WASHINGTON — President Trump on Thursday directed Vice President JD Vance to devote his “complete and total attention” to what the president called “Massive Corruption and Crime” in Democratic-led cities and states, and said the United States no longer needs a negotiated agreement with Iran.
“We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social, according to NBC News, referring to the Strait of Hormuz.
In the same post, the president made his case for the shift in priorities. “The Blue States, such as Minnesota, California, Illinois, and many more, are all poorly run, corrupt disasters. Billions of Dollars is being stolen each and every month,” he wrote, as quoted by Politico. “Our Budget could be quickly BALANCED with the correction of this large scale criminal activity,” he added, The Hill reported.
Mr. Vance chairs the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which Mr. Trump created by executive order in March. The administration says the effort has turned up more than $200 billion in fraud, according to The Hill, and in an October release the White House described Mr. Vance as leading a “nationwide coalition” against fraud. In that White House release, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling cited “$22 BILLION in labor fraud already uncovered,” and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said his department had returned $175 million in payments that would have gone to deceased people.
A change in role on Iran
Mr. Vance has been a central figure in diplomacy with Tehran during the eight-month war. He led U.S. delegations in talks after the conflict began, Axios reported, and The Wall Street Journal reported this week that he had weighed face-to-face talks with Mohsen Rezaei, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, according to NBC News.
The New York Post, citing unnamed sources, reported that Mr. Vance is not entirely off the Iran portfolio and would likely return to a negotiating role if stalled talks make progress, and that the vice president joined an Oval Office meeting on the war Thursday morning after the president’s post, the Post reported. The Washington Inquisitor has not independently confirmed that account.
The post follows reporting from the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Paris, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio told counterparts the president had decided against resuming major military action or pursuing a deal for now, choosing instead to keep pressure on Tehran, according to The Independent, citing Axios.
Mr. Vance, widely seen as a potential 2028 Republican presidential candidate, wrote on X after last week’s elections that “[t]he reason we lost is the war,” Axios reported. Mr. Trump has said the military campaign was necessary.
Markets and the rest of the president’s agenda
Oil prices rose and stocks fell after the post, which Axios said “reinjected a note of uncertainty” into markets that had been trading as if the war were nearly over.
The president also used Truth Social on Thursday to press other priorities. He called on Senate Republicans to pass $350 billion in defense funding before Democrats take control of Congress in January. “Our Military must be strong, powerful, and respected,” he wrote. “Republicans must deliver for our Warriors. The Democrats never will. The time is NOW,” Politico reported.
He also warned that tariffs on Mexico would be “IMMEDIATELY DOUBLED” if Mexico does not stop migrant caravans heading north. “MEXICO MUST STOP THEM, NOW,” he wrote, in a post the White House republished in a release Thursday that also quoted border czar Tom Homan: “These caravans [can] come to the border all they want. They’re not going to be released into the United States.”
What critics say
Critics of the administration’s focus on Democratic-led jurisdictions say crime statistics have not consistently supported the president’s descriptions of those places, Axios and The Independent noted in their coverage. Supporters of the task force point to the dozens of Cabinet members, governors, attorneys general and members of Congress who signed Mr. Vance’s anti-fraud pledge in October, as listed in the White House release.
Leave a Reply