JD Vance Warns About ‘Fraud In The Federal Government’ & Everyone’s Saying The Same Thing

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What to Know

01 During a recent speech in Maine, Vice President JD Vance focused on fraud.
02 He said the Trump administration has been tackling fraud, which he largely blamed Democrats for.
03 One particular statement has gone viral online because Trump critics see it as a nugget of truth.

During a recent speech in Maine, Vice President JD Vance focused on fraud. He largely blamed Democrats for fraud and acted like “the government wasn’t going after fraud” before President Donald Trump was inaugurated. This statement isn’t factually correct, according to Politifact. While some people were certainly receptive to his message about Republicans tackling fraud, others were more critical because of how unaffordable life in the United States currently is.

Trump critics did find one nugget of truth in the speech though, and it has gone viral on social media.

Vance said there’s a lot of fraud in the federal government.

And, in response, Trump critics were like, Yeah, we know. But when talking about the amount of fraud in the government, Vance was not talking about the Trump administration. Instead, he was acting as if the Trump administration has been the first to address the issue.

“So, for once, for the first time in a very long time, you’ve got an administration in Washington DC that is fighting for you, fighting to protect your tax dollars, and fighting to put the fraudsters in prison, which is where they belong,” he said during his speech.

He said lots of people (including the president) have asked him, “Is going after fraud hard?”

According to him, he responds with, “Unfortunately, no” when people ask him this question. “Because there’s a lot of fraud in the federal government,” he said. “…It’s unbelievable how much you have been fleeced by your own government, over the past 15, 20, 30 years. Nobody was looking at this. Nobody was asking difficult questions, like, for example, ‘Are dead people getting food stamps?'”

But on social media, people were more focused on the part of his statement that made it sound like he “accidentally told the truth” again. (This has happened to Vance on multiple occasions. For example, he previously started a sentence by saying that gas prices are high due to “Trump’s work”).

Journalist Aaron Rupar shared a clip from Vance’s speech on X and captioned it with, “JD Vance: ‘There’s a lot of fraud in the federal government. It’s unbelievable how much you’ve been fleeced by your own government.'”

The internet had a lot to say about that line in particular.

When Trump administration officials complain about the federal government (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also seems to have a habit of venting about how you can’t trust the government while seemingly forgetting that he’s part of it), people often have the same reaction: you are the government.

So, although people knew that Vance was not talking about himself, they found it hard to take him seriously when Trump has now been president for more than a year.

Rep. Jim McGovern reposted the clip and captioned it with, “They’ve been running the federal government for 16 months. The fraud is them.” Another critic simply wrote, “You are literally the federal government,” while someone else captioned the clip with, “Republicans have total control of the federal government now btw…”

Of course, some of the critics also joked that Vance isn’t wrong. “Well, at least JD Vance accidentally got one thing right: Americans are absolutely getting fleeced by Trump and the administration,” a commenter wrote. And someone else joked, “He would be right. But he really should stop talking about trump this way????”

Another person jokingly said Vance should get a “Self-Aware Moment Award” for this one.

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Paige Sheffield (she/her)