Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Wednesday brushed aside President Donald Trump‘s declaration that the “financial situation” of Americans was not a motivation for ending the Iran war.
Both the vice president and House speaker faced questions about the president’s comment during two separate press events.
“I don’t know the context in which he made that comment, but I can tell you the president thinks about American financial situations,” Johnson told reporters during his Wednesday press conference on Capitol Hill. “I talk to him, on average, twice a day, sometimes three or four times a day, and we talk about it constantly.”
Johnson added that Trump is “laser focused” on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which he claimed “will alleviate a lot of pressure with gas prices and other things in the economy.”
Vance was also forced to clarify Trump’s comments during his own Wednesday press conference, suggesting that the viral clip in question was a “misrepresentation of what the president said.”
“Of course, the president, and I, and the entire team — we care about the American people’s financial situations,” he countered. “It’s one of the reasons why we passed the Working Families Tax Cut[s]. It’s one of the reasons why we’re so focused on fraud. We care about how the American people are doing, economically.”
Trump made the controversial remark before departing the White House for a bilateral summit in China when asked to what degree he thinks about Americans’ “financial situation” as he seeks an end to the war.
“Not even a little bit,” the president responded, claiming that the only issue coloring his thinking is Iran’s nuclear program. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
Democrats were quick to pounce on the comments in an effort to paint Republicans as out of touch on the issue of affordability.
The vice president was asked about the politics at the White House on Wednesday. Vance said that the administration knows “that we have a lot of work to do in order to deliver on the prosperity that the American people deserve.”
VANCE PUSHES STATES TO ROOT OUT MEDICAID FRAUD OR RISK LOSING FEDERAL FUNDING
“The president is hyperaware of this. I’m hyperaware of this. We talk about it all the time,” he continued, pushing the blame back onto the previous administration. “We know that the American people inherited a very bad inflation crisis.”
“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance concluded. “But take it back to the May of 2023 in the Biden administration or take it back to even further. We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration, and that’s a problem in and of itself.”