JD Vance Steps in for Karoline Leavitt — Then Goes to WAR With the White House Press Corps

He accused the media of lying about the DOJ compensation program, dismantled Jonathan Karl’s framing in real time, and forced the press corps to confront Biden-era political persecution.

It’s not every day the Vice President of the United States walks into the White House briefing room and takes over the podium himself, but that’s exactly what happened today.

With Karoline Leavitt out on maternity leave, Vice President JD Vance stepped in to handle the briefing — and from the second he walked up to the podium, it was clear this wasn’t going to be one of those slow, scripted press conferences full of meaningless talking points.

Vance came in ready to fight on multiple fronts.

He opened with the administration’s anti-fraud crackdown and immediately started throwing around massive numbers tied to government waste and abuse.

It was all action from the Fraud Czar himself.

According to Vance, the administration has already uncovered billions in fraudulent activity spread across multiple federal systems in just the past few months alone.

VANCE: “We have caught, just in the last couple of months, BILLIONS upon billions of dollars of fraud in our hospice system and our Medicaid system and our Medicare system and our immigration system.”

Vance has essentially become the administration’s point man on the anti-fraud crackdown, and he sounded like someone who believes they’ve only just scratched the surface.

He went on to describe fraudulent SBA loans being identified and stopped before more money went out the door, while also making it clear that the administration is now moving beyond audits and into prosecutions.

“We’ve seen hundreds of millions of dollars of fraudulent loans that were being handed out through the Small Business Administration that we’ve identified and stopped.”

“We’ve also started investigating some of the fraudulent criminal activity and also prosecuting some of the fraudulent criminal activity.”

The way Vance talked about it, this clearly isn’t some side project inside the administration.

He speaks about it like someone who genuinely believes entire parts of the federal system have been quietly looted for years while nobody in Washington wanted to seriously confront it.

But the mood in the room shifted once the conversation moved to Iran.

The fraud discussion was intense, but the Iran portion of the briefing carried a completely different weight to it.

Standing behind the White House podium, Vance laid out what was essentially a two-track message to the Iranian regime: negotiate seriously and move toward a deal, or risk military escalation with the United States.

He made it clear that there is an opportunity for Iran to “reset” their relationship with the U.S. — if they are unwilling, option B is on the table and the U.S. is “locked and loaded.”

VANCE: “Now, what we did here is that we effectively degraded their conventional military capability. That has been done, that has been successfully done.”

“But where we are now is the president has asked us, has told us, to aggressively negotiate with the Iranians.”

Vance said the administration believes progress is being made diplomatically and that Iranian leadership appears interested in reaching some kind of agreement.

At the same time, he repeatedly stressed that there is one condition the White House will not compromise on.

“On that core issue of never having a nuclear weapon, we think that we’ve made a lot of progress. We think the Iranians want to make a deal. The president of United States has asked us to negotiate in good faith, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”

“So we’re in a pretty good spot here. But there’s an option B, and the option B is that we could restart the military campaign to continue to prosecute the case, to continue to try to achieve America’s objectives.”

“And we could talk a little bit about what that looks like, but that’s not what the president wants. And I don’t think it’s what the Iranians want either.”

Vance said Trump wants a reset in relations after decades of hostility between the two countries, but he also made clear there is a second option sitting in the background if diplomacy fails.

“We have an opportunity here, I think, to reset the relationship that has existed between Iran and the United States for 47 years.”

“That’s what the president has asked us to do, and that’s what we’re going to keep on working at.”

“But it takes two to tango. We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon.”

“So as the president just told me, we’re locked and loaded.”

“We don’t want to go down that pathway, but the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.”

That was probably the clearest signal yet from the White House that while negotiations are ongoing, the administration wants Iran to understand military action remains a very real possibility.

Once the floor opened up for questions, things got combative pretty quickly and Vance showed them what he was made of.

ABC’s Jonathan Karl immediately pressed Vance over the administration’s new $1.8 billion DOJ “weaponization” compensation fund, framing it as taxpayers footing the bill for lawsuits connected to President Trump.

Vance clearly didn’t like the framing and pushed back almost instantly.

He used Karl’s narrative-driven questions as a gateway toward the moment where he completely shattered the media’s myths about the weaponization fund.

KARL: “I want to ask you about that $1.8 billion fund set up, weaponization funds as it’s being called.”

“Why should taxpayers be paying to settle a $10 billion lawsuit that was brought by the president of the United States?”

“And should people that attacked the Capitol Building and assaulted police officers, should they be eligible? Should they receive money?”

Vance responded by accusing the media of fundamentally misrepresenting what the fund is actually for.

VANCE: “Well, let me say a couple things about that.”

“First, John, I think in some ways, the media has misrepresented what this is actually about.”

According to Vance, the purpose of the program is to compensate Americans who were unfairly targeted through what the administration describes as politically motivated prosecutions during the Biden years.

“This is about compensating Americans for the lawfare that we saw under the last administration. And by the way, anybody can apply for it. Republicans can apply for it. Democrats can apply for it.”

“As you know, the president of the United States has pardoned a number of Democrats who he felt were actually subject to this lawfare.”

Vance even sarcastically referenced Hunter Biden, saying he would be free to apply as well if he wanted to.

“I mean, if Hunter Biden wants to apply for this particular fund, he is welcome to, it’s going to go through a normal process where we vet everything, where we try to identify whether people’s claims are actually legitimate.”

Vance then drew a clear distinction between compensating people for government abuse and personally enriching Trump or his family.

“You say, why should taxpayers fund this? Whenever the United States government incurs legal expenses, it pays out those legal expenses when it it’s settling a lawsuit, it pays out money to settle that lawsuit.”

He asked himself aloud a series of questions, which decisively nuked Karl’s entire argument.

“And the question is, is a dollar of this money going to the Trump administration? No.”

“Is a dollar of this money going to Donald Trump personally? No.”

“Is a dollar of this money going to Donald Trump’s family? No.”

“The people that would get the money are people, some of whom have been prosecuted completely disproportionate to any crime they’ve ever committed.”

However, Vance wasn’t finished on this topic. He wanted to provide a concrete example of persecution to help get the point across to the media.

Vance then forced the White House press corps to cover the plight of Tina Peters.

He said the “innocent grandmother” is exactly the kind of person who should receive DOJ compensation for being targeted by Biden-era lawfare.

VANCE: “Tina Peters is this woman who is about to get out of prison, thanks in large part to the president’s good work in Colorado.”

“This is a woman who, at worst, if you believe everything that the prosecutor said about her, committed misdemeanor trespassing, and somebody threw the book at her.”

“This innocent grandmother was going to spend ten years in prison, completely disproportionate to any misdemeanor trespassing that I’ve ever seen.”

“Was that fair? No.”

“Is it reasonable for her to get some compensation for the fact that she was treated unfairly? I think the answer is yes.”

Vance showed today that he can handle the press room almost as comfortably as Karoline Leavitt herself.

He’s not afraid to get in the mud and wrestle.

The media kept trying to drag the briefing into the usual hostile back-and-forths, but Vance looked completely at ease sparring with them and setting the record straight.

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