VP Vance hosts White House press briefing

And there is Vice President J .D.Vance.Let's listen in.

All right.Good afternoon, everybody.How you guys doing?Good.Good.Good.

Okay.I've got my sheet here.

So I know.Most importantly, do not call on.

All right.It does sound like there's a little bit of feedback right there.We have another angle.Let's try that one.All right, so this particular feed has no sound right here, but we're going to head back to this angle right here.This is on the side of the White House, so we're going to see if they're able to fix that feed.

We're also going to bring in another feed as well, as we do want to hear from Vice President J .D.Vance, but there seems to be an echo on the end of the White House.Let's see if they fixed it.

Hundreds of millions of dollars of fraudulent loans that were being handed out through the Small Business Administration that we've identified and stopped.And we've also started investigating some of the fraudulent criminal activity and also prosecuting some of the fraudulent criminal activity.So the thing that I say to the American people, and I'll repeat here to all of you, is fraud is a crime that has two victims.It has, first of all, the American taxpayer, people who pay their taxes, who out of their generosity, And because they have to, of course, they pay their taxes expecting that it's going to go to pay our troops and ensure that low income children have access to food and ensure that people get medical benefits, even if they're not able to afford a doctor.I think it's a great thing about our country is that we have this generosity of spirit where we take care of one another.But fraud takes that away from us because it steals money from the taxpayer when they pay their taxes.

And it also steals money from innocent people who are meant to benefit from these programs, but can't when the money runs dry because it's gone to fraudsters.instead of the people who benefit from it or should benefit from it.So we're going to keep that work up.The President of the United States has been very clear that he wants us to focus on fraud, he wants us to prosecute the fraudsters, and he wants us to save the American people as much money as we possibly can.proposition here.There are two options, two pathways we can go down when it comes to the Iran situation.

So step back for a little bit.What the President of the United States has said is, number one, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.And I think it's important for the American people and all of you to appreciate that when we say that, it's not just that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.It's what would happen if the Iranians did get a nuclear weapon.We know that a lot of nations all across the Gulf would then want their own nuclear weapon, and then a lot of nations all across the world.And what is been very dangerous and very sympathetic to terrorists have nuclear weapons.

We want to keep the number of countries that have nuclear weapons small, and that's why Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.On top of all the other things that we might be worried about, that they themselves could use it, that they could use it in leverage and economic control or economic negotiations, we just don't want them to have a nuclear weapon.Now, what we did here is that we effectively degraded their conventional military capability.That has been done.That has been successfully done.You could always do a little bit more, but where we are now is the president has asked us, has told us to aggressively negotiate with the Iranians.

Why did I go to Islamabad, Pakistan?Why did I spendI think, probably twenty two hours but there's an option B. And the option B is that we could restart the military campaign to continue to prosecute the case, to continue to try to achieve America's objectives, and we could talk a little bit about what that looks like.But that's not what the president wants, and I don't think it's what the Iranians want either.We have an opportunity here, I think, to reset the relationship that has existed between Iran and the United States for 47 years.That's what the president has asked us to do, and that's what we're going to keep on working at.

But it takes two to tango.We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians in the lie that she would be vice president for a couple weeks.So thank you guys.And I actually want to start first with Nick from Breitbart.Nick, it's good to see you.

Good to see you, Mr. Vice President.Thank you.Today, we saw the president endorse Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in the Texas Senate race.Do you think that sends a message going forward for the next cycle to senators, you know,considering running for re -election or any MEGA -aligned potential candidates that are considering challenging them.

as a country together.One of the things the President has done very effectively, going back 10 years in his leadership of the Republican Party and the country as President of the United States, is he said, you know, I want people who fight for the good.I want people who can't be bought by corporate lobbyists, who can't be bought by Wall Street, who can't be bought by special interests, who are going to go to Washington and fight for the people who actually elected them to those positions.And I think one of the things we've seen in the Republican Party, while I can't say that all of our representatives are perfect or all of our senators are perfect, We have seen a much better crop of talent come into Washington since Donald Trump has been the leader of the party and the leader of the movement.I do think we're going to continue to see that happening, but I think the message that people should take from this is fundamentally you are You have got to serve the people who sent you.And if you don't do that, you're going to find yourself out of step with voters or out of step with the President of the United States, and that's not a good place to be politically.

Go ahead.Just following up on what you just said, you said that the White House is negotiating with Iran in good faith.I think Americans tend to believe that.what is it about?

The Iranian side that you personally have seen where you believe that they are negotiating with us in good faith Well, first of all, I'd say it's a very complicated country and it's a country that I wouldn't pretend that I understand even after as as deep as I've been involved in this process from the very beginning It's a great and proud civilization amazing people.I was have a great Iranian American community here in the United States of America a totally clear what the negotiating position of the team is. and I think I've said it a lot too, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.We want to see not just the commitment to not have a nuclear weapon, but the commitment to work with us on a process to ensure that not just now, not just when Donald Trump is president, but years down the road that the Iranians are not rebuilding that nuclear capability.And that's what we're trying to accomplish in the negotiation.Sorry, you had a follow up.

come to a deal.Because we keep seeing this over and over again when they go back and forth.

So do I personally believe it?The honest answer is how could I possibly know, right?And you negotiate with people and sometimes you feel like you're making progress and sometimes you feel like you're not making progress.What I think, what I think is that the Iranians want to make a deal.What I think is that the Iranians recognize that a nuclear weapon is the red line for the United States of America, that they've internalized that.not going to know until we're actually putting pen to paper on signing a deal.

We've had a lot of drafts, a lot of, you know, a lot of pieces of paper going back and forth, but I will not say with confidence that we're going to reach a deal until we're actually signing a negotiated settlement here, and I think that it's president of the United States, and should people that attacked the Capitol building and assaulted police officers, should they be eligible, should they receive money, should they receive money from this party?United States has pardoned a number of Democrats who he felt were actually subject to this lawfare.I mean, if Hunter Biden wants to apply for this particular fund, he is welcome to.It's going to go through a normal process where we vet everything,where we try to identify whether people's claims are actually legitimate.But here's the question.

You say, why should taxpayers fund this?Whenever the United States government incurs legal expenses, it pays out those legal expenses.When it's settling a lawsuit, it pays out money to settle that lawsuit.And the question is, is a dollar of this money going to the Trump administration?No.Is a dollar of this money going to Donald Trump personally?

No.Is a dollar of this money going to Donald Trump's family?No.The people that would get the money are people, some of whom have been prosecuted completely disproportionate to any crime they've ever committed.Like, let's just take a couple of examples.Tina Peters is this woman who is about to get out of prison, thanks in large part to the president's good work in Colorado.

This is a woman who, at worst, if you believe everything that the prosecutors said about her, committed misdemeanor trespassing and somebody threw the book at her, this innocent grandmother was going to spend 10 years in prison, completely disproportionate to any misdemeanor trespassing that I've ever seen.Was that fair?No.Is it reasonable for her to get some compensation for the fact that she was treated unfairly?I think the answer is yes.And I think that what we're going to see, hopefully, is the entire country, led by this Department of Justice, turning the page on the lawfare.

What I would like to propose, and I think the Democrats, you know, hopefully they're willing to meet us halfway here.I won't hold my breath.But what I would propose that's what this fund is going to be targeted at.And again, I'm going to propose something very simple that if you are willing to turn the page on Joe Biden's lawfare, why don't we prosecute people?Very simple principle.Why don't we prosecute people who violate the law?

Let's not prosecute people because they said the wrong thing or because they had the wrong political candidate or because they have the wrong viewpoint.And I think part of that part of turning the page on that is to actually ensure the real victims of thatlawfare receives some compensation.That's what this fund is going to be targeted at.And again, there's going to be a process to ensure that that money is only given to people who have actually, I hate to say earned it, but the people who actually were really mistreated by the previous administration and Department of Justice.

police officers should not get taxpayer money from this fund?

Well look, John, we're not trying to give money to anybody who attacked a police officer.We're trying to give money, not give money, we're trying to compensate people where the book was thrown at them, they were mistreated by the legal system.Sometimes, you know, we do have, John, in this country, innocent until proven guilty.We do have people who were accused of attacking law enforcement officers.That doesn't mean that we're going to completely ignore some of the claims that they're going to make.We're going to evaluate these things on a case -by -case basis.

And if we think that somebody, whatever they were accused of, if we think that somebody was unfairly prosecuted and deserves just compensation, then that's what this fund is going to exist to provide.It's just going to correct a wrong.And I think that's a good thing.And I'd encourage everybody, Democrat, Republican, independent, let's turn the page on this thing that we did under the last administration, where we tried to throw people in prison prison because they had the wrong politics.Let's throw people in prison who broke the law.I think this fund is a good part of getting justice for the people who were wrongly treated.

Back there, yeah.

Just to follow up on that quickly, does that mean that people that were violent, that were convicted, were mistreated?Are you saying that?

You're asking me to comment on hypotheticals and on any number of dozens of cases.Here's the thing.We're going to look at everything.to be in 103 ,000 Americans over the past seven years, according to CDC data.

That's one in every 850 Americans who died.White House Counterterrorism Director Sebastian Gorka said last week that China's exports amounted to the targeted killing of Americans and war by other means.Do you agree with that assessment?And what is the Trump administration doing to punish and deter China, especially since the Supreme Court struck down the federal tariffs?

So, go ahead and ask the second question.Because I'll try to take each question, and then I'll try to answer them, and then we'll go on.And if you ask two questions, I can only guarantee that I'll answer one.In fact, I'm a politician.Maybe I won't even answer the one that you asked.But I will try at least to answer one question.

OK, well, I'd love to hear the fentanyl response too, if not today, sometime.Go ahead.On Iran, is Russia taking possession of the enriched uranium in Iran a plausible end to the war?And if not, why not?

So first, on the Russia taking possession of the enriched uranium, look, these things are being discussed through negotiations.That is not currently our plan.him in of 2020.had in China just last week.But it's come up in any number of phone calls.And our sense is that President Xi has been willing to work with us on this.

And, obviously, we want to continue to ensure that the Chinese work with us as much as possible, because we don't want our people to be poisoned.So we'll keep working on that issue with the Chinese.There's been, I think, a big amount of progress that's been made.But, of course, we can make a lot more progress, and we're certainly going to be committed to doing exactly that.White Jack.sorry.

Oh, hey, yeah.Natalie with the Washington Post.

Natalie, thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Vice President.Does the government need to create a new mandatory review process for new AI models, given the concerns about MITHAS?And secondly, in a few days, Pope Leo is going to release his encyclical on artificial intelligence.What influence, if any, do you see the Pope's guidance on AI having to broader society?

Well, I mean, I think when the Pope issues an encyclical on artificial intelligence, it's going to have some influence.I, of course, don't know how much influence.I don't know exactly what it's going to say.But I think when the leader of the world's largest Christian denomination speaks on an issue like that, it's certainly going to have some influence.And I'm sure it'll contain a lot of insights, some of which I'll probably agree with, some of which I may not.But I think that it's going to be a very, very important document.

And I think that one of the things I always found fascinating about Pope Leo is that he chose the name Leo XIV, which, of course, course, is recollecting Leo XIII.Leo XIII was the Pope during a period of incredible industrial transformation in the entire world.Of course, that industrial transformation, according to a lot of people, led to the rise of fascism and communism in Europe.I think it was interesting that Leo XIV chose that name to maybe apply Christian social teaching in a new era with a new technological innovation in the same way that the Industrial Revolution was the technological innovation of its time.So I think it'll be fascinating.I'm looking forward to reading it.

very focused on, of course.we're We want to be pro -innovation.We recognize, I mean, artificial intelligence could be great.It could help us find cures to diseases that currently, you know, people are dying from or suffering from.It also does have some downsides.And we're trying to balance that safety against innovation.

And we think that we've got the right balance here in the Trump administration.But it's something we're going to have to keep on working on, because that's just the nature of these technologies is they certainly change.Let's go.Is that Reagan all the way in the back, Daily Caller?There we go.Okay.

I figured out finally how the seeding chart works.

I want to ask you about the anti -fraud task force.You previously mentioned that Ilhan Omar seemed to have committed immigration fraud.Do you anticipate an indictment against her, an indictment related to that situation?

Yeah, so Reagan, I don't want to prejudge an investigation.I mean, you read the things about Ilhan Omar and about, you know, who she married and whether she didn't marry this person or that person.It certainly seems like something fishy is there.everybody's entitled to equal justice under the laws.So we're going to investigate it.We're going to take a look at it.

If we think that there's a crime, we're going to prosecute that crime.And that's something the Department of Justice is looking at right now.

Go ahead.Based on what you've seen during your work on this anti -fraud task force, do you believe anything should change about our immigration or refugee policies to stop fraud in the United States?

Well, yeah.I mean, look, one thing I'd say is that the biggest immigration fraud that existed under the Biden administration.it's not just that they let a flood of people across the southern border.That was obviously a very major problem and something I'm proud of the president for stopping.But it's also that they allowed the asylum and refugee claimant process to become totally fraudulent.And so here's what would happen, right?

You would take a person who in normal cases would just be a traditional economic immigrant, whether you let them into the country or not, they're trying to come because they want a better job, okay?They would come into the country and say that they were fleeing persecution, and they would say that they were an asylum claimant, and then effectively what the Biden administration would do is say, okay, you're an asylee, go into the interior of the country, here's a work permit, maybe come back in 10 or 12 years for your hearing on whether you actually have a legitimate asylum claim.So what did that mean?That meant that person was just completely given amnesty and released into the interior of the country.Well, what if that person was a criminal?What if that person actually had a violent history?

We didn't do any of the work necessary to ensure that the people coming into our country claiming to be asylum claimants actually had anything legitimate or anything good in their background.a serious problem.It is something that we have fixed in the Trump administration.But fundamentally, that loophole, you're going to see sometime in the future, somebody is going to try to exploit that loophole.And it's one of the things that we're very focused on in the Fraud Task Force is making sure that the people who exploited that loophole are actually prosecuted for it, assuming they committed a crime.

is going back to the $1 .8 billion fund, not to keep beating up, but sadly, Democrat lawmakers are misrepresenting that fund.

I agree.

Yes.It's a great question.And sadly, some of the mainstream media doesn't understand the magnitude of the political persecution of J6ers.So if a violent offender like a J6er was still overand mistreated, literally some of them were sentenced to 24 years in prison, put in unconstitutional pretrial detention, literally tortured in cages, wouldn't that person still be able to apply for the fund because of due process?

And - This is why we say, just to answer that very briefly, this is why we say we have to evaluate this thing case by case, right?We don't in the United States say that everybody who's accused of a crime is automatically guilty in a court of public opinion, you've got to actually look at this stuff and figure out what were they accused of.Maybe they did something bad even, but what they were accused of was way worse of what they actually did.Maybe they had their entire lives ruined in a totally disproportionate way.That's fundamentally illegitimate and political.And I find, just Carol, on this point, one of the interesting things about the American media is there is a fascination.

If you go to any American law school, there are these, you know, prisoner rights clinic.There are people.who objectively committed heinous crimes, but the American media and the American Legal Academy has decided that even though they committed bad crimes, their sentence was disproportionate, they were mistreated in some way.You know who never ever gets an ounce of sympathy when it comes to that disproportionate sentencing?It's people who voted for Donald Trump and participated in the January 6th protest.Go to your second question.

or political divisions have gone, and what are you specifically doing to bridge the divide, especially as a potential future president?

Well, sorry, who was it that said something?

Pete Davidson made a really obscene joke about Charlie Kirk.So what are you doing as a potential future candidate or president to bridge the divide?

Well, first of all, I'm not a potential future candidate.I'm a vice president, and I really like my job, and I'm going to try to do as good of a job as I can.But let me just say this.So you talked about Pete Davidson, who said something bad about Charlie Kirk.Kirk.Look, Charlie was a very, very dear friend.

But more importantly than that, Charlie was a father of two beautiful kids, and he did not deserve to have all of those moments with his kids, all those moments with his beautiful wife taken from him in the way that that happened.I would expect everybody, everybody with a heart or a conscience would say whatever we agreed or disagreed with about his particular viewpoints, this is a tragedy and it's totally unacceptable that it happens in the United States of America.To their credit, a lot of the reporters in this room, even though I don't agree with their politics, they were open about the fact that what happened to Charlie was disgusting and it shouldn't happen in a civilized country.You talk about bridging the divide.I mean, one thing that happened that hits, you know, not quite literally close to home, but there was a very terrible shooting that happened today at a Muslim community center.It seems like three people are dead plus the shooters.

And, you know,