Vice President JD Vance, reflecting Thursday on his first year in office, said he disagrees with his Republican colleagues who have warned of a rise in anti-Semitism in their party.
“I think judging someone based on their skin color or immutable characteristics is fundamentally un-American and anti-Christian,” Vance said in an interview with NBC News. “I think it’s important to call these things out when I see them. Also, when I talk to young conservatives, I don’t see latent anti-Semitism exploding.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has positioned himself as a potential rival to Vance in the 2028 presidential race, raising his profile in part by condemning what he sees as an escalation of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment. Cruz has singled out young conservatives who pressed Vance with questions about Israel at a recent political event, while also criticizing Tucker Carlson, a Vance ally who featured a Holocaust denier on his podcast.
“Do I think the Republican Party is substantially more anti-Semitic than it was 10 or 15 years ago? Absolutely not,” Vance said. “There are bad people in any pile of apples. But my attitude about it is that we have to be firm in saying that anti-Semitism and racism are wrong… I think it’s a little slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely anti-Semitic.”
Vance made the comments, the first on the issue since Cruz began raising it, during an interview inside his West Wing office, addressing an issue that has roiled his party in recent weeks amid a broader focus on anti-Semitism by the Trump administration.
As he drank a cup of coffee while a fireplace crackled behind him, he also volunteered the names of three progressives he said he has come to like, for various reasons: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.
And the vice president discussed what he sees as key areas of progress and disappointment since he and President Donald Trump took office in January, including acknowledging that voters are “impatient” to see more progress on prices and the economy. The increase in deportations and the sharp decline in illegal border crossings, Vance said, are among the administration’s first victories.
“I think Kristi has done a good job. I think Stephen Miller, Tom Homan and all these people have done a very good job,” Vance said, referring to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials involved in U.S. border and immigration policy. “That’s where you see the clearest numbers and the most immediate return on all of our time and all of our hard work, and that’s what I’m most proud of.”
Vance, who has played a role in Middle East diplomacy and efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, said he feels he was most effective this year in helping Trump get Congress to pass his signature “big, beautiful bill.” Vance helped build support for the legislation and cast the tie-breaking vote to get the tax and spending bill passed in the Senate.
“I spent hours at the Capitol with a group of United States senators, late into the night on the first vote, and frankly I didn’t know if we were going to be able to pass it, and we did,” Vance said. “And we did it because the president was making phone calls, and we did it because I was there encouraging people to vote the right way. That’s probably where I see the most tangible connection between the hard work I did and a good outcome for the American people.”
When asked what his biggest frustration was so far as vice president, Vance cited the failure so far to reach a deal to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“Oh, man. I mean, look, the Russia-Ukraine issue has been a source of constant frustration, I think, for the entire White House,” Vance said. “I think we really thought – and you’ve heard the president say this a million times – that that would be the easiest war to solve. And if you had said that peace in the Middle East is easier to achieve than peace in Eastern Europe, I would have told you you were crazy.”
Vance added that he remained optimistic.
“I think, for what it’s worth, we’ve made a lot of progress, but we haven’t crossed the finish line yet,” he said. “I think there is hope; hopefully there will be good news in the next few weeks on that front.”
The vice president also expressed frustration that prices have not fallen as quickly as he and Trump promised during the election campaign last year, while deflecting blame onto former President Joe Biden. He cited several metrics, including a four-month drop in rent, as signs of better days to come. Trump, meanwhile, has chosen a different message, arguing in recent days that Americans’ concerns about affordability are part of a “false narrative.”
“I think the president certainly understands that prices have gone too high,” Vance said when asked about Trump’s comments. “But I think what the president is saying is the idea that, 11 months into the administration, we could solve all the affordability problems created by the Democrats. I mean, that’s a hoax. The hoax is the idea that it’s our fault and not the Democrats’. And I think that’s a totally silly narrative.”
Recent polls have shown that Americans are unhappy with Trump’s management of the economy. In an NBC News poll conducted in late October, 63% of registered voters, including 30% of Republicans, said they felt Trump had not met their expectations on the economy.
“I think ultimately voters are going to have to make that decision,” Vance said. “I certainly see some of the polls that you’ve seen. But I think the reason we have elections every two years and not every year, at least for Congress, thank God, is that you have to give it a little time for this to work.”
“I think I would certainly say voters are impatient. I think voters have every right to be impatient,” Vance continued. “We are also impatient and we are going to see if what we do and what we think we have to do converges with what the voters think we should do.”
Next year’s midterm elections will help answer that question, Vance added.
“We’ll find out in about a year,” he said, “and we’ll keep working as hard as we can until then.”
The midterms are also a key reference point for Vance as he weighs a campaign to succeed the term-limited Trump in 2028.
Vance has routinely dodged questions about his political future by saying that “politics will take care of itself” if he and Trump do a good job. He jokingly repeated that theme when reminded of it Thursday and asked under what circumstances he would do it. No seek the presidency.
“We’re going to find out a lot of things in the midterms and after: what we did right, what we did wrong, what we could have done better, what we did very well,” he said. “I try not to wake up and think, ‘What does this mean for my future?’ I always try to think, ‘How can I do a good job right now,’ right? And that’s one of the reasons I’ve tried to stay away from the conversation about 2028. … I never want the focus on the future to come at the expense of this work.”
Vance veered off again when pressed with the same question that dogged then-Vice President Kamala Harris as she ran for president last year. Vance and other Republicans ridiculed Harris when, during an appearance on ABC’s “The View,” she said she couldn’t think of anything she would have done differently than Biden. At the time, Vance described it as Harris huffing a “softball” question, but said Thursday it was too early to throw it at him.
“The president really needs a vice president who will be loyal to him and not use the media to betray him or prepare well for 2028,” Vance said. “So what you will never hear me do in this job is attack the president of the United States. Of course, if I run for another office in the future, it will be reasonable for people to ask me, ‘Would you have done this? Would you have done that?’ And if that time ever comes, let’s have that conversation. But I will never attack the president of the United States.”
While Vance said there is no Democrat he is very concerned about as a potentially strong 2028 presidential contender, he singled out Sanders, Khanna and Mamdani.
“I’ve always been fascinated by Bernie,” Vance said. “Someday I’ll tell you what Bernie told me, like the second day I was in the United States Senate. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, and it’s actually a pretty good summary of my politics, but it would probably hurt a lot on both the left and the right. If I told you what Bernie told me, it would probably hurt Bernie, too.”
Khanna, Vance noted, has argued with him on social media. “I think he’s very annoying at times, but he also… occasionally says something interesting, which is more than I could say for most politicians,” Vance said.
And Vance described Mamdani, the democratic socialist mayor-elect who recently had a friendly visit with Trump in the Oval Office, as “fascinating.”
“Obviously, I’m not a communist, and I think he is,” Vance added, “but the fact that he’s focusing so aggressively on the issue of affordability in New York City, which has one of the worst affordability crises in the world, is smart, and at least he’s listening to people.
He continued: “Most politicians have a very low bar, but they don’t even listen to the people. I would put Mamdani, Bernie and Ro Khanna in the category of those who, at least sometimes, are.”
