JD Vance’s Interview with Benny Johnson (Transcript)

And maybe they don’t even have three kids, and they certainly don’t have three kids who are autistic. So it takes money away from the American citizens who need these services. It defrauds the taxpayer.

And you’re absolutely right that the thing that we need to do is get real justice. Something I learned just the past couple of months — I had no idea that we do not prosecute fraud in this country if it’s under $1.5 million per year. Think about that. Think of all the people who are at $1.5 million a year. This is not chump change. That is meaningful money. And by the way, sometimes by prosecuting the lower level people, you get to the higher level people who have sort of the conspiracy to commit fraud against the American people.

So one of the things that we’re trying to do with this task force is commit the Department of Justice to investigating all fraud and actually going after the people who are doing it at the small scale of $1.4 million, but also actually looking at the big conspiracies that are out there. Because, Benny, I do not believe that what happened with the Somali immigrant community in Minnesota happened without some cooperation from politicians, without other people looking the other way, or maybe even being in the fraud themselves.

Ilhan Omar, Immigration Fraud, and the Somali Community

BENNY JOHNSON: Okay, let’s talk about Ilhan Omar and Tim Walz. Obviously, Ilhan Omar — the President and the White House have been out saying that she married her brother, that there is immigration fraud going on here. These are deportable, denaturalization offenses. Can you give us an update on that?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud against the United States of America. I talked to Steven Miller about this recently. We’re trying to look at what the remedies are. That’s the thing that we’re trying to figure out — what are the legal remedies? Now that we know that she’s committed immigration fraud, how do you go after her? How do you investigate her? How do you actually build a case necessary to get some justice for the American people?

There’s a related issue, Benny, which is she has been at the center of a lot of the worst fraudsters in the Somali community. Do I know that Ilhan Omar was aware that the Quality Leering Center was defrauding the American people? I’m not certain of it, but we at least need to investigate it. Because if people can commit wrongdoing without even the fear that they’re going to be found out, that’s a fundamental problem.

So I’m worried about the immigration fraud. I’m also worried about what did Ilhan Omar know about what was happening in the Somali community, and why was nobody looking into it until, frankly, Donald Trump came along?

BENNY JOHNSON: That’s right. What about your friend Tim Walz? You guys shared a wonderful moment on the debate stage.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I do feel very bad for Tim Walz because of what happened in the October 2024 debate, but unfortunately we’re going to have to maybe kick him again a little bit. Because, look — to be clear, I don’t know what Tim Walz knew about the fraud that was happening in Minneapolis, but what I do know is that the Department of Justice is now going to look into it. We’re now going to investigate it, and if he committed a crime, we’re absolutely going to prosecute it.

BENNY JOHNSON: Same with Gavin Newsom in California. There’s a lot going on.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Same with Gavin Newsom.

Voter Fraud, the SAVE Act, and the Senate Filibuster

BENNY JOHNSON: Voter fraud in California, hospice fraud. What about the voter fraud — using fictitious names, paying people for votes, perhaps? You’ve seen this.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: We’ve seen this. California is the state that is most ripe for voter fraud because they will literally prosecute you if you ask for voter ID. And this is one of the reasons why — to bring in another subject — this is why the Senate has to grow a spine and pass the SAVE Act. Because when you allow people to cast a ballot and you don’t even check their ID, in fact you prosecute somebody at the polling booth who would check their ID, you necessarily invite fraud.

And my favorite response on this, Benny, from people is when they say that voter fraud doesn’t happen that often. Two problems. Number one, “not that often” is still too much voter fraud in the United States of America. The right amount of voter fraud is actually zero. And number two, if voter fraud doesn’t happen that often, then why are you guys so dedicated to stopping our anti-fraud efforts? In other words, why do you care so much? And the reason they care so much is because they know that fraud happens in both our voting system and our welfare system way more often than they let on.

BENNY JOHNSON: You were in the Senate. You worked with some of these senators who used to support the SAVE Act, like Mitch McConnell and Murkowski. You know the Senate and how it works. They’re going on recess now, and people are enraged about that — without passing the SAVE Act. They’re now going on recess without funding the Department of Homeland Security.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Right.

BENNY JOHNSON: Does that frustrate you? You’re the President of the Senate — I think if I read the Constitution correctly.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: That’s right. That’s right.

BENNY JOHNSON: So what’s your word to the Senators here? What would you like to see happen? Are you available to cast the deciding vote to pass the SAVE Act?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Absolutely. I am available whenever they would like to pass it. The problem is we actually do not have 50 senators — not who would vote for the SAVE Act, but who would overrule the filibuster. You need 50 senators plus me, and I’m certainly on board — 50 senators to actually overrule this archaic rule and pass the SAVE Act.

Now, here’s the thing that I find so absurd about this. If you remember Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin — two people I didn’t always agree with politically, moderate Democrats, but very good people — they are the people who saved the filibuster when the Democrats were in control of the Senate just a couple of years ago. What happened to them? They were tarred and feathered by the far left. They were ran out of town.

So when Mitch McConnell and Lisa Murkowski say, “Well, we need to protect the filibuster because the Democrats aren’t going to do it, so we shouldn’t do it either” — the Democrats ruined the career of Kyrsten Sinema for not overruling the filibuster. And they’re going to do it, so we might as well do it now to enforce the protection of the American electoral system. It’s the dumbest political argument I’ve ever seen.

I promise you, Benny, I would bet every dollar that I own that the next time the Democrats have control of the Senate, they will break the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, and destroy this country. We have to do it now in order to save the country.

BENNY JOHNSON: Should the Senate be going on recess right now?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: No, of course not. At the very minimum, the product that we should get before anybody goes on recess is: let’s reopen the Department of Homeland Security.

I heard from my mother-in-law this morning — chaos at the airport. She’s flying this morning. There are over four-hour waits at the Houston airport. That’s probably one of the airports most affected by this. We want people to be able to fly and see their families over the Easter holiday without having to wait six hours in a TSA line. We want the TSA agents who are keeping our airports safe to be able to get paid. We want the people who are running our Coast Guard ships and preventing drug cartels from bringing fentanyl into our country — we want them to be getting paid. They’re not getting paid because Democrats shut down DHS and went on recess. Republicans in the Senate should not be playing along.

Mass Deportations, Housing Costs, and the Iran Conflict

BENNY JOHNSON: So we wouldn’t actually need a SAVE Act if we got rid of all the illegal immigrants in this country. Right? There would be no illegal.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I would still like it, but sure.

BENNY JOHNSON: Of course, it’s like you’re trying to put a band-aid on the real problem. And I think the real problem is — I don’t know what’s the exact estimate — what is the estimate from the White House of how many criminal aliens there are in this nation? And will we ever see mass deportations? There’s been some headlines that perhaps that’s not the policy anymore.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: No, I mean, I’ve seen those headlines too. If you look at the number of illegal immigrants that exist in this country, we think that it’s probably about 3 million lower than it was when we took office about 14 months ago. Now that’s a combination of self-deportations. We’re trying to facilitate people who leave voluntarily. We’re also arresting more people and deporting them than we have pretty much at any period in the history of the US Government.

The problem is we did inherit a mess. I mean, when I say 3 million, good news is that’s 3 million fewer. My guess is we probably still have 20 million criminal illegal aliens in the United States of America. So there’s a lot of work to do. But again, it goes back to — we’ve got to keep our foot on the gas pedal. And we also need a Republican Senate and a Republican House that’s helping us.

What I’ve realized about Democrats and Republicans is Democrats always stick together. They always vote the way that their leadership tells them to vote. So when you say, “Well, you have 53 Republican senators, why can’t you get the Save America Act passed?” — the reality is that we’ve only got 48 or 49 Republican senators who are willing to do the right thing.

Good news — that’s much higher than it was. Even 10 years ago, this is one of the fundamental transformations that Donald Trump has wrought on the Republican Party. 10 years ago, there would have been 35 votes to break the filibuster and pass Save America. Now it’s 48. So don’t get discouraged. Just get involved, because we need to get that 48 to 51 so we can pass this thing.

Responding to Joe Rogan’s Deportation Claims

BENNY JOHNSON: So you’re saying that Joe Rogan is wrong, because Joe Rogan yesterday was roasting the Trump administration, saying probably the most offensive thing you could say, which is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are better at deporting people than you.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I did not see Joe say this. I’m going to text Joe, because that is definitely wrong. So here’s why this is wrong. When you look at the deportation numbers that go back to the Obama administration, they would count somebody who showed up at the border and they turned away as a deportation. Now we have almost no one showing up at the border because the border is secure.

So if you have somebody show up at the border, let them cross into our country, provide them some free medical care and free food, and then you send them home — that counted as a deportation. What we’re talking about is interior deportations. We’re taking the flood of people that Joe Biden led into our country and getting them out of our country. The numbers from the Obama administration or any other administration — they weren’t doing a tenth of what we’re doing.

So Joe is wrong on this. We’ve been the best administration in American history at deporting illegal aliens. The problem is we also followed the worst administration at letting them in. So there’s a lot of work to do.

On MAGA, Dorks, and the Movement

BENNY JOHNSON: Joe says MAGA is full of dorks. What do you think? You consider yourself a dork? MAGA?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Dorks. I think we have many, many fewer dorks than the far left. But everybody’s got some dorks. We love our dorks. We love our cool kids. We love anybody who wants to save the country.

Domestic Policy: Housing, Gas, and Affordability

BENNY JOHNSON: So the domestic policy issues critical for the midterms — obviously high gas, nobody likes it. Grocery prices, there has been ups and downs. But also homes. I know this is critical for you. You’re young. You’re the youngest vice president in history. You’re a young father. You understand the pains of young fathers trying to have housing for families.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Of course.

BENNY JOHNSON: And also what a threshold that is to actually start a family if you don’t have a home. So what can young people expect from this administration when it comes to affordability?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: So you’ve heard me say this before, Benny, but I’ll repeat it. One of the main drivers of housing costs is that we let in so many people into our country and that we didn’t build enough homes. Too many illegal immigrants, weren’t building enough homes. We’re fixing both of those problems.

If you actually look at rents, rents have gone down — not stayed flat, they’ve gone down — in the United States of America for the past six months. Now, I understand a lot of people were saying rents got too high, housing prices got too high. The fact that they have leveled off is a good thing. But again, we’ve got more work to do. But we’ve made a lot of progress there.

You’re right, gas prices are way too high right now because of what’s going on in the Middle East. The President said this is going to be short term. It’s going to be a blip, as he said — a little excursion. And the gas prices are going to come back down to reality.

Food prices — I think that we’ve done a good job. Again, I think rent and housing is probably where you’ve seen the most movement over the past six months. But there’s just a lot more to do. And Rome wasn’t built in a day.

And I try to remind myself that while the average American has actually — this is just simple, objective dollars and cents — has gained about $1,400 since Donald Trump became president in take-home pay. The average American lost $3,000 when Joe Biden was president. So we’ve made a lot of progress, but Biden left us in a big hole and we’ve got a lot more work to do.

And by the way, just to be fair to Joe Biden — which, you know, I would never —

BENNY JOHNSON: — wasn’t counting on hearing that.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Yeah, but look, Biden accelerated problems that existed in this country for 30, 40 years. And it was bipartisan — it was Democrat and Republican. It was “ship all of our jobs to China, let illegal aliens into our communities to make them less safe and to make it harder to buy a home.” That was the official policy of the government until Donald J. Trump came along. You’re not going to fix all of that in 14 months. But we’ve made a lot of progress and progress I’m very proud of.

The Real Cost of Illegal Immigration

BENNY JOHNSON: Mass deportations are really tied to so many of those issues, so many of those affordability issues. There’s 20 million people here that shouldn’t be here.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Correct.

BENNY JOHNSON: And many of them are on welfare. And if 40% of the people are getting their food for free, what does that do for the people who are —

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: — driving the price of food for everybody else? By the way, have you gone to an emergency room in the last few years in this country? Of course you’re going to have half the people there who don’t speak English, who require a translator. That’s resources — that’s not going to doctors and nurses. And then of course you’re going to have a much longer wait time because people are there. It’s one of the things that you see. You’re already starting to see evidence of hospital wait times. Emergency rooms are more functional because we have fewer illegal aliens in the country.

The Iran Conflict and Gas Prices

BENNY JOHNSON: So gas prices were down. I think the national average was close to $2 a gallon. Do you think that’s where the actual status is? Do you think that’s natural? And obviously the excursion in Iran is what’s doing this with the high gas prices. As somebody who served, what is your message to the troops? What does the off-ramp look like in Iran?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Well, the president said, look, we’ve accomplished the gross majority of our military objectives. I think you can make a good argument we’ve accomplished all of our military objectives. The president’s going to keep at it for a little while longer to ensure that once we leave, we don’t have to do this again for a very, very long time.

That was fundamentally the president’s goal — he said, “Look, this country, they’re threatening us in all these ways. They’re still trying to build a nuclear weapon. We need to neuter them for a very, very long time.” And that’s the purpose.

You’re right, gas prices have certainly gone up because of what’s going on in the Middle East, but they’re going to come down. This is a very, very temporary reaction to what is going to ultimately be a short-term conflict. I think the president’s been very clear about this — that we’re not interested in being in Iran a year down the road, two years down the road. We’re taking care of business. We’re going to be out of there soon. And gas prices are going to come back down.

BENNY JOHNSON: We used the discombobulator.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I cannot talk about the discombobulator. That’s highly classified.

UFOs, Demons, and the Unexplained

BENNY JOHNSON: Benny, that’s my job — ask these kinds of questions. Are you going to release all the UFO files?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: We’re working on it. It’s funny, when I came in, I was obsessed with the UFO files. And then you start getting really busy worrying about the economy and national security and things like that. But I’ve still got three more years as vice president. I will get to the bottom of the UFO files.

BENNY JOHNSON: Okay, have you peaked? Have you done a peek?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: So I actually haven’t.

BENNY JOHNSON: I have Independence Day and I have —

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I have not been able to spend enough time on this to really understand it. But I am going to — trust me. I’m obsessed with this. I’ve already had a couple of times where I’m like, “All right, we’re going to Area 51. We’re going out to New Mexico. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.” And then the timing of the trip just didn’t work out. But trust me, anybody who’s curious about this — I’m more curious than anybody. And I’ve got three years at the very tippy top of the classification. I’m going to get to the bottom of it.

BENNY JOHNSON: Okay, so you haven’t been to Area 51 yet?

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Not yet.

BENNY JOHNSON: They say they keep the UFOs in Ohio.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Hangar 18, Hangar 18. Right. I’ve heard that as well, but I don’t know. I haven’t looked into it yet.

BENNY JOHNSON: Okay, all right. Well, we’re waiting for it. We saw aliens.gov.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons anyway. But that’s a longer discussion.

BENNY JOHNSON: Well, I can’t let you go without a follow-up on that, because Barack Obama was on this podcast and he goes, “Yeah, aliens are real, but here’s where they’re not.” So Obama gets asked point blank — are aliens real? “Oh, yeah.” And then he goes, “But they’re not at Area 51.” Well, where are they? That’s what he says, right? It’s a great question. Trump had to go save him. And he said, “Hey, so you think they’re demons?”

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Well, look, I think that celestial beings who fly around, who do weird things to people — I think the desire to describe everything celestial, everything otherworldly, to describe it as aliens — I mean, every great world religion, including Christianity, the one that I believe in, has understood that there are weird things out there and there are things that are very difficult to explain.

And I naturally go — when I hear about extra-natural phenomenon — to the Christian understanding that there’s a lot of good out there, but there’s also some evil out there. And I think that one of the devil’s great tricks is to convince people he never existed.

2028 and the Final Question

BENNY JOHNSON: Okay, I’ve been given the wrap, but here we go. I can’t let you go without one final question, the last question.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: All right, all right.

BENNY JOHNSON: I’m not going to ask you about running in 2028. I won’t. Okay? I won’t. I’ve heard the answer a million times. But I will ask you this. Since we started on fraud and since it’s going to come back to it — if perhaps hypothetically there was a 2028 run, would you rather run against Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, or AOC?

The Democratic Party and Working People

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: Oh, God. Oh, man. That’s. You just asked the question. You just asked it in a different way to try to trick me. I’m not nearly as easy to trick.

But look, I’ll say this about the Democrats. They don’t seem to have a very strong bench. And I’m not too worried about any of these people as political candidates. I am worried about them as potential presidents because they’re all, in their own way, nightmares.

The thing that I continue to find very interesting about the modern Democratic Party is on the one hand, they say that they stand for working people, and on the other hand, they support the importation of millions and millions of people who undercut the wages of working people, who take away housing and health care from working people, who stretch the social fabric that normal Americans depend on.

And I just think until the Democrat Party wakes up to the fact that, I mean, Cesar Chavez, the old, like, socialist union organizer who hated illegal immigration, recognized this, that you cannot stand for working people in mass immigration. You have to choose one. Until the Democrats make a smart choice, I’m not worried about who they nominate. But God forbid any one of those people ever became president, because then we would have what Biden did to this country on steroids.

Jimmy Kimmel and Mark Wayne Mullin

BENNY JOHNSON: And now Jimmy Kimmel’s making fun of plumbers. You see that? Mark Wayne Mullin’s a plumber. Shame on him. He said he shouldn’t be in charge of our security.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: You’ll be shocked to find out that I don’t watch Jimmy Kimmel on the regular. I deal with enough annoying people as it is.

Closing Remarks

BENNY JOHNSON: Well, that was real life. Ladies and gentlemen, JD Vance, live from inside of the Executive Office of the Vice President here at the White House. Talking demons and aliens. Speaking of alien demons, Ilhan Omar potentially getting deported. What a wild interview. We hope that you enjoyed it.

We took all of the questions directly from the chat. We are a channel that is going to lock in and make sure that we are pushing your priorities here. That is my job. To sure that your voice is heard by the people that you elect. Also that America First policies are instituted.

And that’s why I’m proud to be partnering with the America First Policy Institute on this interview and many more to come. America First Policy Institute ensures that our elected officials have the side held up when it comes to actually passing policies and enforcing regulations that serve our movement and the American people. It’s not enough to just get to D.C. You have to actually work once you are here.

The housing policy issue is something that I’ve been working on personally with AFPI and we’re proud to have them as a partner on this banger of an interview. Hope you enjoyed it. God bless you. It’s your boy Benny from the White House. See you.

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