JD Vance Veep-splains to CNN reporter Trump’s ‘I don’t care’ about Americans’ finances comment in wild WH briefing

Days after President Donald Trump doubled down on his claim not to be concerned about Americans’ financial well-being relative to the Iran war, Vice President JD Vance tried to suggest that Trump had never said anything of the sort in a terse exchange with CNN’s chief White House correspondent on Tuesday.

Vance was at the White House briefing room lectern as part of a rotating cast of top administration officials filling in for Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt while she is on maternity leave, when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed him on his previous denial that Trump had uttered the words “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” — despite that utterance to reporters having been nationally broadcast.

He had claimed in an exchange with NBC News last week that he did not “think the president said that” and suggested Trump’s words were “mischaracterized,” but Trump actually defended the comment the next day, telling Fox News that he’d made a “perfect statement.”

Asked by Collins whether Trump should be considering Americans’ financial conditions when making decisions about the war, Vance accused her of doubly misrepresenting both what he’d been asked last week and what Trump had been asked in the first place as he lectured her in response.

“Kaitlan, what you did is you misrepresented the question that I was asked and then you misrepresented the answer that I gave. What I said is that a question that was asked where the president allegedly, he allegedly said that he didn’t care about Americans’ financial situations, he never said that,” Vance insisted, seemingly ignoring the fact that Trump had, in fact, said it to a group of reporters, broadcast across cable news networks, as he departed the White House for last week’s trip to China.

Vance on Tuesday continued: “What he said — it was totally taken out of context. What he said is that when he is negotiating with the Iranians, he’s focused on the national security objectives that he’s trying to achieve.”

Vance added that Trump “has a mandate to be focused on a number of things” and said Trump is “worried about his fellow Americans” on “every single day.”

“He wants them to be prosperous. He wants them to thrive. He wants them to have good jobs. That’s why we’ve done the things and taken the steps that we’ve taken in order to create record job growth, in order to create record record wage growth, in order to induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country. That’s because he cares about that stuff,” he said.

Trump’s controversial remarks came on the same day the Labor Department released inflation data showing the Consumer Price Indexspiking 3.8 percent from the same point last year, including a .06 percent jump last month in the CPI. Gasoline prices, meanwhile, surged by a whopping 5.4 percent last month alone as the ongoing standoff between the U.S. and Iran has blocked the waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil supply transits each year.

A poll release last week by CNN and SSRS shows Americans overwhelmingly blame the president for the record-high gas prices and the rising mortgage rates and food costs that have followed.

Some 77 percent of respondents said Trump’s policies have driven the cost of living up, with most people blaming his decision to go to war with Iran and the implementation of tariffs as the driving factors.

As of May 12, AAA determined the nationwide average cost of a gallon of regular fuel was $4.50 – up from $3.13 one year ago. The Consumer Price Index, which acts as a key measure of inflation, found that consumer prices continued to increase in April – up 3.8 percent from last year.

General morale around the president’s handling of the economy is at an all-time low, according to the CNN/SSRS poll, with roughly 70 percent of respondents saying they disapprove of the economy under the president.