BANGOR, Maine — With most of the administration overseas, Vice President JD Vance stayed stateside Thursday, leading the charge on both domestic policy and the looming midterms.
Vance touched down in Bangor, Maine, for his first trip dedicated to the Anti-Fraud Task Force, arriving around 24 hours after holding a press conference on the topic at the White House. A fired-up crowd met him there, appearing ready to rally behind Vance, his anti-fraud agenda and the administration’s midterm push. His remarks come shortly after President Donald Trump flew to China for a summit with President Xi Jinping. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Trump Admin Intercepts $60 Million In Student Loan Fraud)
The Daily Caller traveled with Vance aboard Air Force Two on Thursday to a stop billed to be about “protecting taxpayer dollars,” but the rally atmosphere made the midterm subtext hard to miss.
“But here’s the thing, my friends, because you all work hard, because you all pay your taxes, because you do things the right way, it is time to have leadership in Washington that treats you the right way and protects those hard earned tax dollars,” Vance said.
VP Vance has taken the stage in Maine. One attendee shouted “2028” as Vance took the stage. pic.twitter.com/Se8R1qRPKJ
— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) May 14, 2026
The vice president spoke from a stage at Bangor Airport, with two signs on either side of him reading “protecting taxpayer dollars” and “fighting fraudsters.”
The attendees, who constantly interacted with Vance throughout the rally, held up signs that also read “protecting taxpayer dollars.”
As Vance and his sidekick on the trip, Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, recounted the fraud that has allegedly been uncovered since the launch of the task force, attendees couldn’t hide their dismay.
“Since the Task Force began, we’ve already uncovered widespread fraud and are aggressively preventing it from ever happening again. So here’s some examples. We found that nearly 29 billion went to the same social security numbers across multiple states,” Sonderling told the crowd prior to Vance taking the stage.
Gasps filled the room.
“Oh, hold on, I got better ones. 139 million got sent to dead people,” Sonderling followed up, met by more shocked murmurs.
“Are you serious?” one attendee let slip.
“They voted for [former President Joe] Biden!” another attendee exclaimed.
By the time Vance hit the stage, the crowd seem disgusted by the allegations the Anti-Fraud Task Force had discovered.
Prior to speaking with attendees, Vance was greeted on the tarmac by former Republican Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who is running for Congress, and his wife Ann. LePage became a recurring character throughout the rally, earning repeated shoutouts and an explicit call from Vance for Maine voters to send him to Washington to help stop fraud.
“I can’t even compare to your great former governor, because while I love this state as an outsider, he loves this state as somebody who has fought for it every single day,” Vance told the crowd.
“[He’s] a guy who came to work every single day, protecting your tax dollars, protecting your essential services, protecting our local law enforcement, making sure common sense — that the government actually works for the people who deserve and have the right to be in the United States to begin with,” he added.
The handling of Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who skipped the rally to maintain her voting streak in Washington, offered one of the sharper glimpses into Vance’s midterm calculus. The relationship between the White House and Collins has been tense as she has repeatedly given the administration trouble with political nominations.
Instead of creating distance or friction, Vance threaded the needle.
“The thing I love about Susan is she is independent, because Maine is an independent state, and frankly, if she was as partisan as I sometimes wish that she was, she would not be a good fit for the people of Maine,” Vance told the crowd, who nodded along.
We just landed in Maine for the Vice President’s remarks on fraud. There appear to protestors here with a meme of Vance… but mega sized. pic.twitter.com/3QNOOByt3z
— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) May 14, 2026
The administration has struggled to find its footing on midterm messaging. The U.S.-Iran war and the rising gas prices as a result have made it difficult.
Trump made his first big domestic push of the year at the end of April. The Daily Caller traveled with Trump on that trip, which was to Las Vegas and Phoenix. On the road, the president touted his “No Tax on Tips” policy and headlined a “Build the Red Wall” Turning Point USA event. Still, a unifying message has been missing.
TPUSA plays a hype up video for President Trump as he takes the stage. Big theme of the event is the importance of 2026 midterms. Feels like a vintage Trump rally.
Prior to the president’s speech, Erika Kirk stressed to attendees the importance of the midterms so “we don’t lose… pic.twitter.com/CIjXpE1uKj
— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) April 17, 2026
Thursday felt like a proof of concept for something that could work: Want your taxpayer dollars protected? We’re the ones doing it.
“We’re going to send representatives, senators and governors who fight for the people in this room [to Washington,],” Vance said. “We’re going to do it by rejecting fraudsters, sending them to prison where we can and taking away the money in all cases. That’s how we fight fraud successfully.”
In 2024, Vance was Trump’s attack dog. He was the surrogate who went where the Trump couldn’t, shadowed former Vice President Kamala Harris through swing states and didn’t flinch when he sat down with hostile media. By Election Day, he was widely considered one of the campaign’s greatest assets.
That version of Vance was on full display in Bangor.
His time on stage felt less like a rally speech and more like a conversation with the crowd of attendees. He asked them for recommendations on local lobster roll joints. He reacted alongside them as the fraud numbers landed. He happily fielded questions from local reporters.
Those “protecting taxpayer dollar signs” could be 2026 bumper stickers.
Vance called on voters to send LePage to Maine and criticized outgoing Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills, and then he closed with the familiar face the Trump-Vance ticket leaned on in 2024: Biden.
“This is why I blame Joe Biden, because you cannot talk about the fraud problem in the United States of America without acknowledging that Joe Biden’s administration let in tens of millions of illegal aliens all over the United States of America, including the State of Maine,” Vance told attendees.
Trump administration officials told the Caller on Wednesday that Vance’s anti-fraud task force found almost $6.3 billion in government contracts being received by possibly fraudulent entities and have begun dispatching letters to almost 400 contracting business. The task force was created after Nick Shirley, an independent YouTuber, helped expose an alleged fraud scandal involving Somali-run daycare centers in Minnesota.