Vice President JD Vance got caught playing dumb about Black disenfranchisement live on “The View,” then turned around hours later on Fox News and tried to recast himself as the victim of the very exchange he stumbled through.
Vance Squirms Through His First Trip to The View
Vance appeared on the daytime talk show Tuesday to promote his new book, “Communion,” which centers on his conversion to Catholicism. But the hosts weren’t there to talk books; they wanted answers on the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and its record on race, and Vance went on the defensive almost immediately.
Host Whoopi Goldberg opened by asking how Vance squares the administration’s hardline immigration policy with Catholic teaching on caring for the vulnerable.
“I come from a poor community. You come from a poor community,” Goldberg said. “You talk a lot about your Catholic faith, but the Catholic faith says we take in immigrants, we take in people who don’t have or who are having a hard time. How do you justify both things?”
Vance pivoted to a defense of national borders, a response the panel mostly let slide. But when the conversation turned to race, his composure started to crack.
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Vance Plays Dumb About Black Disenfranchisement
Goldberg asked Vance point-blank what Black people had done to deserve an administration she said has made it “very easy… to denigrate Black folks who have worked their behinds off to get this American dream,” pointing to the removal of Emmett Till’s history and the erasure of Black heroes from public record.
Vance’s response: “What exactly are you talking about, Whoopi?”
Goldberg laid it out anyway, referencing Trump-era moves to gut DEI programs, scrub Black and women veterans from military websites, strip slavery exhibits from national parks, and push to dismantle the Voting Rights Act and Black congressional districts. Vance still claimed not to follow, asking if Goldberg meant the administration was withholding appointments based on race.
That’s when co-host Sunny Hostin jumped in with specifics. “I’m talking about Black history getting erased from public spaces, Black voter districts are being dismantled, Black leaders are being sidelined from our ranks,” she said. “Where do Americans of color fit in this vision? Because it doesn’t seem like we fit.”
ESPN writer Keith Murphy summed up the reaction on X: under the Trump administration, he wrote, roughly 95,000 Black women have lost federal jobs to “anti-DEI” cuts, Black unemployment is climbing, and the administration is sidelining Black military personnel and erasing Black history, “And Vance is acting dumb.”
‘Don’t Start Any Stuff With Me’
Cornered, Vance tried the oldest move in the book, accusing the hosts of calling the administration “anti-minority or anti-Black.” Goldberg shut it down instantly.
“No, I didn’t say that!” she snapped. “I asked — see? Don’t start any stuff with me, man. Don’t get me in trouble.”
The studio audience erupted, cheering then booing when Vance admitted on air that he had “misinterpreted” the question — an admission he never actually walked back. He still dodged a direct answer, pivoting to a separate controversy over refugee admissions before Hostin pulled him back to the topic of erased Black history. Vance denied it outright: “Black history is not erased from public space.”
Then He Went on Fox News and Tried to Play Victim
Hours after leaving the set, Vance resurfaced on Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” with a noticeably different version of the story. Instead of acknowledging he’d gotten boxed in on live television, he reframed himself as the one who’d been wronged — joking that he’d braced for Sunny Hostin to call him racist, only for Goldberg to beat her to it, since “expectations were defied.”
It was a tidy way to turn a bad answer into a punchline, and to take a backhanded shot at Hostin in the process, all without ever explaining why he claimed not to understand what Goldberg was talking about in the first place.
Social Media Wasn’t Buying the Act
Viewers online called out the contradiction almost immediately.
“JD Vance going on The View is probably the biggest sign of a humiliation kink that I’ve ever seen,” one X user wrote.
Another accused Vance of gaslighting Goldberg outright: “And he knew EXACTLY what he was doing to Whoopi. I’m glad she stopped him in his tracks because he most definitely tried it.”
“Finally! Some accountability,” another added. “Watching Vance trying to justify the unjustifiable is just another example of how far this administration has taken the country in the wrong direction.”
A Threads user put it simply: “Of course, he is like gaslight and pretends he doesn’t understand the question. Whoopi didn’t expect a straight answer. She wanted to simply put the question out there for people to hear it and watch him fumble.
