VP Vance Talks Redistricting and Trumps Pursuit

When then-candidate Donald Trump announced that he had chosen then-Ohio Senator JD Vance as his operating mate just a little over a 12 months in the past, I wasn’t immediately offered. I preferred Vance high quality; I just hadn’t seen enough of him at that level to really feel assured he had the chops to fill that position. 

He’s since confirmed — to me, at least — that he does. He’s repeatedly demonstrated a firm grasp on the problems and presents as an efficient spokesman for the administration. (And, as Andrew Malcolm rightly notes in his Sunday column, is proving to be a stable fundraiser for the GOP as nicely.)

READ MORE: Trump’s Plan to Set Up Even More GOP Winning

Vance sat down with Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” and spoke on a big selection of points. In this first clip, he addressed redistricting and then some of President Trump’s international coverage goals. 

Watch Part 1 of @MariaBartiromo‘s exclusive interview with @VP @JDVance on @SundayFutures discussing the wars in Ukraine & Israel, and the future of redistricting@FoxNews pic.twitter.com/8HUL7DO7z1

— SundayMorningFutures (@SundayFutures) August 10, 2025

In the first portion of that clip, Vance describes what the administration is doing to work with Indiana (and other purple states) on the redistricting issue, and lays out in very stark phrases why this is critical, given the machinations of the Democrats in latest a long time: 

“We spoke with the governor, with the speaker of the House there in Indiana, and the Senate president, and the message I delivered is pretty straightforward: We want a unified Republican team; we want to fight together, win together, make big things happen for the American people —  and obviously people the state of Indiana — together. But one of the things that you see in a lot of red states is — blue states have really aggressively gerrymandered, such that they’ve actually made it harder for the majority of the state of Indiana to have their voice heard in their federal elections. Because if California has crazy gerrymanders, Illinois has crazy gerrymanders, New York has crazy gerrymanders, what it does is it actually suppresses the will of the people in states like Indiana. 

“And the other factor that we talked about — and I didn’t understand this, Maria, until a couple of years in the past — that for apportioning representatives, you truly depend unlawful aliens. So even though unlawful aliens, theoretically, usually are not supposed to vote — we all know sometimes they do — you still depend unlawful aliens for congressional apportionment. So California has method more House seats than it ought to because they’ve such a high population of unlawful aliens — so they get rewarded for welcoming unlawful aliens in their state, giving them federal advantages, truly asking the taxpayers states like Ohio to subsidize them, and then those same taxpayers in Ohio, in Indiana, and elsewhere, they’ve fewer congressional representatives because of what California has allowed to occur. That’s ridiculously unfair, and the only real method to battle back against it’s for us to redistrict in some methods as aggressively as these arduous blue states have performed.” 

Bartiromo then introduced up President Trump’s push for a new census and requested about what influence that may need on the GOP make-up and electoral votes. Vance responded:

“Yeah, so, another crazy thing I had no idea about but everybody — even Democrats — actually admit this: that the census in 2020 had a major statistical error, and what that meant is that you actually undercounted a few states that are Republican, like Florida and Ohio; you overcounted some blue states. And so, what I understand: If you actually did the census anew, right now, you would have 10 additional Republican seats and nine fewer Democrat seats. And really, what we’re living with, Maria, is the consequence of 40 years of institutional control of the Democratic Party — these guys have fought very dirty for a very long time. And they haven’t just won elections and enacted laws that we may not agree with; they have tried to rig the game for Democrats and against Republicans. 

“And fortunately, under President Trump‘s leadership, you finally see some spine; you finally see some backbone in the Republican Party to fight back against these very aggressive Democratic dirty tricks. But the only way for us to do it is to actually go and do the hard work to reset the scales a little bit. What we want to do is redo the census, but importantly, we want to redistrict some of these red states, and we want to make the congressional apportionment fair in this country again. You cannot do it unless Republicans actually take some very decisive action in the months to come. We think they will, and we’re obviously supporting them every step of the way.” 

Bartiromo asked whether that raises the concern that Democrats will simply fight back by further redistricting in blue states like Illinois and New Jersey. But Vance pointed out a critical distinction:

“You know, Maria, there’s just not a whole lot of juice left out of that lemon. The Democrats have already gone as far as they possibly can. Let me give you a crazy statistic: I believe it is in New Jersey, Illinois, New York, California, and there’s one other Democrat state, where you’re taking those 5 states — you’ve gotten a large quantity of Democrat representatives. But right here’s the craziest statistic: President Trump gained 43 p.c of those 5 states, and Democrats have one thing like 85 p.c of the representatives out of those states. You can not gerrymander these far-left states anymore — and that’s the entire level: We have unilaterally disarmed the Republican Party. We have said to the Democrats: If you wanna rig the sport in your favor in blue states, go forward, we’re gonna do nothing to battle back against it. That’s loopy. It makes it more durable for us to move our agenda, it makes it more durable for us to win elections, and most importantly, it offers Democrats this skill to run roughshod over the nation without any pushback from the American people. The democratic system in this nation is damaged because who you vote for doesn’t essentially get mirrored in who your representatives are. We’re just attempting to rebalance the scales and, frankly, push back against a very unfair system created by the Democrats.”

Bartiromo then moved on to international coverage, and in specific, the Russian-Ukrainian battle and upcoming talks aimed at securing an end to it, asking Vance what he expects to come of that.

“Well, first of all, I’ve got to give the president a huge amount of credit here, Maria, because this is a major breakthrough for American diplomacy. If you go back — this has been going on for over three years at this point, well over a million Russians and Ukrainian dead soldiers, and, as the president says, the numbers are probably much higher than the official tally indicates — there has been no substantial breakthrough. And for six months, the president himself — he has asked me, he’s asked Secretary Rubio, of course, Steve Witkoff — we have been aggressively working, trying to break the logjam. One of the most important logjams is that Vladimir Putin said that he would never sit down with Zelensky, the head of Ukraine, and the president has now got that to change. We’re at a point now — we’re now trying to figure out, frankly, scheduling and things like that, around when these three leaders could sit down and discuss an end to this conflict. Now, what do I think is ultimately going to come out of this? Look, it’s actually very simple: If you take where the current line of contact between Russia and Ukraine is, we’re going to try to find some negotiated settlement that the Ukrainians and the Russians can live with — where they can live in relative peace, where the killing stops. It’s not going to make anybody super happy — both the Russians and the Ukrainians, probably, at the end of the day, are going to be unhappy with it. But I don’t think you could actually sit down and have this negotiation absent the leadership of Donald J. Trump. And the president said this to me today privately, he said, ‘Maybe this works out, maybe it doesn’t.’ But it’s worth the effort, it’s worth trying, and we’re going to keep on using the diplomatic influence of the President of the United States to accomplish an end to this conflict. 

“And, Maria, this, but other other people could not: If you look at the president’s international coverage accomplishments, if you look at Congo-Rwanda, a battle that went on for 30 years, killed six million people; if you look at the quantity of hostages in Israel — in Gaza — who’ve been launched and have gone back to their households; if you look at Malaysia, Cambodia; you look at all of these horrible conflicts. The president has shown a willingness to be the president of peace. It’s a big, big testomony to the standard of American management. And it’s an wonderful factor to have a president who’s working to stop the killing, when you’ve had, for so many generations, presidents who didn’t care about bringing peace to these very conflict-torn areas of the world. It’s one thing I believe all Americans ought to be proud of, whatever their political get together.” 

Bartiromo requested about the likelihood of Putin and Zelensky assembly before Putin is set to meet with President Trump, but Vance explained why he would not imagine that is critical or will work:

“I actually don’t think it would be that productive. I think fundamentally the President of the United States has to be the one to bring these two together. We’re, of course, going to talk to the Ukrainians — I actually spoke with the Ukrainians this morning. Marco has been talking to them quite a bit. We’re gonna keep that dialogue open, but fundamentally, this is something where the president needs to force President Putin and President Zelensky really to sit down to figure out their differences. We, of course, condemn the invasion that happened. We don’t like that this is where things are. But you’ve gotta make peace here. And the only way to make peace is to sit down and talk. You can’t finger-point; you can’t, you know, wag your finger at somebody and say, ‘You’re wrong, we’re right.’ The way to peace is to have a decisive leader to sit down and force people to come together.”

Bartiromo then requested about Vance’s opposition to persevering with to fund the battle. He explained his rationale thusly:

“Well, two things on that. First of all, I think the reason that we reached this decisive moment — a real change in where we were — is because the president was willing to apply some significant pressure, and actually say, ‘If you don’t come to the table, the American people, we’re not gonna get involved in this war directly.’ We have a lot of economic points of leverage, and we’re willing to use those to bring about peace, and that was a big thing that happened. To your point about weapons, what we said to the Europeans is simply: First of all, this is in your neck of the woods. This is in your back door. You guys have gotta step up and take a bigger role in this thing. And if you care so much about this conflict, you should be willing to play a more direct and a more substantial way in funding this war yourself. I think the president and I certainly think that America we’re done with the funding of Ukraine war business. We want to bring about a peaceful settlement to this thing. We want to stop the killing. But Americans, I think, are sick of continuing to send their money, their tax dollars, to this particular conflict. But if the Europeans want to step up and actually buy the weapons from American producers, we’re okay with that, but we’re not going to fund it ourselves anymore.”

Lastly, Bartiromo requested about the latest assertion by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they intend to take control of Gaza and requested if that is the fitting transfer. Vance summed up the administration’s stance:

“Well, in the end, that’s up to Benjamin Netanyahu, clearly. There are a lot of downsides, a lot of upsides to that, but I believe basically what we’re attempting to accomplish for America’s perspective is: Number one — we would like to make this so that Hamas can not kill harmless people — Israelis, Americans, or anyone else. Number two — we would like the hostages to come home. And quantity three — the president’s been very clear that you do have a humanitarian disaster there, where you’ve gotten a lot of harmless people who are actually struggling, and we would like to make sure that the people of Gaza are in a position to get food, in a position to get medication, and so forth. And so we’re attempting to accomplish all three of those issues. And what the president said is he needs to be, again, the president of peace. He is encouraging, through every diplomatic technique doable, a speedy end to the battle, the hostages get to come home, the people of Gaza get a free stream of humanitarian assist. That’s what we’re working in direction of, and we’re going to keep on working with our allies in the area to make that occur.

That’s a good deal of data and insight shared by Vance — and that was only the first portion of the interview. What it demonstrates, in my view, is that even with the myriad distractions being thrown its method, this administration stays targeted on enacting its agenda, both at home and overseas.

And yes, this is completely what I voted for. 

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