Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt unloaded on Vice President JD Vance in a YouTube video published this week, zeroing in on Vance's interview on "The View" and pinpointing a key moment when one co-host tore a hole in his lies.
"Here's Vance explaining that you don't understand the Epstein files," said Schmidt. In Vance's reckoning, he said, "it was Donald, like a latter-day Magnum P.I. dropping the dime, narcing on [Epstein], as JD Vance says, communicating to the police the crimes of Epstein. You see, it was Trump that brought Epstein to justice like the Lone Ranger."
However, Schmidt continued, "Ana Navarro was having none of it" — and he played a clip of Vance getting smacked down.
"What I disagree with is the idea that the White House wasn't committed to full transparency," said Vance. "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, the emails ... you know, one of the things you see in the Epstein emails is that Jeffrey Epstein hated Donald Trump and that Donald Trump literally reported Jeffrey Epstein to the police. That's one of the things that came out."
Navarro then cut in. "They were best friends for about a decade," she said. "And remember, he signed that Transparency Act under duress when some Republican women, Congresswomen like Lauren Boebert, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, did not give in to his pressure of not signing. He brought Lauren Boebert into the Situation Room to pressure her into caving on not voting for that bill."
That was one of the biggest moments of humiliation for Vance, Schmidt said, but far from the only one: "it went on and on and the lying never stops."
Ultimately, he concluded, "J.D. Vance is strange and corrupt" and trying to position himself to take over an America that has "lost a war" and is flooded with "masked agents" because of his boss. "Let's be clear ... things in America are not okay. Rather, they seem to be falling apart. Defiance is the cure to all of this. We must never get in line with this insanity. Not for an hour, not for a day."