Vice President JD Vance would not share whether he had any concerns about waging war on Iran and instead claimed could go to prison for sharing his advice to the president publicly.
Vance, a longtime anti-interventionist before he became Donald Trump’s number two, has faced mounting scrutiny over his thoughts on “Operation Epic Fury.”
Vance headed to North Carolina for a rally on Friday, where he only briefly mentioned the U.S. striking Iran in his speech, but offered a cop-out when asked for his opinions during the Q&A at the end.
A reporter from the Associated Press asked the vice president what his advice was to the president as he considered taking action against Iran, and how he is advising him now as the economic impact of the war hits Americans back home.
“Do you express any concerns like those you’ve expressed in the past on the possibility of these extended wars?” reporter Bill Barrow asked.
“Imagine the situation. We’re in the situation room where you can’t even take your, you know, iPod in there or your AirPods, I guess what they’re called. You can’t take your iPhone in there. You can’t take anything in there because it’s the most classified space anywhere in the world, and I sit there with Pete Hegseth and General Caine and Marco Rubio and the entire White House team and the president and I and the entire senior team are talking about the options and about what we need to do and about how we must best protect the American people,” Vance rambled.
“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not going to show you here and in front of god and everybody else, tell you exactly what I said in that classified room, partly because I don’t want to go to prison and partly because I think it’s important for the President of the United States to be able to talk to his advisors without those advisors running their mouth to the American media,” Vance continued.
The vice president has been a vocal supporter of many of Trump’s policies since he took office and, in many cases, has been an extremely active keyboard warrior defending the president online.
But when it comes to the war in Iran, the vice president has noticeably been in the room but taken a backseat for the most part in making the case for war to the American public, apart from one primetime Fox News interview just days after the strikes began.
On Friday, Vance argued that Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were running the administration’s response to the economic impact “because we know obviously when the president takes actions to make sure the American people are safe, we’ve got to do everything that we can to deal with the consequences of that economically.”
His comments came as gas prices have skyrocketed since the war began. Oil also hit $100 a barrel this week.
“What the president has said very clearly is that he does not like oil prices—higher oil prices—and neither do I, but he also believes that we’re going to make the American people safer and that we’re going to bring those prices at the pump back down to the levels they need to be for the American people," the vice president said.
He did not say when or how the administration would bring down prices.
During his actual speech, which was largely a campaign rally address, Vance did not bring up the war in Iran until more than 20 minutes into it.
After urging the crowd to give a round of applause to those who have served in the military, he briefly addressed the conflict near the end of his remarks.
“You all know right now we are engaged in a military operation to ensure, as the president has said repeatedly, that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. That is a simple, simple principle and standard,” he said. “Every president said that they believed it. Donald J. Trump has taken affirmative steps to ensure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.”
As the vice president was in North Carolina on Friday, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal that the Pentagon was moving additional Marines and warships to the Middle East as the strikes on Iran and retaliation in the region continue.
