Bulwark Takes - JD Vance Can’t Handle Reality—So He Rewrites It

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Will Saletan and Mona Charen take on JD Vance’s reality-bending interviews—where every inconvenient fact becomes “left-wing” and every lie gets a new excuse. From calling governors criminals to dismissing real corruption as “media reports,” Will and Mona expose how MAGA’s gaslighting has replaced truth with loyalty.

Hey, everybody. It's Will Salatan from The Bullwark. I'm here with one of my favorite people, my wonderful colleague, Mona Charon. We're here to talk about what's on the Sunday shows today. And I got to start by apologizing Mona. I've got like a big bruise on my nose from playing basketball a couple days ago. I got hit. And it just really swelled up. Oh, ouch. And so that gives me the perfect entree to talk about somebody else whose nose just swelled up. Our Pinocchio. Nokia Vice President, J.D. I thought you were going to go for a whose nose is out of joint, but no, yours is better. Yours is better. Yeah, yeah. Fortunately, mine's not out of joint. His might have got out a little joint from these interviews.

So J.D. did a couple of interviews today, one on ABC this week, another one on Meet the Press. And it's really impressive what a liar this guy is. But I want to, like, take you through a couple of the clips and get your reactions to them. So the first one was he was on ABC and with George Stephanopoulos. And Stephanopoulos asked him about the feds sending National Guard and troops and stuff into Chicago. Here's the question that Stephanopoulos asked Vance. Also the Republican governor of Oklahoma and chairman of the National Governance Association, Kevin Stitt. Here's what Governor Stitt said.

We believe in the federalist system that states rights. Oklahomans would lose their mind if Pritzker and Illinois send troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration. How do you respond to Governor Stitt? So that was Stephanopoulos' question, and here's how Vance answered it. Why shouldn't federal troops empower the people in Chicago to live safe lives when the governor and the local mayor just simply refused to do their job? So, Mona, I hear Vance saying that because the governor and the mayor, quote, didn't do their job and don't want federal troops or troops from another state being sent in, that that is reason to go

ahead and send the troops? I mean, is that how the system is supposed to work? So, well, watching J.D. Vance is like, it's like in a movie when there's a villain who tells a horrible lie to a credulous person and you in the audience are just cringing and you want to scream to the misled person, no, don't trust it. Don't believe he's lying. Right. And then by the end of the movie, the misled person learns the truth. The problem here is that with these MAGA people, and I have to say J.D. is really the master of this, they never get, they never get called to account. They never, their lives just go on and on and on forever.

So, I mean, so first of all, it's worth saying that Kevin Stitt deserves some plaudits here. He told the truth, which is very rare. He said that if under the Biden administration, they had sent troops from a Democratic state into a Republican state that people would have lost their minds. He didn't even state it quite strongly enough. I mean, people would have, their heads would have exploded in whatever metaphor you want. I believe jackbooted thugs would be the phrase we'd be hearing. Absolutely. And they'd be saying this is, you know, this is communism.

You know, they'd be using every, and so, you know, that's so, so congratulations to Stitt, who is a Republican. Anytime our Republicans, you know, utters a truth, it's worth giving them, you know, some plot. It's because it's so rare. But as for J.D., he just, you know, he falls back on this, well, why shouldn't people be, you know, safe? their homes, et cetera, et cetera. And these people aren't doing the job. And therefore, we're just helping them out. And of course, he knows that this violates every standard about not mixing the military with domestic law enforcement that has been sort of a pillar of our republic for a very long time. The exceptions are narrow and rare. And this,

this idea that we can just, you know, on the grounds there's crime, you know, militarize the situation and send in the National Guard is appalling. Yeah, I personally was just shocked that Vance said that the fact that the governor and the mayor of the state don't want us to go in is a reason why we should go in. Like the whole federal system is, no, no, no, it's local control. You let the governor and the mayor make their own decisions. If they want to send in their guard, they'll do it. But the fed's going in is like, that is exactly what's just talking about. So I think your point's very well taken. So then Stephanopoulos takes, goes to the next point, which is that Donald Trump has literally posted on truth social that Pritzker, the governor and

Johnson, the mayor, should go to jail. So they should be jailed for their lack of cooperation here. Here's the question that Stephanopoulos asks Vance. Governor Pritzker is our next guest. President Trump has said that he should be in jail. Do you think Governor Pritzker has committed a crime? Well, I think Governor Pritzker has certainly failed to keep the people of Illinois safe. Okay, so that's the first time Stephanopoulos asked the question about should they be jailed. He tries again, and Vance still doesn't answer the question. So then Stephanopoulos tries a third time.

Here he is. It's really a yes or no question. Do you believe he's committed a crime? George, you're going to keep on asking this question. I'm going to keep on telling you that Governor Prisker has failed to do his job. he should suffer some consequences, whether he's violated a crime. Ultimately, I would leave to the courts, but I certainly think that he has violated his fundamental oath of office.

That seems pretty criminal to me. Mona, seems pretty criminal to me. Is that the vice president accusing the governor of Illinois of a crime and saying that he should go to jail as the president's claim? It is not a criminal offense for a governor of a state to not be fulfilling what the vice president thinks are his obligations. That is not a crime. If it were, then, you know, every single elected representative would be liable for arrest for not meeting the standards of J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, which may be where we're headed, by the way, but that it's certainly

what they would prefer. But, you know, it is, it's because he can. It's because he can. He wound up, J.D. Vance winds up saying this stuff because he can't contradict Trump. Trump said the guy should be in jail. So J.D. pressed, I mean, he tried to, as you point out, he tried to wiggle out of it. But eventually he had to come up with something. And so he said, yeah, it seems kind of criminal to me. There you go. I mean, Mona, if the president of the United States unilaterally just posts a social media message saying that the governor and the mayor should be jailed for resisting him sending troops into a city against their will, and the vice president asked three times will not say,

no, it's not a crime. I feel like that is authoritarianism. Like, there's nothing between us and the authoritarianism. It's here. It is here. That is right. And, you know, and by the way, this is only the beginning because the president is gearing up to invoke the Insurrection Act, which I'm sorry to report does give him broad authority

in all kinds of situations. The legislation is very poorly drafted. It's very vague. Gives the president all kinds of authority to use the military as he sees fit, and that is the direction they're going. Yeah. Okay. So here's the next stage of the authoritarianism. The president has told the Attorney General to indict, well, he said they're guilty and bring them to justice. The New York Attorney General, Letitia James, FBI director, former FBI director James Comey, already indicted Adam Schiff, the senator from California. So Stephanopoulos asks about that. They're going after Letitia James for mortgage fraud. And Stephanopoulos asks Vance about a report that at least three members of the Trump administration have also done.

what Letitia James did and what a lot of people did, which is alleged to have done. Alleged to have done, to have claimed two primary residences for the purposes of getting a mortgage. So here's the question Stephanopoulos asked. The journalism outlet ProPublica has actually published a story, and I want to show it up on the screen right now, that says that several members of the Trump administration have faced similar questions. Labor Secretary Laurie Chavez-Durmer entered into two primary residence mortgages in quick succession. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C., Lee Zeldon, the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator,

has one primary residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C. How do you respond to critics who say that the Trump administration is engaging in a double standard here? Well, I'd say two things, George. First of all, ProPublica is basically a left-wing blog. I'm not shocked that you found a left-wing blog that can attack members of the Trump administration.

Okay, so Vance is trying to write this off as the work of a left-wing blog. You know, this is... So there are all of these, you know, chin-pulling articles and symposia in our country about the lack of trust and how we got here and how there's so many people who don't trust, you know, major institutions. And then, you know, you can discuss that and it's fine. And I'm not saying that there aren't people on both sides or on all sides who have to do some self-examination. but J.D. Vance and this crowd are like so off the charts when it comes to inciting disrespect for any authority outside of themselves. They do this all the time. So Vance says,

ProPublica is a left-wing blog. I'm not surprised, George, you found a left-wing blog. He also said it was another interview or moment where in reference to these indictments, he said, oh, And super left-wing juries, super-left-wing grand juries have brought in indictments. He was talking about the state of Virginia, okay? Super-left-wing, I mean, anything that they don't like, they will just brand as, you know, ultra-left-wing, you know, whatever. And the fact is, even if it were true that ProPublica leans left, which maybe it does, that's not the issue. The issue is, are the facts true or are they false? That's it. Whatever

their preference might be is not the issue. But the Maga people always want to make it, you know, that you can dismiss facts if they come from a source you don't like. Right. And then Bance basically dismisses the facts. Here's the second part of his answer to that question. I'm not worried about what they said about members of our administration. I ask the question, what does the law say? And if the law says that you engage in mortgage fraud and a local prosecutor, a local grand jury, and finally a jury convicts you of that crime, then that is how the justice system is meant to work in the United States of America. So wait a minute.

I'm not worried about what they said about members of our administration. So, Mona, I always heard that the left doesn't understand the right because the right doesn't care about Hippocchio. I feel like that's what's going on here. He just said it doesn't matter what people in our administration did. We're going to prosecute them for the same thing. He does it. I mean, he will just blatantly sit there and deny reality. And he does it with great aplomb.

He just will sit there and lie. So, for example, also, I don't know if it was this interview or a different one. I watched a few of them this morning. in your honor, because I hate watching these things. I did this for you, Will. But, you know, he was asked, yeah, I think it was Stephanopoulos, who was asking him about Tom Holman and about, you know, did he accept the $50,000?

And, you know, J.D. Vance, again, doesn't deal with the facts. He simply says, well, I saw reports, media reports about this, media reports. So an inconvenient fact becomes just a media report, not something that is part of our agreed upon mutual reality. And so he just refused to grapple with it and it kind of engaged in denial, all up and down the spectrum. There was one more interview that Vance did today. It was on Meet the Press.

And Kristen Welker asked him about the social media post in which Trump essentially told the Attorney General Pam Bondi to secure the indictments of Letitia James and James Comey. NBC News is covering and has confirmed that President Trump's social media post last month calling for his Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his political opponents, James Comey, Letitia James, and Adam Schiff was actually meant to be a private message. Both Comey and James have now been indicted. Is the Department of Justice acting on orders from the president to prosecute his political opponents? And here's how Vance answered that question.

No, Kristen, I think that we continue to allow the law to drive these decisions. If the law didn't necessitate an investigation and a prosecution in this case, it wouldn't happen. Of course, the president is allowed to have opinions about the law enforcement of the federal government. He is the chief executive officer of the federal government. Him having opinions doesn't mean that we prosecute people unless we have the legal justification to do so. Mona, he says, if the law. didn't necessitate an investigation, apart from Trump's social media post, the prosecution wouldn't happen. I'm sorry, I thought that there was a prosecutor in that district in

Virginia who did look at the evidence and decide that a prosecution wasn't warranted and that it wasn't until Trump personally decided that it was warranted, that it proceeded with a different prosecutor. Am I wrong here? Yeah, precisely. And, you know, bear in mind. that this man is a graduate of the Yale Law School. So he knows what the law is and he knows what it isn't. And honestly, you know, let's just remember cast your mind back all the way to the Biden administration. When these people were up in arms over the fact that the Biden, not even Biden personally,

but that the Biden officials might have been pressuring Twitter and other social media companies, to downplay certain things or, or, you know, not to circulate like COVID-denying stuff, okay? Even that was enough for them to say, the president must never interfere this way. This is terrible, you know, this is an abrogation of our freedoms, et cetera. And, you know, so he knows full well that in our system you prosecute the crime, not the man. and that, you know, any other system where you, you know, you say, show me the man and I'll show you the crime, which was supposed a line attributed to Joseph Stalin, is unjust and is not the way we do things here. And so, you know, he is fully aware that this is not what the law, the law requires the exact opposite. The law requires that the president not interfere in the Justice Department and certainly not downright, you know, I mean, this is so much beyond anything that we can even imagine.

I mean, it isn't even as if there is, you know, a credible criminal investigation going on of, you know, some drug kingpin or something. And the president calls up the Justice Department and say, you have any updates for me? me, how's that going? Which would not be not kosher, okay? You're not allowed to do that. But even, I mean, this is so far beyond that. This is so blatant. It's people who criticized him, and I'll say again,

I don't think people should call them enemies. They should be clear. Trump is going after his critics. He is going after people who criticized him or who made him feel bad or who annoyed him or

who were some kind of Thorne in his side. And that's the only reason that he's going after him. Not because he cares about the law. If he cared about the law, he wouldn't have pardoned all the January 6th people who attack cops, et cetera, et cetera. He doesn't care about the law. He cares about going after his critics. Yeah, yeah. So with all due apologies to Yale Law School, law school will teach you how to argue something. It will not teach you what the law is. It will not teach you ethics. It will not teach you to be an honorable, honest person. You know, you are supposed to, though, understand legal ethics when you take the bar exam. But poor J.D. Listen, J.D., I know it's the tough day. I will give you a little

advice. I'm sure that after all these interviews, your nose is out to about here. My buddy's explained to me just ice, a little bit of ice. I put that on mine. It went down. So hopefully apply a little bit of ice and maybe by tomorrow your nose will be back to a regular shape. Mona, thank you so much for joining me. And everybody, subscribe to the channel. Subscribe to the channel. You'll get more great videos with Mona and other colleagues here at the Bullwark.