CNN panelists praised Vice President JD Vance’s recent media appearances and complimented his performance on “The View,” saying his glow-up was “impressive.”
Contributor Lulu Garcia-Navarro opened the discussion of Vance’s media blitz during CNN’s “The Arena Saturday” by pointing to the vice president’s appearance as he promoted his new book and defended the Trump administration’s Iran agreement.
“Can I just say, as an aside, the glow up of JD Vance for this is pretty impressive. The tan, the trimness, the sharp suits. I just want to note, you know, he is presenting himself in a very glowed-up fashion,” Garcia-Navarro said.
Former Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said Vance displayed stamina during a week of high-profile media appearances.
“Also like a beast of a week. I mean, he’s performed really well with tough interviews over and over and over again. I mean, just to watch that piece of it is an amazing piece of endurance,” McHenry said.
Garcia-Navarro, who has interviewed Vance, said the vice president’s effectiveness on television was familiar.
“He’s great in interviews. I’ve interviewed him, and he is great in interviews. He is an able communicator. He communicates on many levels. That is one of his strong suits,” she said.
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Jamal Simmons, former communications director for former Vice President Kamala Harris, said Vance deserved credit for appearing on ABC’s “The View,” where he faced tough questioning.
“I give him credit for going on ‘The View,'” Simmons said. “This is foreign territory for him. And I don’t know that I would have advised that of most leaders, to go into what’s probably going to be a hostile environment.”
The panel then watched a clip from “The View,” where co-host Ana Navarro challenged Vance over Trump’s remark that he loved “the inflation.”
Vance said Trump meant he loved that inflation would fall when the war ended.
“What he said, Ana, what he said is that he loves the fact that the inflation is going to come down when this war is over. That’s what he said,” Vance said.
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Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, broke from the CNN panel and accused Vance of relying on misleading arguments while defending President Donald Trump‘s agenda.
After host Pamela Brown asked whether Vance had successfully defended Trump, Goldberg rejected the praise.
“I’m going to dissent from all of you guys, from this JD Vance admiration society,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg argued Vance’s exchanges showed a broader flaw in his political style, saying the vice president was most effective when reframing his opponents’ positions.
“That clip, dozens of other clips, demonstrate one of the biggest problems with JD Vance is that he’s always good at winning an argument when he is fighting a straw man, when he’s lying about the facts, when he is creating, when he’s working on a false premise,” Goldberg said.
Vance appeared on “The View” Tuesday while promoting his new memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” released on June 16. The appearance came during a media-heavy week in which Vance also defended Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran.
