9 highlights from JD Vance’s first interview since taking office

In his first interview since taking office, Vice President JD Vance on Saturday defended President Trump’s flurry of executive orders, his pardons of hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, and the new administration’s aggressive efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.  

Vance dismissed concerns that the White House was not prioritizing U.S. economic fears, and argued that suspending the nation’s refugee admissions program was justified.

Here are some of the highlights of his wide-ranging interview with “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Sunday.  

Vance calls new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “a disrupter”

Vance on Friday night was forced to cast the tie-breaking vote to push through the controversial confirmation of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary. This came after three Republican senators voted against Hegseth’s nomination, leading to a brief 50-50 Senate stalemate, the smallest margin of approval for a defense secretary since the position was created.

Hegseth’s nomination had been questioned over allegations of alcohol abuse, sexual assault and financial mismanagement.

“I think Pete is a disrupter, and a lot of people don’t like that disruption,” said Vance of the tight vote.

“If you think about all of those bipartisan, massive votes, we have to ask ourselves, what did they get us?” he went on. “They got us a country where we fought many wars over the last 40 years, but haven’t won a war about as long as I’ve been alive.”

Vance said Hegseth’s primary task will be “to fix the problems at the Department of Defense,” which he said included increasing recruitment numbers and fixing an “incredibly broken” weapons procurement process.

“If you look at where we are with the rise of artificial intelligence, with the rise of drone technology and drone warfare, we have to really, top to bottom, change the way that we fund the procurement of weapons, the way that we arm our troops,” Vance said.

Vance “confident” Tulsi Gabbard will be confirmed

Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Mr. Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, has been oft-criticized for her contentious views on U.S. diplomatic issues.

The Army National Guard veteran, who has no experience in the intelligence arena, received backlash for a 2017 trip she took to Syria in which she met with its since-deposed leader Bashar al-Assad, despite evidence even at the time that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people. She also said in 2019 that Assad “is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.” 

Vance brushed aside the criticism Gabbard’s nomination has received from some conservative media outlets, saying he is “confident” that she “will ultimately get through.” He described her as a “career military servant who’s had a classification at the highest levels for nearly two decades,” and “a person who I think is going to bring some trust back to the intelligence services.”

When pressed on how she will instill public trust in agencies – which Gabbard has expressed distrust of in the past — Vance responded that Gabbard “recognizes the bureaucrats have gotten out of control, and we need somebody there who’s going to rein them in and return those services to their core mission of identifying information that’s going to keep us safe.”

Vance argues “capital investment” will “help lower prices”

The Trump-Vance ticket campaigned on curbing inflation and lowering prices. When asked which of the Trump administration’s early actions would help Americans financially, Vance cited “a number of  executive orders that have caused, already, jobs to start coming back into our country, which is a core part of lowering prices.” 

“Capital investment” will “help lower prices,” Vance said.

On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order declaring a national energy emergency, this despite the fact that crude oil production in the U.S. reached a record last year under the Biden administration.

“You asked specifically what executive order is going to help lower prices, all of the stuff that we’ve done on energy, to explore more energy reserves, to develop more energy resources in the United States of America,” Vance said.

Vance couldn’t say when consumers may begin to see prices tick down.

“How does bacon get to the grocery store? It comes on trucks that are fueled by diesel fuel,” Vance said. “If the diesel is way too expensive, the bacon is going to become more expensive. How do we grow the bacon? Our farmers need energy to produce it. So if we lower energy prices, we are going to see lower prices for consumers, and that is what we’re trying to fight for.” 

Vance alleges FEMA “has often been a disaster”

While touring disaster zones Friday from Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and the wildfires in Los Angeles, Mr. Trump disparaged the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He said he  planned to sign an executive order that would “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”

And when asked how low-income states like Mississippi and Alabama would recover from natural disasters without FEMA’s help, Vance responded that Mr. Trump “is not saying we’re going to leave anybody behind,” but instead “get the bureaucrats out of the way and get the aid to the people who need it most.” 

The vice president did not detail the particulars of what that would look like, but said FEMA “has often been a disaster” and criticized the agency for not working “well enough with state and local officials to get resources to the people who need it.”

Vance on immigrant arrests near churches, schools: “I desperately hope it has a chilling effect”

The Trump administration’s first week has been marked by a wave of activity targeting U.S. immigration policy, including sending hundreds of troops to the southern border, halting asylum proceedings and launching deportation flights to Guatemala for what it called “illegal immigrant criminals.”

Among the most controversial was an order revoking a Biden-era policy that barred immigration agents from arresting immigrants near schools and places of worship.

When asked by Brennan if the move would have “a chilling effect” on parents who may be hesitant to send their children to school, Vance responded, “I desperately hope it has a chilling effect…on illegal immigrants coming into our country.”

The immigration orders drew condemnation this week in a statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Vance said that as a “practicing Catholic,” he was “heartbroken” by the group’s statement, accusing the organization, without evidence, of potentially having ulterior motives.

“I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”

Vance on challenge to birthright citizenship: “The dumbest immigration policy in the world”

A federal judge this week blocked Mr. Trump’s order attempting to eliminate birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which says “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The judge, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, called the president’s efforts “blatantly unconstitutional.” 

“I obviously disagree with that judge,” Vance told “Face the Nation,” citing the example of children of diplomats, for which there is already a carveout in the 14th Amendment.

“We’re saying that that carve out should apply to anybody who doesn’t plan to stay here,” Vance said. “If you come here on vacation and you have a baby in an American hospital, that baby doesn’t become an American citizen. If you’re an illegal alien and you come here temporarily, hopefully, your child does not become an American citizen by virtue of just having been born on American soil.”

When it was pointed out the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, Vance responded, “This is a very unique country, and it was founded by some immigrants and some settlers. But just because we were founded by immigrants, doesn’t mean that 240 years later that we have to have the dumbest immigration policy in the world. No country says that temporary visitors — their children will be given complete access to the benefits and blessings of American citizenship.”

But according to the CIA’s World Factbook, there are 30 nations with some form of birthright citizenship.

Vance says Trump was right to suspend refugee program

Hours after taking office on Jan. 20, Mr. Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, leaving thousands of Afghans stranded at airports, some of whom had worked with the U.S. prior to its withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

Vance previously told “Face the Nation” in August that “I don’t think we should abandon anybody who’s been properly vetted and actually helped us.” 

The refugee program is an 18- to 24-month process that involves interviews, medical screenings and security vetting. Refugee applicants must prove they are fleeing persecution before being allowed into the U.S. 

Vance on Saturday seemed to reverse course, questioning whether the program had “properly vetted” the refugees.  

“Now that we know that we have vetting problems with a lot of these refugee programs, we absolutely cannot unleash thousands of unvetted people into our country,” Vance declared, without detailing how the refugee program’s vetting process may be faulty.  

He provided the example of an Afghan national who came to the U.S. immediately after the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The man was arrested in Oklahoma in October on federal charges of planning an election day terrorist attack in support of the Islamic State.

“He was allegedly properly vetted, and many people in the media and the Democratic Party said that he was properly vetted,” Vance claimed of the suspect. “Clearly, he wasn’t.” 

However, as CBS News has reported, that suspect did not arrive via the refugee process. Instead, he was paroled into the country, like most Afghan evacuees, and allowed to live in the country temporarily under that immigration authority while he applied for a Special Immigrant Visa.

Vance on Trump’s pardons of violent Jan. 6 offenders: “We’re not saying that everybody did everything perfectly”

As he had vowed during the campaign, Mr. Trump pardoned about 1,500 people who were charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

When asked why Jan. 6 defendants who had committed acts of violence deserved to be pardoned, Vance put blame on the Justice Department, saying “it denied constitutional protections in the prosecutions,” and he alleged, without evidence, that there were “double standards in how sentences were applied to the J6 protesters versus other groups.”

On the blanket nature of the pardons, Vance said, “What the president said consistently on the campaign…is that he was going to look at a case by case basis…and that’s exactly what we did.” 

“We looked at 1,600 cases,” Vance continued. “And the thing that came out of it, Margaret, is that there was a massive denial of due process of liberty, and a lot of people were denied their constitutional rights. The president believes that. I believe that, and I think he made the right decision.”

A group of federal judges in Washington, D.C., blasted Trump’s pardons in a series of separate orders this week. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the charges had been “fully supported” by videos, photos, admissions by defendants themselves during plea hearings, and the testimony of law enforcement and congressional staff who were at the Capitol.

Vance said that while “violence against a police officer is not justified,” former Attorney General Merrick Garland had “weaponized” the Justice Department. 

Vance on Silicon Valley’s influence: “We believe fundamentally that big tech does have too much power”   

The in-person audience at President Trump’s inauguration was a who’s who of tech giants, including Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

But when Vance spoke to “Face the Nation” in August, he said that companies like Google are “too big, too powerful.”

“We ought to take the Teddy Roosevelt approach to some of them. Break ’em up. Don’t let them control what people are allowed to say,” Vance said at the time.

Amazon, Meta and OpenAI were among several companies that made $1 million donations to Mr. Trump’s inaugural fund.  

When asked whether he still planned to take a hard stance against Big Tech, Vance said the tech leaders at the inauguration “didn’t have as good of seating as my mom.”

“We believe fundamentally that big tech does have too much power,” Vance said. “They’re very much on notice.” 

contributed to this report.