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Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday responded to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles calling him a “conspiracy theorist” in an explosive new Vanity Fair story.
The political world was rocked by Wiles’s explosive tell-all with the outlet. In it, she referred to Office of Budget and Management Director Russell Vought as a “right-wing absolute zealot,” claimed that President Donald Trump had “an alcoholic’s personality,” and even denied Trump’s previous claims that former President Bill Clinton visited Jeffrey Epstein’s private island.
Wiles also called Vance’s support for Trump “sort of political,” and added that the vice president had been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”
Hours after the story went live, Vance was at an event in Pennsylvania to speak about the economy. When it was opened up to questions, Vance was asked for his thoughts on Wiles’s characterization of him. The vice president said:
I haven’t looked at the article. I, of course, have heard about it. But, conspiracy theorist — sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true. And, by the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time.
For example, I believed in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask 3-year-olds at the height of the Covid pandemic, that we should actually let them develop some language skills. You know, I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job. And I believed in the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was trying to throw his political opponents in jail rather than win an argument against his political opponents.
So, at least on some of these conspiracy theories, it turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it, and that’s my understanding.
Although Vance downplayed the article, he later suggested the White House will make themselves less accessible to mainstream media outlets because of it.
“And the last thing I’ll say is if any of us have learned a lesson from that Vanity Fair article,” Vance continued, “I hope that the lesson is we should be giving fewer interviews mainstream media outlets.”
He also reaffirmed his support for Wiles, stating that he had never seen her be disloyal to the president.
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