Transcript: Trumpworld Shivs JD Vance as Leaks Discredit Iran Deal

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 17 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.JD Vance is having a moment. He’s selling his new book and he just appeared on The View, where the hosts worked him over pretty hard. In a telling exchange, Vance found himself defending Trump in the context of the Iran war in a way that will come back to bite him later. Indeed, there are several other signs that Trump world is setting up Vance to take the eventual fall on Iran in a number of different ways. New leaks from inside the administration are making Trump’s Iran deal look even worse, and they’re also shedding light on what this shivving of Vance really entails.We’re talking about it all with one of the best observers out there of the intersection between politics and culture, New Republic contributing editor Virginia Heffernan. Hey, Virginia, always nice to have you on.Virginia Heffernan: Hey, Greg, same here. I like being on the show.Sargent: Well, we like that. So let’s start with JD Vance’s appearance on The View. He took a hammering on a number of fronts. I want to highlight one exchange, though. They’re talking about inflation. JD says, we’re doing all we can. Then one of the hosts points out that Trump recently said, I love the inflation. Listen to this.JD Vance (voiceover): We’re doing a lot to make it better. It’s going to take a little bit of time. There’s a lot more work to do. But the president knows that a lot of Americans are struggling. In fact, he ran on that, he talked about it, and we’ve done some things and made some good progress on that point.Host (voiceover): He just said he loves the inflation.Vance (voiceover): What he said, Anna, what he said is that he loves the fact that the inflation is going to come down when this war is over. That’s what he said.Joy Behar (voiceover): Are you his—wait, are you his interpreter or are you his vice president?Vance (voiceover): Well, look, look—what the president said, people were asking about the inflation, they were asking about the affordability problem, which again is very real. And what he said is, I love the inflation because it’s going to come down when the war is over.Sargent: So Joy Behar got a good dig in there saying that Vance is just functioning basically as Trump’s propagandist and not leveling with people, although she said it in a way that kind of kept it light. Virginia, what did you make of the exchange?Heffernan: Well, I mean, I think—I don’t know, do people still say mogged? I do think that JD Vance got mogged by the women of The View. They were all on top of him. I know he had said on Fox News the day before, or maybe earlier this morning, that he was trying to prepare for a civil conversation, but he knew he was going into the lion’s den.The inflation question is going to be really interesting to View viewers, right? JD Vance has this book come out about his Christian faith, about his Catholic faith, and he really wants everyone to focus on his religious journey because he believes that he can bond with the suburban women who sometimes lean Republican, especially on issues like crime, and he might get to them by The View, right? So he wasn’t going into the lion’s den for no reason. He was going into it to promote a book. And indeed they gave the QR code so you could buy the book at the end. They did their part. And they gave him a onesie for his forthcoming newborn that says The View on it. But—Sargent: Yeah, I have to ask—do you think that JD Vance and Usha are going to put that onesie on their baby?Heffernan: I was wondering about that. I thought, maybe that’s just another mogg moment. Like, we’ll brand your baby with The View. I mean, we don’t want to get too symbolic about it, but there was a lot going on and it’s a lot to watch.And Whoopi and some of the other hosts of color were especially incensed and didn’t give any ground. And there was something satisfying about seeing that because we’ve seen Trump attack so many women over and over again in interviews, walk out of interviews, call women nasty, call them piggy, call them whatever. And so just saying, we’re not really going to entertain the idea that there’s a kumbaya here with you, and making it very clear with their expressions that they weren’t going to entertain it.Sargent: JD was really on his best behavior, though. We should point that out. Now, what do you think of the inflation exchange? Because I want to clarify for people that the inflation exchange is really about inflation from the war. That’s what Trump was talking about when he said, I love the inflation. And it kind of maneuvered Vance into a position where he was essentially forced to defend what Trump said there.