I think, create the situation where we can have good relations. Now, we’re not radically—it’s been misreported, I think. We’re not radically increasing the number of visas that we give to China. That’s just not true. I’ve seen that reported. It’s not true.

What we are doing is trying to preserve a very delicate diplomatic balance. Anything, there are risks and rewards and costs and benefits. But the President is trying to balance a very important relationship for the United States.

Election Integrity and the SAVE Act

MEGYN KELLY: How about election integrity here at home? There’s a bill right now.

JD VANCE: Let’s get the SAVE Act. Let’s get the SAVE Act.

MEGYN KELLY: What’s going to happen with that?

JD VANCE: Well, we’re working very hard right now to get the Senate to approve it because if the Senate approves it, we think the House would approve it too. Now, that would require, I think, some Republican senators who—maybe they’re a little too attached to the filibuster. Maybe they’re a little too attached to Senate procedure. This is about the integrity of American democracy.

Do the people control who they elect or do some shady people? It’s like, who actually controls the people who cast the ballots or the people who count the ballots? We want the sovereignty to be with the people who cast the ballots. And that’s why we have to get the SAVE Act passed.

And you’ll hear people say all the time, and I love this argument, they’ll say, well, if you look at this precinct, only three illegal aliens voted in this election. Number one, that’s three illegal aliens too many. And number two, if it’s not a big problem, then why not just allow us to check ID and exercise some basic precautions to prevent illegal aliens from voting.

I never quite understand the person who says, on the one hand this never happens and on the other hand your effort to prevent it from happening is a threat to American democracy, which is fundamentally the Democrats’ argument, by the way. It’s like an 85-15 issue. Yeah, most Democrats want voter ID because they want to protect their own votes.

MEGYN KELLY: But the elected leaders don’t want to vote.

JD VANCE: But elected leaders don’t because they know that the more control they give to the people who are counting the ballots as opposed to those who are casting the ballots, the more control they will have.

MEGYN KELLY: Is this where the rubber meets the road on the filibuster? And whether we get rid of it? I hope John Thune doesn’t want a lot.

JD VANCE: I hope that it is. That is what we’re working very hard to make happen. Now, there is also some in between solutions we’re working on. For example, can you allow the Democrats to preserve the filibuster, but actually force them to go and do a real filibuster? Not a procedural paperwork filibuster, but stand there and talk.

If you really want to prevent us from checking ID before votes, if you really want to ensure that illegal aliens have the right to vote, then stand on the Senate floor, Cory Booker style, for 30 hours and defend that to the American people. At the very least, then we’d have a real debate.

We’re working on it. I can’t tell you how it’s going to turn out because I can’t predict 51 GOP senators, but we are making some progress.

Economic Affordability

MEGYN KELLY: Let’s talk affordability for a minute here. A lot of people are still suffering. President Trump says, look, we’ve made a lot of progress, but the average American sitting at home doesn’t feel it because the polls show that the numbers are not good for the administration on the economy. And that just reflects what people are feeling, of course. So what can actually happen, let’s say, between now and November, speaking of the midterms?

JD VANCE: Yeah.

MEGYN KELLY: So that people actually feel better about what’s happening in their wallet.

Economic Progress and Challenges

JD VANCE: Yeah. So I will say, if you look at the numbers on affordability, they’re starting to move in our direction a little bit. But there’s clear movement from where there was, say, four or five months ago. I think that’s a good thing.

But here’s the way that I think about it, Megyn, is if you go just dollars and cents, the average American household lost about $3,000 of net wages during the Biden administration. That’s through inflation, that’s through higher taxes. The average American household, now this is about a month old, but had gained about $1,200 during the Trump administration.

So there’s a good news and there’s the bad news. The good news there is that compared to last year, you were $1,200 richer than you were. The bad news is that compared to four or five years ago, you’re about $2,800, I guess, $1,800 poorer than you were. Okay. So we recognize there’s still a lot of work to do.

I don’t think that there’s anything to do, Megyn, other than to do the work. We continue to have a lot of capital coming into the country. That means higher wages, more jobs for the American people. We continue to see grocery prices, I think, starting to come down a little bit. There are a couple of categories. We really worry about beef in particular that we’re working very hard to bring down, not for the midterms, but just because we want the American people to buy some ground beef and to buy some steak if they so choose.

There are things like cars and houses where we’re seeing some real progress. Rents have now declined five months in a row. That’s a big thing that’s happening. So it’s one of these things where I don’t think you’re going to be able to trick the American people. They know they got $3,000 poorer during the Biden administration. I think they’re going to judge us by how much we’ve made them wealthier. And I think that come November, the verdict there is going to be positive, but we just have to keep working on it.

Republican Messaging Strategy

MEGYN KELLY: The number one question that my audience wanted me to ask you. Oh, God, I know. I was actually surprised by it. Was they think the Republicans suck at messaging.

JD VANCE: Okay.

MEGYN KELLY: They want to know what the administration is going to do to get their arguments out more strongly on immigration and on the progress that they’ve made. I think there’s a frustration actually amongst the GOP base that there have been a lot of wins, but people don’t know it and that there actually is a sound immigration policy. But they let the left run with this narrative and the media is only too happy to spread lies about the four, the five year old boy who was wrongfully deported and all that. Right. Is there a plan?

JD VANCE: There is. I mean, one is the President and I are just going to get on the road a lot more in the next eight, nine months. Part of this is you’ve got to look, CBS, NBC, ABC, there’s always going to be an editorial slant to those networks, but they’re also declining in power.

So I do things like this. I talk to you, I talk to your viewers through this conversation. But most importantly, we get out on the road constantly because most people still consume their news through their local affiliate. Right. If their local CBS guy is saying, oh, the Vice President came to town, the President came to town, this is what they’re talking about. That’s how you get the message out there.

It’s non-traditional media. I think we were very good about this in the campaign in 2024. It’s something we want to get back to in 2026 is actually taking the message to people. You’re going on a lot of podcasts and a lot of the non-traditional media, which frankly I think has more narrative power than the traditional media does. That’s part of what we just have to do.

I think the first year we’re so focused on governing. Now we’ve got to go out there and talk a little bit more about what we’ve achieved. I do think there’s a lot to hang our hat on to be proud of that the American people should be proud of. But you’re right, we got to get out there and talk about it more.

Gavin Newsom and 2028 Speculation

MEGYN KELLY: Somebody who’s not shy about talking at all is Gavin Newsom. He’s been everywhere. Vogue really loves him. I don’t know if you saw the Vogue piece on him, but they’re real, they love him.

JD VANCE: I don’t make it a habit to read Vogue or to read about Gavin Newsom.

MEGYN KELLY: Let me, I kid you not, this is the lead line of their piece. “Let’s get this out of the way. He’s embarrassingly handsome, his hair seasoned with silver, at ease with his own eminence as he delivers his final State of the State address. It must drive Trump nuts. Newsom life. Ardent, energetic, a glimmer of optimism in his eye, Kennedy-esque.” Do you expect Vogue to give you this same treatment when you sit down with them?

JD VANCE: Completely unbiased reporting. That is like something out of Pravda. Yes, that’s what Pravda would have written about Stalin.

MEGYN KELLY: That is what you’re up against.

JD VANCE: Yeah, but I mean how many people read Vogue?

MEGYN KELLY: Nobody. But I really, it’s just, it was just a segue into 2028 and whether, topic, whether you think there could be a square off with the Kennedy-esque Gavin Newsom and possibly yourself.

JD VANCE: Well, we’ll see. I mean I, look, I’ll give you the answer I’ve given to other people, Megyn, which is it’s so far in the future.

MEGYN KELLY: I don’t want the answer you’re giving to other people.

JD VANCE: Yeah, but it’s the truth. And all I can tell you is the truth. Truth is, look, I think that if we take care of business, the politics in 2028 will figure itself out. And if we don’t take care of business, there is no amount of salesmanship that is going to change that. You just got to actually do a good job at the job that we have right now.

And I think the American people, hopefully in two, three, four years say, you know what, we want another term of the governance of this agenda. We don’t want to go back to the crazy woke Democrats. We want to double down on reinvesting in America, on rebuilding the American middle class. I think that’s ultimately what they’re going to decide. I can’t predict the future, but it’s why I’m focused on the job that I have now.

The other thing, Megyn, is I made this observation and I think that it would be so warping and because of that, very bad for the American people if I woke up every day and thought to myself, how do I maximize my chances in 2028? Because sometimes the answer to that question, in fact, probably most of the time going to be a little bit different than how do I maximize the chances of giving the American people a win. Right. I got to focus on this job or I’m going to hurt a lot of people who really depend on me.

Family Considerations and Future Plans

MEGYN KELLY: Can I just ask you about the personal considerations that go into it? You’re expecting a fourth baby.

JD VANCE: Yes.

MEGYN KELLY: You have a young, vibrant, very smart and successful wife who had a big career before you guys got here.

JD VANCE: Sure.

MEGYN KELLY: So what will factor into whether you actually do run?

JD VANCE: Oh, I mean, a huge factor. Look, if we ever have that conversation, seriously, it’s, you know, do the kids actually want to do it? Do they like this? I mean, so far they’re very happy. They’ve actually thrived in it. I think our 8 year old struggles more with it than our two younger kids because, you know, they’re both, you’ve met them. But the two younger kids are extroverts.

Usha says the two younger kids are like me and the other kid is like her. So he doesn’t like the attention, he doesn’t like the cameras. He doesn’t like that people are always offering to do special things for him. Even when the special thing is nice. He just kind of wants to blend in a little bit.

So I think the question is going to be, can the family support it happily? Can we keep our family healthy? And if the answer is yes, then obviously that’s a notch in favor of doing it. If the answer is no, I’d say that’s pretty dispositive towards not doing it.

But again, we’ll have that conversation in a few years when we’ve actually done a good job here and can have that conversation with, I think, a little bit more of, first of all, it’s there staring you in the face. It’s not three years in the future, it’s now. But also just where we have a little bit more sense of what is good for the kids. I mean, my first obligation, as much as I love the American people, it’s to my wife and my kids, and we got to keep them happy. And so far, so good.

MEGYN KELLY: I’m going to wrap it up, because I know you got to go. How are you going to prepare for this fourth baby?

JD VANCE: I don’t. I mean, at this point, we’re getting so many kids that they just kind of take care of themselves. So I guess we’ll train the others to change diapers and do a bottle. I mean, I don’t know. It’s going to be chaotic.

The thing is, we, Usha and I had this conversation. There are certainly sacrifices that come along with this life, but there are also a lot of good things. Like, we live in this beautiful, very protected mansion that the American people have gifted us. So thank you. You’re a taxpayer. Thank you for that.

We also, most of our meals are prepared for us, so we don’t have to worry as much about cooking. We did when baby number three came along. So there are a lot of things that in some ways make having a baby easier. You don’t have to worry about TSA lines when you’re the vice president. Air Force Two makes transportation pretty easy.

So there are all these weird little ways where I actually think it’ll be a little bit easier. It’ll obviously be harder in some ways, but I just, my attitude towards kids. I remember after we had Ewan, our oldest, I was like, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into? No more kids. And then we had a second, then we had a third, and now both of us are just like, what’s one more?

Reflections on Family and Legacy

MEGYN KELLY: Whatever. I’ll share with the audience. I don’t think you’ll mind that we were with you guys personally at one point, and your kids were outside, and you just sort of called from afar, “Please don’t create any ruination and despair.” I loved it. It actually made me think, Mr. Vice President, what do you think Mamaw would think of all this?

JD VANCE: Oh, man, I don’t know. I think she would, I ask myself that question a lot. I think she’d be amazed by it. And, you know, she was fundamentally just such a patriotic person. I think she’d be in this room right now looking up at the molding and the beautiful imagery and just saying what a blessing it is to be here.

But I think the thing that she would just most like about our life is the kids. Mamaw always just loved kids. She loved grandbabies, and she loved the weird little things that they would say. She loved how, you know, they were at one minute super caring and affectionate. At the other minute, completely rebellious. And I think that’s what, you know, as much she’d be impressed by the pomp and the circumstance of the professional role. If Mamaw were alive right now, she’d probably be living with us, and she’d be much more worried about the kids and anything I was doing at the White House.

MEGYN KELLY: I feel like she could really, you know how Marco Rubio’s got every role in the administration. I feel like she could have done him. She could have taken any one of those off of his hands, and we would have been in very good hands.

JD VANCE: That’s right. No, that’s another thing that will make the new, the new baby much easier is Marco has agreed to be nanny for the fourth kid. So, you know, what’s another job?

MEGYN KELLY: He can do it. All right, we got to go. I forgot to ask you quickly, if you’ll allow me, please. Savannah Guthrie is in the midst of a national crisis right now.

JD VANCE: It sounds very sad.

MEGYN KELLY: It looks awful.

JD VANCE: It looks awful.

MEGYN KELLY: Just wanted to give you the chance to comment on it because the White House sent out a tweet yesterday asking people to call in if they have any information, but.

JD VANCE: Well, obviously thinking about her and praying for her. And I believe it’s her mother in law. Is that right?

MEGYN KELLY: It’s her mom.

Closing Remarks

JD VANCE: It’s her mom. Okay. So praying for her mom and the whole situation just seems, you know, very scary. So what we’ve done at the White House is basically offered every resource that we can to try to help and, you know, what can you do but help where we can and pray that it all turns out right.

But certainly knows. I hope she knows we’re all thinking about her at the White House because sort of the worst. One of the worst situations you can imagine personally. So we’ll just keep tabs of it, keep on helping out where we can and hope that it goes okay.

MEGYN KELLY: We’re praying for her. We’re praying for you.

JD VANCE: Thank you.

MEGYN KELLY: Every day.

JD VANCE: I appreciate it.

MEGYN KELLY: Thank you for this sacrifice that I know it takes to do this job.

JD VANCE: Good to see you, Megyn.

MEGYN KELLY: Yeah, you too.

JD VANCE: Thanks.

MEGYN KELLY: All the best.

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