‘The View’ Hosts Grill JD Vance on Trump, Epstein & More

Amanda BellTue, June 16, 2026 at 3:46 PM UTC

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JD Vance on Ana Navarro - ABC

JD Vance, vice president of Donald Trump's second presidential term, appeared on Tuesday's (June 16) live episode of The View, and all six cohosts were on hand to grill the VP about a range of current events.

Among the major topics discussed were Trump's statements on the affordability crisis, the Iran War, and the Jeffrey Epstein files. The latter topic in particular earned a great deal of crosstalk and pushback from the hosts.

When asked about reporting that he was pushing for the release of the files in the Situation Room, with Sunny Hostin praising him for doing so, Vance said, "I'd say first of all, don't believe everything that you read in any newspaper, whether it's a right-wing paper or a left-wing paper, because, as you guys know, well, there are things that are true, things that are false, and things that are totally missing context. Well, here's what I'll say. So, number one, I am frankly kind of a conspiracy theory on the Epstein stuff… I love Suzie [Wiles, chief of staff], but absolutely, she thinks I'm a conspiracy theorist on the Epstein stuff, because I think that it's crazy that you had this guy, a sex predator, who was hanging out with a lot of very wealthy and powerful people, that really bothered me. I don't know what's there, of course, nobody knows exactly what happened unless you were there, but that really bothered me, and I wanted to have full transparency. What I disagree with is the idea that the White House wasn't committed to full transparency. We have to remember,  I was inside the room when some of these decisions were made. The Epstein Files Transparency Act, the one that the president signed, the one that led to all these files that we're seeing."

He also argued that the emails released in the files proved Epstein "hated" Trump and Trump turned him over to authorities.

Ana Navarro then argued that the only reason Trump signed that bill into effect was that he was unable to pressure key Republican representatives, including Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, into dropping their support for it. She also contended that the real reason for the Epstein-Trump fall-out after a decade of friendship was a real estate dispute.

"The idea that Donald Trump runs around afraid of Republican congressmen, as opposed to the other way around, is kind of crazy,  because the Republicans control the House and the Senate, particularly the Senate, you need the Republican sign-off," Vance said. "What the president did is look, I will say this again. I was in there in the meetings, he was very frustrated that the Democrats were making this about him. When he's like, 'Look, I threw the guy out of my club, I am the guy who reported to the police, or one of the people who reported police.' The president was frustrated about that, absolutely. But eventually, 'You know what? Let's just get everything out there. Let's have this out in the public.' And he actually called the senators. I was there. He called the senators and said, 'You know what? Pass this bill, I'll sign it.'"

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Hostin then challenged him to explain why no one mentioned in the files has been arrested and why a reported 2.5 million files have yet to be released.

"So, we have released, I think it's 6 million files or 6 million pages of documents. My understanding is that 2.5 million, Sunny, I'm going to check on this to make sure, but my understanding is that a lot of those are duplicates of things that have already been released. We're not holding, we're not holding anything back. Some of those things are like the courts have to order you to release it. So, that was one thing that we confronted. Talk about the situation for meetings, is there's a big bunch of files that exist, I think, in the Southern District of New York, or maybe it was some other jurisdiction, but we were like, we want to release these files, but you need the court approval in order to release the files. Sometimes we would apply to release the files, and the courts would say no. So, those particular documents, I would need to actually know exactly what you're talking about," Vance responded.

Vance was also challenged about his change of attitude about Trump, whom he was critical of ahead of his first term, and Vance explained, "Well, first of all, it's been well covered that I was a critic of Donald Trump back in 2015, 2016. Now, obviously, I'm sitting here as the vice president of the United States in the Trump administration… For example, I said that Donald Trump's economic policies would not lead to wage growth. They did in the first term, that was actually a major, major thing. I said that we couldn't bring back any of those factory jobs, because I'd kind of given into this idea that those jobs were disappearing, but actually, Donald Trump, you saw our manufacturing boom during that administration. There's a certain point where you say, 'You know, I make predictions about this, I end up being wrong,' and in politics, and anything, I think it's important to say, 'You know what? I got some things wrong, and I was wrong about him.' He was a very successful presence, one of the reasons why I've been so supportive."

Sara Haines also asked how, with his faith that is so championed in his new memoir, he can support some of the things Trump says. And in response, Vance said, "I would say fundamentally that one of the things I underappreciated about Donald Trump is that so many of the things that people said about him weren't actually true."

The View, Weekdays, 11a/10c, ABC

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