JD Vance 'implicitly throwing Trump under the bus' with latest 'blunder': analyst
Vice President JD Vance may not be doing the president any favors in his attempts to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein story, according to one analyst.
Bill Kristol, executive editor of The Bulwark, said on a recent episode of The Bulwark Podcast that Vance appears to be "implicitly" knifing Trump with silence. Kristol was referring to comments Vance made during an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on her Sunday morning show, "Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo."
During the interview, Vance attempted to argue that Democrats bear responsibility for the Epstein files still not being released. To Kristol, the comments seemed like a "blunder."
"Vance is happy to be implicitly throwing Trump under the bus," Kristol said.
"And strikingly, he doesn't defend Trump. He doesn't say, 'I know this man and he did nothing wrong,' or anything like that," Kristol continued. "There's zero defense of Trump. There's just this analysis that Biden should have done more."
Kristol's comments come at a time when the Trump administration is seeking to move on from the Epstein files story, which has seemingly fractured the MAGA base.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump and his surrogates promised voters that they would release the files once they were in office. However, they have since walked back that promise and attempted to blame Democrats for not releasing the files before Trump was in office.
It's been reported that Trump knew in May that he appeared in the Epstein files, and that his Justice Department assigned hundreds of FBI agents have been assigned to comb through the files and redact those mentions.