Bret Baier Confronts JD Vance on Poor Economic Data: ‘The Economy Shrank’
Vice President JD Vance deflected when Fox News’s Bret Baier pointed out the economy contracted during the first quarter of the Trump administration.
Vance sat for an interview with the Special Report host at a steel plant in South Carolina on Thursday. Shortly before, the vice president toured the facility. The visit came a day after it was revealed that the U.S. economy shrank by 0.3%, which was markedly worse than the 0.4% that economists expected it to grow by. President Donald Trump responded by insisting his predecessor was actually to blame for the bad data, even though Trump’s tariffs have fostered an atmosphere of economic volatility.
“First, I didn’t really appreciate how high-tech this steel-making facility was,” Vance said before reiterating Trump’s stated aim of bringing jobs back to the U.S. via tariffs. “There’s a lot of criticism that Donald Trump is trying to bring back the jobs of the past. These are the jobs of the future, making American steel, building bridges, and automobiles, homes for American people.”
The vice president noted that Trump has spoken about trade and tariffs for decades and concluded, “The president thinks that we have to make more of our own stuff.”
Baier replied by getting Vance’s reaction to the bad economic data.
“The economy shrank – first time in three years,” Baier said. “People are pointing to the tariff policy. There are people looking at their 401(k)s that are worried. What do you tell them? Is this going to work?”
“So the first thing is, when you talk about the economy, this is Joe Biden’s economy,” Vance said, echoing Trump. “And we inherited $2 trillion of debt, the highest peacetime deficits in American history. A $1.2 trillion trade deficit, which fundamentally means we’re not making enough of our own stuff. And that the president came in and he said, ‘This is not always gonna be easy.’ It would’ve been very easy for Donald Trump to do what administrations in the past have done, which is borrow a lot of money and continue fueling the national debt. He said, ‘No. We need a reset. We need American workers to have better jobs.'”
While touring the steel plant earlier, Vance briefly confused some reporters with steelworkers.
“Oh, you guys are just reporters you got all the shit on,” he said. “I couldn’t tell.”
Watch above via Fox News.
