While the White House works through the process of choosing a new press secretary, Vice President JD Vance filled in at the podium on Thursday afternoon for a Q&A with reporters that could have gone better.
At one point, for example, the Ohio Republican acknowledged the fact that next week is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and he will attend a memorial service in New York City. “As you guys can probably guess, I’m really looking forward to hanging out with Joe Biden,” Vance said in apparent jest. “I’m sure we’ll have many, many intense intellectual conversations. And, you know, it’ll be great; we’ll have a great time.”
Because nothing’s funnier than joking about the 25th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history and an ailing former president who has cancer.
While at the podium, the vice president also insisted that people follow Trump’s lead in support of data centers, brought up Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed unprompted multiple times, refused to accept any responsibility for the ongoing affordability crisis, falsely insisted that the White House is committed to “transparency” and at one point even claimed that gas prices would be higher were it not for administration “efforts” that he failed to identify.
But of particular interest were Vance’s comments about the war with Iran.
“America has fought a lot of wars since I’ve been alive, 42 years,” the vice president told reporters. “And we have won almost none of them — until Donald J. Trump became the president of the United States.”
I’m mindful of the fact that there’s often a gap between what Vance says and what’s true, but this was absurd even by his standards. At the root of the claim is the idea that Trump launched a war in Iran and succeeded, which is tragically at odds with reality, as the administration’s failed four-week war extends past the six-month mark.
Roughly 15 minutes later, however, during the same briefing, a reporter asked whether the war with Iran will be over by the midterm elections.
“I wouldn’t call it a war,” the vice president replied. “Right now there is no active shooting.”
Hours earlier, The Associated Press reported, “Iran fired at Kuwait Thursday, continuing its retaliation for U.S. bombardments earlier in the week. … [This] came after U.S. allies Bahrain and Jordan said their air defense systems intercepted several Iranian air attacks Wednesday. Fighting between the U.S. and Iran has increased this week after the U.S. hit Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, saying Iran was planning to use them to shoot mines into the waterway.”
I don’t mean to sound picky, but this sounds a lot like “active shooting.”
Vance didn’t need to do fresh damage to his elusive credibility, but he did it anyway.
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