Will Cain Country - From the Vault: Vice President J.D. Vance Takes Aim at Gov. Newsom in EXCLUSIVE Interview

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

In this “Best Of” edition of ‘Will Cain Country,’ Will sits down with Vice President J.D. Vance at the Mid-City Steel Manufacturing Plant in La Crosse, Wisconsin to discuss the Trump Administration's war on drug cartels, making homes affordable again, what the Vice President’s football predictions are (or rather, were) for the season, and much more. Subscribe to ‘Will Cain Country’ on YouTube here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch Will Cain Country!⁠⁠⁠ Follow ‘Will Cain Country’ on X (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), Instagram (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), TikTok (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), and Facebook (⁠⁠⁠@willcainnews⁠⁠⁠) Follow Will on X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WillCain⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Wilcane. Thanks for spending your Christmas Eve with us. Today on Wilcane Country, we put together a best of show, conversations that stood out and defined the year for this program. No wasted time. Just the moments that mattered. Let's get started. What is the prediction of the Vice President of the United States? J.D. Vance. Noted Ohio State Buckeye fan who dropped the National Championship trophy when they visited the White House. I asked the Vice President about that moment, his prediction for the game, and much, much more when it comes to the issues facing the United States of America. Yesterday I traveled to lacrosse, Wisconsin, Mid-City Steel, one of the beneficiaries of the Big Beautiful Bill.

to sit down with our Vice President, J.D. Vance. I hope you enjoy. Mr. Vice President, it's great to see you here. Good to see you, man. Mid-City Steel, LaCross, Wisconsin, the middle of America to celebrate the big, beautiful bill. Of course. Yeah, we're thrilled to be here.

And this is one of these businesses, a steel manufacturer, employs a lot of good people, use a lot of technology. So people, I think, sometimes assume that manufacturing is sort of old, dirty, doesn't use technology.

This is a good business. It's an example of leaning into American investment, American innovation. Obviously, the people here have great jobs. And you know my story will, but I grew up in a town where we were shedding manufacturing jobs because politicians had made stupid decisions. We're now adding manufacturing jobs and adding productivity in this economy thanks to the things that the President and the Republican Congress have done. So we're here to talk about it, here to talk about the benefits of the working families tax cuts and obviously fire people up a little bit and just, you know, it's good. It's good to get out of Washington. I'm glad to be here.

Glad to have you in Middle America. You bring up Middletown, Ohio. It's a lot like LaCross, Wisconsin. It's not unlike my hometown of Sherman, Texas, all about 40,000 to 50,000 people manufacturing towns. And there's a lot of excitement today, but it hasn't always been that way, to your point, whether or not it's been job loss, an opioid crisis, a cultural malaise and a sense of loss of purpose, I believe, is deeply rooted in what's happened to Middle America. What do you think that's done to America? Well, I think it was very bad for our country, and all these problems are very connected. You take a dad who's got a good middle class manufacturing job, is able to support a family, a couple of kids, and then that job disappears. Well, now the family is feeling financial stress that it wasn't 10 years ago, it wasn't 20 years

ago. So sometimes families dissolve in the wake of that. That stress affects the kids. Some of those people turn to drugs, and all this stuff is very connected. And if you look at what the president is trying to do, it's also all connected. And I think that it's why it's leading to this very early days of an American Renaissance. because you bring jobs back, you have people hope, optimism, you give them a little extra money to spend in their pocket. Maybe some of those people go and start a business, but then simultaneously, we're focused on the southern border because we don't want this poison to come into these communities and destroy people from fentanyl and other related problems.

So I kind of think in the same way that America's decline was a problem of interconnected issues. I think this American Renaissance led by the president is also interconnected. And we're trying to work on all these different problems because we solve all these problems, it leads to a virtuous cycle. Well, the big, beautiful bill is big. It is interconnected as well. It is. What would you say to the people that are sitting right on the other side of this curtain? By the way, there is a beautiful bridge being built right on the other side of this curtain. But what would you say to them about the big beautiful bill and how it begins to address the depth of what you just laid out, those problems?

Well, I'd say, look, it's all connected. We're going to talk to obviously in a little bit to the crowd that's assembled. Well, we're going to say a few things. Number one is you've got the biggest amount of money for border enforcement that we've seen in our country's history. Those criminal cartels that are bringing the fentanyl into places like Wisconsin that are killing people by the bushel. We are now going to war against those cartels in a way that we've never done before because of that big beautiful bill. We've also got incredible working families tax cuts to reinvigorate the economy here in Wisconsin. So you've got the child tax credit going up. You've got no tax on overtime, no tax on tips. 27% of Wisconsin workers worked in overtime shift in last year. 5% of Wisconsin workers rely on tips either in part or entirely. So this is going to mean a lot more money in people's pockets. And of course, if they got more money in their pocket, they can spend it on American-made products.

And that's the final point is the President of the United States. This is not the main part of the working family's tax cuts. We're going to make it easier to save and invest in the United States of America. The tariffs, of course, are separate. But it's all connected. Because if we make it easier to build things in the United States, of America, we're also making it harder to build things overseas. This generation of failed American economic policy where we rewarded companies for put in factories in Mexico or in China

or somewhere else. No, we've got to reward people from putting factories right here in Middle America, right here in Wisconsin, employing good American workers to make great American products. That's the whole purpose of President Trump's economic agenda. And again, it's already barren real fruit, but it's going to, I think, lead to a great American Renaissance over the next three years. I saw this this morning that in 74 out of 100 metro areas in the United States, half of all starter homes are unaffordable for the average American worker. You're the first millennial vice president. You have personal experience with people of this generation not being able to make that leap, that first economic leap into adulthood, homeownership. Is the system rigged?

Oh, the system is absolutely rigged. I mean, look, you go back to the four years of the Biden administration from 2021 until 2025 when we took over the average price of a new home doubled. That's 100% increase in four years. That priced millions upon millions of young Americans out of the housing market. Now, there's a little bit of good news here because even though we've only been in power for about seven months, you've already seen home prices flatten off a little bit. They've gone up depending on what metric you believe, about 1% maybe less than 1%. That's a big, big improvement, but there's so much more that we got to do.

And this is why the President of the United States goes after Jerome Powell for being too late. Because, of course, the housing crisis in this country is really two things. Number one, that the prices are too high. We've made some progress on that. In some ways, more importantly, the interest rates are too high. So even if you can afford the top line dollar value of a home, if the interest rates are way too high because the Federal Reserve isn't doing its job, that also makes the American dream of homeownership unaffordable.

So we're really working on both of those things. We had a lower interest rates. We had a lower housing crisis. We've made again progress, but it's early, and we realize there's a lot more work to do. Quick break. More of our Christmas Eve, best of Wilcane Country. This is Ainsley Earhart. Thank you for joining me for the 52 episode podcast series, The Life of Jesus.

A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Absolutely, the system is rigged. You've been a long-time critic of the system, but not the vice president of the United States, and one could argue you are the system. So how do you fix a rigged system? Well, we inherited a rigged system, but I think that in seven months, we've already made a lot of progress to fix this. If you go back to, again, a hundred percent housing price increase in four years under Joe Biden, we've already seen that level off under Donald Trump. Now, to fix the rig system, you ask that question, you've got to understand the root causes here. Why did it? housing gets so unaffordable for American citizens, two big problems. Number one, I already talked about interest rates were too high. Number two, you had way too many people in this country who are competing against American citizens for scarce homes. And that's the illegal immigration problem. Why is housing leveled off over the past six months? I really believe the main driver

is you've had negative net migration into the United States for the first time in 60 years in this country. You cannot flood the United States of America with 20. 30, 40 million people who have no legal right to be here, have them compete against young American families for homes and not expect the price to skyrocket. It's a simple supply and demand. You increase the demand. You're going to increase the price. And the final thing I want to say here is we're working on issues right now in the White House every single day because we want to make it easier to build homes too. Because in the same way that getting illegal aliens out of this country means fewer people competing against young American families. We also want to increase

the housing stock in this country by making it easier to build. So we're working on all this stuff, but man, we've got to be honest. The system was rigged against Americans, especially young Americans for a very long time. We're making progress to un-rig it, but it's going to take some time. You brought up tariffs. You brought up bringing manufacturing back home. I had dinner, I had the opportunity to have dinner a week or two ago in Texas with several big corporate CEOs across the country. And I did hear concern about tariffs. I heard concern not from people who necessarily vote Democrat, but people that are involved in the economy. Their concern was uncertainty, and their concern was that we might see inflation in the fourth quarter of 2025 or the

first quarter of 2026. What would you say to those CEOs? Well, let me say a couple of things. So first of all, I understand the point about uncertainty. The president's been very clear here. The countries have a tariff rate. If they open up their market, that tariff rate might go lower. But people at this point, I don't think that there's uncertainty about this. The president has deliver very clear guidance to the market about what tariff rate each particular country is going to pay. Obviously, in threatening higher tariff rates, he was able to get some markets opened up for our country. But I think at this point, it's pretty clear which countries are going to be paying which tariffs. And again, on this concern about inflation, I've heard people say many years

now that Donald Trump's tariffs are going to cause inflation. They didn't cause inflation during the Trump administration, we keep on defying economists' expectations. They keep on saying inflation is going to be three, four, five percent. It ends up being two percent, which is exactly where you want it. So we're very sensitive to this. We're obviously monitoring this stuff. But I think the evidence is that what these tariffs have done has caused a lot of capital flow into our country, a lot of new facilities being built in our country. And we don't see the evidence yet. And I've been skeptical from the very beginning that President Trump's tariffs are going to cause prices to rise. What they're going to do,

has caused people to come back into our country. And the final point on this will is the president said this better than anybody. You know what your tariff rate is if you build in the United States of America? It is zero. You don't pay a tariff if you build in the United States. So why not employ American workers? Build your products closer to the people who are going to be consuming those things. That's the whole point of President Trump's economic vision is more for America,

more in America, more by American workers. And if we do that and pursue that policy, it's going to make a very important. everybody better off. It's very fair and very accurate. The doomsday predictions have been consistent and consistently wrong. Well, they remain wrong. Time will tell perhaps later into this year. Quick break. More of our Christmas Eve, best of Wilcane country coming up. Let's return to culture for just one moment. Sure. You spent a lot of time talking about Europe, the migration crisis of Germany, of England. You've talked about free speech. Why is it so important for you to focus on Europe? Well, I think in some ways the problems of Europe mirror the problems of

America. And anything that I've said about Europe, I've said 10 times and is even as true or more true in the United States of America. We, of course, had a wide open southern border under Joe Biden. I think the Europeans have got to learn the hard lessons. What happens is you get higher crime, you get less cultural cohesion, you get more just problems that come from importing millions and millions of low-wage foreigners in your country. The Europeans have got to learn that lesson in the same way that I think the United States had to learn that lesson. You've seen in the same way that the Biden administration went after social media companies to censor their fellow citizens, you've seen the very same thing happened in Europe, where rather than debate ideas,

you have certain European leaders who would rather censor their fellow citizens. So I think fundamentally, there's so much cultural similarity between us and Europe. Obviously, the United States was born out of a European country, the United Kingdom. I think it's important to recognize those cultural similarities. And importantly, what's happening in Europe does affect the United States and vice versa. And so I think it's important for us to step back and say, look, the West, right? That's Europe and America together. We got too comfortable with open borders.

We got too comfortable with censorship. And I think the president has shown that if you go in the other direction, if you close down your borders and actually give free speech to your people, you can really energize the culture in these countries. Europe is the bedrock of Western civilization. It's the foundation of Western civilization. And that seems to be not just questioned, but under threat. Have you seen this story out of England where the English flag, has simultaneously become controversial and patriotic. Some in that country see it as a sign of protest,

others see it as a sign of patriotism. And it's a little reflected at what's happening here in America. Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, again, so much of what happens in Europe happens in America and vice versa. You know, sometimes we're on the leading edge of a trend, sometimes they're on the leading edge of a trend. But I remember back in the crazy BLM summer of 2020,

I had a buddy of mine say, you know, I was gonna put the American flag out today, but I'm worried that some BLM person, is going to ransack my house or or you know come and vandalize in some way because they see the American flag somehow as this controversial symbol it's not a controversial symbol nothing should be less controversial in the American flag it's the one thing that whether you're a Democrat or Republican should unite us all together we should all love our country be proud of our country so again some of these trends where you have Americans worried about flying the American

flag because they think their house is going to get vandalized first of all that's crazy Second of all, you see the same things happening in Europe, and I think we just have to be on guard against this stuff. It's okay to be proud of your country. It's in fact a good thing to be proud of your country, and we should push back against the crazies who say we should be so ashamed of our culture and of our heritage that we shouldn't be willing to fly a flag. It's craziness. We've got to call that craziness out.

I'd encourage our European friends to follow soon. You brought up how interconnected every single one of these problems are from culture to the economy, but if I could say to you, you could snap your fingers, politics be damned, and you could fix one problem at the root of all of this in America. You forwarded mass migration, you forwarded immigration, talk about the family unit,

but what would be the root unit you would snap your fingers and fix? It's probably the migration problem, and I think again, the President of the United States has shown in just a few short months of what you can do. We've got a legal border crossings effectively at Zibru. We've got net migration negative in this country for the first time, and why do I say that?

First of all, I think it's a legal border crossings. I think it's very hard to feel, you know, like you're part of the same country when your leadership brings in tens of millions of people uninvited. So that sense of shared American identity, the sense that we're part of the same American family, I think that gets destroyed when you import 20, 30 million people without any Democratic check on it. So that's number one. Number two, I think it's terrible for the wages of working class people. You see this in every place where you bring in low-wage immigrants.

It's bad for the wages of Americans who just. just want to work a good job and earn a good wage in their communities. And the third thing that I pointed out is crime and drugs. We know that while most, of course, even illegal immigrants are not bringing in fentanyl, they are used by the cartels as vectors to traffic this illegal poison. And so it makes the opioid problem worse. It makes wages worse. And it makes our sense of common American identity worse.

I think the migration issue really is the root of what went wrong during the Biden administration. By the way, it's why the Democrats are. are so obsessed with you ask yourself like what is the modern national democratic party believe in what do they fight most aggressively for they fight most aggressively to continue to flood the united states with millions and millions of low-wage immigrants the fact that that is the reason for existing for the democratic party should make all americans sort of step back and say what the hell is wrong with these people quick break more of our christmas eve best of wilcane country coming up zoran momdani is the leading candidate for mayor in

New York City. Yes, your me ma'am, by the way, I think was a lifelong Democrat. She was. What do you think it says about the left that Zoran Mamdani is a leading candidate for a big political office as a Democrat? And what would your me ma'amaw say about modern Democrats? I think Mamal would say, this is crazy. I think that she would say that modern Democratic Party doesn't represent her at all. By the way, there are two things that ma'amall. Yes, she was a lifelong Democrat. She believed in standing up for working people. She believed in good wages for for a good job. She was a, her husband was a union Democrat for 40 years, and that's really where it came from. But one, she thought politicians ought to have a sense of humor. Democrats,

the one thing they should learn from President Trump is to laugh at themselves a little bit. They don't have to be so serious. They don't have to get offended at everything. Sometimes it's actually a good thing to have a sense of humor about our political process. And the second thing is, ma'am all, she was a Democrat who loved this country and felt gratitude for this country. She had multiple relatives who served in World War II, who served in World War I. She remembered that war like it was yesterday. She would tell me about World War II and her brother and her dad going off to fight in the Pacific. Does Mondami, when you hear him speak, is this a man who feels gratitude for the United States of America?

Is this a man who feels grateful for all of the opportunities, the incredible bounty of this country? I don't know the guy, but my sense is he's had a very good life in this country. It would be nice for him to occasionally show a sense of gratitude. instead of just attacking the United States for all of its problems. You bring up humor. Gavin Newsom sure thinks he's a comedian in these days on social media.

And so does much of the left. His polling numbers have gone way up since he started mimicking President Trump on social media. What do you make of Governor Newsom? I make of Governor Newsom that you said he's mimicking Donald Trump and I think that's exactly right. The lesson of Donald Trump,

the lesson of President Trump in American politics is you've got to be authentic to yourself. And when I see Gavin Newsom trying to act like Donald Trump, That's the opposite of authenticity. He's not trying to be Gavin Newsom, whoever that is. He's trying to be a fake carbon copy of Donald Trump, and it just doesn't work. You can't mimic the king.

You can't mimic the master. You ought to just go and be yourself, and I think that the American people would like that a lot more than a cheap invitation of the President of the United States. Two more questions. One important to our country, one important to you and me. This story I know you're aware of out of Minneapolis where this school shooter at a Catholic school killed two young children.

children, trans identified. The latest in the news is that he may have actually regretted his transition. There's a conversation today. The mayor of Minneapolis says it's hate to focus on his identity. There are others that say it's necessary to tell the truth. What do you make of this story? And by the way, what do you make of the response of so many that seem to reject the prayers of those that want to reach out?

It seems to be a real antagonism to spirituality. Well, I think there are a lot of things here. The first and most important thing, again, I really do see us as one American family. And you have to think about those parents and those kids and what they've gone through, and especially the kids who lost their lives. This is the most heartbreaking thing, imaginable. And we should be praying for those kids. We should be thinking about those families.

We should be doing everything that we can to try to help them. I mean, I took my five-year-old two days ago to his Catholic school where he became a kindergarten, his first day of kindergarten. And then the very next day, you see something like this happen. This is just an unbelievable tragedy. And we have to remember that there are a couple of families who yesterday had the worst day of their lives. And it's not going to get much better from here because of what this evil person took from these families, which is these two beautiful kids. That's my first response to it.

My second response to it is I'm praying every single day, multiple times a day that while two deaths is tragic, three deaths is even more tragic. and I hope it stays in two because there still are some kids who seem to be in pretty serious condition at hospitals who are praying for their sweat recovery. And I think on the broader stuff, I mean, look, clearly this person was a mentally deranged human being. Clearly it was a transgender individual. We're going to learn a lot more. And I think the FBI and local authorities, I ought to try to get to the bottom of this. But you don't go and shoot up innocent children unless you are a clearly screwed up person. And so that's obviously true. But I do think that, look, We are so soon after this tragedy, I guess this is going to air this afternoon, but we're so soon after this tragedy that I think that it would be nice if we as a country can unite, say our prayer for these innocent victims, say our prayer for the kids who are still recovering, that they make a full recovery, focus on the investigation and getting to the bottom of this thing and not immediately make it about politics.

And my final point on this is when I see far left politicians say, how dare you offer thoughts and prayers, you need action, you know, I don't care about your prayers. I care about what you're going to do to prevent this from happening. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't you pray for the speedy recovery of these kids who literally just got shot yesterday, while at the same time committing to making sure this doesn't happen again or that it happens as infrequently as possible? I don't think there's anything inconsistent about saying a prayer to God for these innocent, beautiful kids while also thinking constructively about how we're going to prevent this from happening the next time.

You can do both of those things. You can hold both of those thoughts in your head. at the same time. And Will, if you are a politician or you're a media commentator and two beautiful babies just got murdered while praying and your politics forced you to contend prayer in response to it, you ought to get new politics because something very wrong has gone on inside your soul. All right. Lastly, on a lighter note, I'm disappointed to see your blue tie. I, as a specific rebuke to you and the Ohio State Bucke I say, chose a burnt orn tie. This weekend, we have number one versus number two.

the University of Texas versus Ohio State. Let's just revisit what has to be one of your most embarrassing moments as vice president. I can't even imagine. What is it like to drop the national championship trophy? It's awful. Let me tell you, it's awful. And my friends gave me hell for it. And it's one of those moments all never lived down.

I didn't break it, though. It was made of solid, good steel, I guess. I did analyze it. I did analyze it. I could give you a whole backstory about it. I didn't know that there's, so it's not the base. fell off the base is meant to come off right you're not meant to lift it up by the base which is the mistake that i made you're supposed to just take the trophy out of the base so anyway that was

the first error that led to a series of problems but yeah i looked at the the line yesterday and i think ohio state were 12 point dogs to texas your favor i believe you're favored by three you're at home you're number two okay we got to look okay i thought i i i somebody sent me up somebody sent me a line That's what I said, because we're in Columbus. Somebody sent me a line that had us minus 11.5. And I was like, that sounds crazy to me. I think it's going to be a good game. You guys have a hell of a team.

Obviously, Archie Manning has good genes, as the president would say. So hopefully he doesn't have too good of a day in Ohio Stadium. You have a prediction? Oh, man. Texas Longhorns by a million. 3423 Buckeyes. All right. I can't wait to see you after.

That's a confident prediction. All right, thank you, Mr. Vice President. Good to see it. Thank you. There you go. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with the Vice President of the United States. J.D. Vance, I enjoyed talking to him both on and off camera. We talked about nicotine pouches. We talked about the country.

I followed up on a suggested question from tinfoil pad. If you could snap your answer, fingers, and fix one problem in the United States, what would it be? He said mass migration. Me and I continue to talk about that. I don't think he would mind me saying, he said, look, you just have to have a country who is its common cause. who all believes in the same experiment. Otherwise, you will have a failed country. And I think he's absolutely right.

He's really impressive. And he's really personable, by the way, as well. He's a guy. He's a dude. He's also the vice president. That wraps up today's best of Will Kane country. Appreciate you being here. And we're going to see you next time.

Listen to ad free with a Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast. and Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon music app.