J.D. Vance sticks to job at hand — winning midterms, immigration, Iran — when pressed about 2028
Vice President J.D. Vance on Tuesday dodged questions about his ambition to become the GOP presidential nominee in 2028, saying there is still a lot to do before finishing President Trump’s term.
His answer, delivered in an interview on Fox News, echoed Mr. Trump.
Recently asked on Air Force One about whether he would throw his support behind his vice president or Secretary of State Marco Rubio for the 2028 nomination, Mr. Trump said, “I’ve got three years to go, so it’s something I don’t have to worry about.”
Mr. Vance said Mr. Trump had the correct outlook.
“Well, I think the president is very smartly saying, ‘We’ve got three years to go, and how about everybody focuses on the job the American people elected us to do, rather than something that is very far in the future,’” Mr. Vance said.
When directly asked if he would like to be president, he said he is focusing on the job at hand.
“A year and six months ago, I asked the American people to give me this job that I have right now,” he said. “Why don’t I do as good of a job as I can in this job, or worry about the next job sometime in the future?”
Looking ahead to this year’s midterm elections, Democrats are increasingly confident they will win control of the House. But Mr. Vance said that Republicans need to remind voters that they are “still digging out of the hole the Democrats put us in.”
“I think that the question we’re going to put to the American people is, ‘Do you want to give the government back over to the people who, frankly, burned down the house and made most Americans much less wealthy and much less safe?’” he said. “Or, ‘Do you want to double down on the president’s leadership, which has helped us recover from some of the problems caused by [President Biden]?’”
Democrats are also making a top campaign issue of Mr. Trump’s mass deportations and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers’ confrontations with protesters, which led to the shooting death of two anti-ICE protesters in separate incidents in Minneapolis.
Mr. Vance blamed Democrats for the “chaotic” clashes of protesters and federal immigration agents.
“Some elected Democrats are so committed to the idea that you shouldn’t be able to deport anybody that they’re willing to put at risk the lives of local police, the lives of federal law enforcement to ensure that it’s as hard as possible to enforce the border,” he said.
Following the fatal shootings in Minneapolis, both of which were caught on video, top officials at the Department of Homeland Security were criticized for condemning the actions of the deceased protesters.
When pressed whether immigration operations would change, Mr. Vance said, “None of us like those videos. That’s a fact. The point is we don’t want immigration enforcement to be chaotic.”
“Where you have that chaos in Los Angeles and Minneapolis, it’s because the local authorities are so committed to an open border that they want to put law enforcement at risk,” he said.
On the topic of artificial intelligence, Mr. Vance said that one regulatory standard is the only way to go.
“I think that eventually you’re going to have some standard applied, whether it’s a federal standard or whether it’s one state standard dominating,” he said. “I think, frankly, the worst possible outcome would be to have far-left California dominate the entire AI regulatory map. That is, unfortunately, what the Californians would like to happen. I think that we need to be a little bit safer there.”
Asked where negotiations with Iran are going, Mr. Vance said that the Washington would like to resolve this through a diplomatic negotiation, but President Trump “has all options on the table.”
Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon is the red line, he said.
“They have shown a number of things that make it clear that they’re interested in acquiring a nuclear weapon. Our goal is to make sure that doesn’t happen. And again, the president has a lot of tools in the toolkit to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he said.
