Vice President JD Vance argued Thursday that the decision to attack the Houthis in Yemen, despite his apparent skepticism of the plan in leaked Signal chats, doesn’t mean he was “overruled” by others in the Trump administration.
“If you go back to when those messages were leaked, what we were doing is having a private strategic conversation about how to message this to the American people,” Vance told Fox News “Special Report” host Bret Baier in his most extensive remarks on the scandal from mid-March.
“It’s always important to explain what you’re actually doing, how to ensure that some of, frankly, our allied countries that are underspending on their own defense are actually carrying some of the burden,” the vice president continued.
“That was a concern that I raised about this particular operation, but I wasn’t overruled.”
In the messages published in March by Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg — who was inadvertently included in the chat group — Vance expressed to his colleagues, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Mike Waltz, that he thought the administration was “making a mistake” with the strikes.
“[Three] percent of US trade runs through the [Suez Canal]. 40 percent of European trade does,” wrote Vance.
“There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary. The strongest reason to do this is, as POTUS said, to send a message.”
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” the vice president went on.
“There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”
Vance then seemingly backed down, after Waltz and Hegseth argued in favor of quickly launching strikes.
“If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance told Hegseth.
Baier noted that messages show Hegseth and Waltz “won the day as far as the policy,” but the veep disagreed with that characterization.
“No, I think the president had made his desires clear,” Vance argued.
“And our job is to implement it. And of course, part of implementing it is you talk about how best to do that, about when to actually launch a strike and so forth, and that’s what the signal chat revealed.”
Vance felt the leaked internal deliberations made him and his colleagues look good.
“Frankly, you know, I thought it reflected well on me,” he told Baier.
“I’m obviously biased about myself, but also Mike Waltz, Pete Hegseth, that we were deliberating how to implement the president’s agenda.”
“I think that’s what a good national security team should do.”
