When something is unpopular, Donald Trump has a habit of throwing his vice president in front of the cameras to take the bullet.
A day after the Trump DOJ announced a slush fund to pay off the president’s supporters who engaged in or were investigated for criminal activity, Vice President JD Vance stood at the podium in the Brady Briefing Room and faced questions from reporters about Trump’s taxpayer-funded slush fund.
Vance was asked:
Going back to the price tag for this DOJ fund, $1.8 billion. You have people that can’t afford groceries. Gas is high. People are making sacrifices in their personal lives to accommodate for this rise in prices. People are telling us that they feel financially worse off. They’re very concerned about the uncertainty. How can you justify that amount of taxpayer money for that fund when people are struggling? What do you say to Americans who wonder why this fund is getting all this money, and I can’t afford basic life amenities?
To put it mildly, Vance’s answer was lacking in everything, including humanity and warmth.
The vice president said:
Well, let me say a couple things about that. First of all, you said $1.8 billion, and it’s important for people to realize we’re not just writing a $1.8 billion check. We’re gonna take a lot of people who are gonna apply and say that they have been mistreated by their government.
We’re gonna handle those situations case by case, and if we determine they were in fact mistreated by their government, we think it’s reasonable to give them just compensation.
Vance went on to claim that an administration which is being led by a man who continually falls asleep in public is capable of doing multiple things at once, especially if one of those things is massive corruption.