Fame
I Have Exactly One Good Thing to Say About J.D. Vance’s Chaotic Appearance on The View
In the midst of an FCC investigation into the ABC show, Vance decided to pop on to promote his new book.
By
Heather Schwedel
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June 16, 2026 6:12 PM
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J.D. Vance’s visit to The View on Tuesday made for one of the most incoherent hours of television I’ve ever watched, which is saying something for a show that’s known for its chaos and political disagreements. But where the show usually devolves into bedlam over the course of a segment, Vance’s episode started from a place of chaos and never really settled down.
The vice president was there to promote his new and incomprehensibly boring-sounding memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith . Unofficially, the memoir and the appearance itself are likely part of a larger strategy of setting himself as a candidate in the 2028 presidential race. This was one of many unspoken elements of Vance’s appearance. Another elephant in the room, of course, was that the Trump administration is currently at war with The View . The Federal Communications Commission has spent several months investigating the show, an action that the show’s network, ABC, has publicly called retaliatory and unconstitutional. The co-hosts of The View have largely let this fight play out behind the scenes, but they haven’t gone easy on the Trump administration while it happens, and they didn’t start today.
Though Vance came prepared to be, to the extent he can be, warm and likeable, the co-hosts launched into hard-hitting questions pretty much right away. The View has six co-hosts, and traditionally they’ve represented a range of political orientations. At least four of the six on Tuesday’s show seemed openly hostile to Vance. Judging by her face, Ana Navarro, a vocally anti-Trump Republican, often seemed outright pissed to be sitting next to him. Also not letting him off easy were Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Sunny Hostin.
Vance’s main ally was Alyssa Farah Griffin, who worked in the first Trump administration and at the end of the show presented him, rather abruptly because she had to break into a contentious exchange to do so, with a onesie for the new baby he and his wife are expecting . It was one of the rare welcoming moments for Vance, who otherwise didn’t get much of the easy daytime reception complete with softball questions about his new book and his wife and family that he must have been hoping for. Instead, the co-hosts peppered him with questions about the Trump administration and tried to hold him accountable for both his own and his boss’s words.
Behar referred to Trump’s project to build a ballroom at the White House and the UFC event there , wondering why the president is seemingly focusing on everything but affordability. When Vance attempted to justify Trump’s actions, Behar quipped, “Are you his interpreter or his vice president?” The discussion moved on to Jeffrey Epstein—Vance defended Trump, claiming the president was one of the first to “narc” on Epstein—and eventually landed on immigration, with Navarro urging Vance as a Christian to visit a detention center to witness the “subhuman” conditions for prisoners at them. When Goldberg asked a question referring to Black people’s place in the country, Vance started to answer by saying, “You say we are anti-minority,” but Goldberg cut in. “I didn’t say that … Don’t start anything with me,” she said, as the audience applauded.
While it was good that the ladies didn’t go easy on him, headlines that claim he got “ torn to shreds by middle-aged women ” are somewhat overstated. It was a confusing hour. They jumped from topic to topic. All he really did was deflect. They would all talk over each other for a while, and then it would be time to go to commercial, and this repeated until it was time to end the show. Everyone seemed heated, but did we really learn anything? I maintain that it was an extremely disjointed episode. The best thing I can say about it is that I’d rather watch it again than be forced to spend even a minute attempting to read Communion.
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