Vice President JD Vance speaks to reporters on Air Force Two after departing Italy.
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00:00Hey guys, how are you? Good. So let me just say a couple words. First of all, we're thrilled to join the first papal mass with the first American Pope, Pope Leo XIV. He and I had a very good conversation with Secretary Rubio this morning. We talked about a number of diplomatic issues and I think the Vatican, in particular the Pope, is going to be a great advocate of world peace and obviously I serve a president, I think is a great advocate of world peace and so we're going to find some very important things to work together on. So I appreciate you guys coming. I hope you guys had fun.
00:30Have to take a few questions before we actually hit the road here.
00:33I have a question. So Trump is supposed to talk with President Zelensky today and I'm just curious, you know, where does the U.S. stand in terms of negotiation? Is the U.S. still open to walking away from negotiations? Are you guys committed to seeing it through?
00:45Yeah. Well, look, I'd say we're more than open to walking away. The president's supposed to talk to President Putin of Russia and President Zelensky as well and I'm sure he'll talk to a number of world leaders today because he always does that.
00:58But, you know, look, the president's been very clear. This is not, the United States is not going to spin its wheels here. We want to see outcomes.
01:04And the first major outcome that we wanted to see, which we were clad about, is that we wanted the Russians and the Ukrainians to put a real peace proposal on the table.
01:11What would you need to do in order to stop fighting? That happened.
01:14The second thing is they needed to agree to direct talks with one another. These sides hadn't talked in years. We thought that was a disgrace. That has now happened.
01:20But now, you know, the talks have been proceeding for a little while. We realize there's a bit of an impasse here.
01:25And I think the president's going to say to President Putin, look, are you serious? Are you real about this?
01:29Because the proposal from the United States has always been, look, there are a lot of economic benefits to thawing relations between Russia and the rest of the world.
01:38But you're not going to get those benefits. You can keep on killing a lot of innocent people.
01:41So if you're willing to stop the killing, the United States is willing to be a partner for peace.
01:46That's been the proposal to the Russians, to the Ukrainians, and, frankly, to nations and other hot spots around the world.
01:51I won't prejudge the president's conversation. I actually was just on the phone with him.
01:55I know he's looking forward to it, and I wish him all the best.
01:57I think he's the right guy to negotiate for the country, and I'm excited about it.
02:01Mr. Vice President, Axios is reporting that you decided against a trip, a visit to Israel after this trip because of the Israeli military's expansion of their operation in Gaza.
02:11Is that accurate, or is there a reason for not moving on to Israel?
02:15Well, I think there's a lot of overstatement there.
02:17I haven't seen the story, to be clear, so I don't want to speak to the details.
02:19But the simple reason is we thought about going to Israel.
02:22We also thought about going to a couple of other countries that the president would like me to visit here in the next few months.
02:29Logistically, it was just a little bit too hard on basic things like who the hell is going to take care of our kids if we take another couple of days overseas,
02:37but on some more serious things like how do we provide security, how do we make sure that we get all the assets that we need in order to do the right official delegation.
02:46So I'm sure we'll visit Israel sometime in the future, but not today.
02:50And just another question on Russia and Ukraine.
02:52From the administration's point of view, what seems to be the obstacle in trying to get this ceasefire deal?
02:58I don't know.
02:59It's a good question.
03:00But there are so many different things that are obstacles that it's hard to pinpoint one in particular.
03:06Look, I think one open question is, is Vladimir Putin serious about negotiating peace, right?
03:12He has made some concessions.
03:14He has taken some serious steps in these conversations.
03:17But we feel like, you know, we're at a point where we're hitting an impasse, and that's why the president is talking to him on the phone.
03:23I think, honestly, that President Putin, he doesn't quite know how to get out of the war.
03:27If you think about this, he's got a million men under arms.
03:30He's reengineered his entire economy, what used to be manufacturing facilities, making, you know, products for people to use in their civilian life.
03:37They're now making tank shells and artillery shells and drones.
03:41And so this is a little bit of a guess, but I think the president would agree that part of this is I'm not sure that Vladimir Putin has a strategy himself for how to unwind the war, of course, that's been going on for a few years now.
03:52And I think there's also just a little bit of, look, there's fundamental mistrust between Russia and the West.
04:01It's one of the things the president thinks is frankly stupid, that we should be able to move beyond the mistakes that have been made in the past.
04:08But that takes two to tango.
04:10I know the president's willing to do that, but if Russia's not willing to do that, then we're eventually just going to have to say, this is not our war.
04:16It's Joe Biden's war.
04:17It's Vladimir Putin's war.
04:19It's not our war.
04:20We're going to try to end it, but if we can't end it, we're eventually going to say, you know what, that was worth a try, but we're not doing it anymore.
04:25Last question.
04:26Oh, no, you go.
04:27Speaking of Joe Biden, sir, do you have any thoughts on his diagnosis?
04:32Yeah, look, I mean, first of all, of course, we wish the best for the former president's health.
04:38And, you know, it sounds pretty serious, but hopefully he makes the right recovery.
04:42Look, I will say, whether the right time to have this conversation is now or at some point in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job.
04:53And that's that's no, you know, that you can separate the desire for him to have the right health outcome with a recognition that whether it was doctors or whether there were staffers around the former president, I don't think he was able to do a good job for the American people.
05:10And that's not politics.
05:12That's not because I disagreed with him on policy.
05:14That's because I don't think that he was in good enough health.
05:16In some ways, I blame him less than I blame the people around him.
05:19And why did the American people have a better sense of his health picture?
05:23Why didn't the American people have more accurate information about what he was actually dealing with?
05:27This is serious stuff.
05:29And this is a guy who carries around the nuclear football for the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
05:33This is not child's play.
05:35And we can pray for good health, but also recognize that if you're not in good enough health to do the job, you shouldn't be doing the job.
05:42OK, thank you guys.
05:43Have a safe trip.
05:44See you.
05:44You too.