Vice President JD Vance piled on a White House reporter a day after President Donald Trump tore into him in the Oval Office. The reporter answered with a challenge.
The official @VP account on X posted a clip of Monday’s confrontation between Trump and Andrew Feinberg, White House correspondent for The Independent.
“President Donald J. Trump eviscerates imbecile ‘journalist’ Andrew Feinberg for misbehaving in the Oval Office,” the post said. It quoted Trump: “What’s wrong with you? Are you a sick person? I actually think there’s something wrong with you.”
The post named Feinberg but didn’t tag his account. He noticed.
“Mr. Vice President, if you’re going to insult me at least have the guts to tag my account,” Feinberg wrote.
His reply drew more than 39,000 likes within hours.
The fight began Monday when Trump and Vance unveiled a new fraud tip line that offers whistleblowers up to $30,000, or 1% of recovered funds. Feinberg asked why anyone would use it when the Civil War-era False Claims Act already lets whistleblowers collect as much as 25% of what the government recovers.
Vance called the question “dishonest.” Trump then asked Feinberg “Who are you?” and warned him, “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you better be careful.”
Feinberg later pointed out that he’d introduced himself to Trump minutes earlier. The two have crossed paths many times over the past decade.
In a first-person piece for The Independent on Tuesday, Feinberg answered the “sick person” jab directly.
“For the record, I had an annual physical earlier this month, and I can report I’m in perfect health,” he wrote in it. “I was doing my job, and I’ll be right back at it tomorrow.”