Vice PresidentJD Vancesaid he is aJeffrey Epsteinconspiracy theorist and denied that President Donald Trump did not want “full transparency” from the Justice Department’s files on the convicted sex offender.
“I am frankly kind of a conspiracy theory [sic] on the Epstein stuff,” Vance said Tuesday morning on ABC’s “The View.” “I think that it’s crazy that you had this guy who is clearly a sex predator who is hanging out with a lot of very wealthy and powerful people.”
Vance said Trump was “very frustrated that the Democrats were making this about him,” but that the president “eventually came to say, you know what, let’s just get everything out there, let’s have this out in the public.”
Vance’s appearance on “The View” was his first promotional appearance for his new memoir, “Communion,” which chronicles his journey to the Catholic faith. But the vice president largely spent his time defending Trump, including on the economy and the administration’s crackdown on immigrants.
Vance said the administration is “not holding anything back” when it came to the Epstein files and that he believed the millions of documents that have reportedly not been made public “are duplicates of things that have already been released.”
At one point, as he was grilled on the Epstein files, Vance said, “Let’s talk about the book. I’m here to sell books.”
Vance went on the defensive when asked about Trump calling theaffordability crisis a “hoax”and his comments last week that“I love the inflation.”The vice president suggested Trump’s comments were misrepresented.
“Are you his interpreter or are you his vice president?” co-host Joy Behar asked.
Vance dodged questions about the administration’s immigration policies, which had promptedstrong criticism from the late Pope Francis. When asked about Trump’srhetoric about undocumented immigrants, the arrests and deportation ofnonviolent offendersand the number ofdeaths in federal detention facilities, Vance said the U.S. has to strike a balance when enforcing its laws.
“We don’t want to dehumanize people,” he said.
The topic of Vance’s faith was not entirely absent from the interview. In 2016, afterTrump’s “Hollywood Access” tapewas published, Vance posted on social media, “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man. Lord help us.”
“I think about that all the time because as a fellow Christian, that is something that weighs on my heart as I watch this country and the leadership at the top,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said about Vance’s post.
Griffin, who worked in the White House during the first Trump administration, said she could not get past his words. “It was not about policy, it was what Christians were willing to excuse,” Griffin said. “What are you willing to excuse in the name of power?”
Clarissa-Jan Lim
