WASHINGTON—Vice President JD Vance blasted a reporter over his “speech masquerading as a question” during Tuesday’s White House press briefing.
The reporter, Andrew Feinberg of the Independent, spent nearly one and a half minutes and about 175 words to ask his question, alleging that President Donald Trump “seems to be talking up stocks that he owns, selling them, and enriching himself.”
During Feinberg’s wind-up, Vance called it a “hell of a question.”
“Let me answer your question here. That was a doozy,” Vance said. “Before I answer your question, I want to just observe there are different ways to ask a question, okay.”
“You can just ask a question, try to get your answer, or you could do like a speech where you say, ‘You know Mr. Vice President… you know you’re a terrible human being and so is the president and so is the entire cabinet,’ and then I’m like ‘What’s your question,’ and then your question is ‘How dare you.’ Come on, man, have a little bit of objectivity in the way that you ask these questions because there were a lot of things in that speech masquerading as a question that didn’t actually get asked,” Vance added.
Vance then answered Feinberg’s question.
“Number one, the president doesn’t sit at the Oval Office on his computer on his, like, Robin Hood account, buying and selling stocks, that’s absurd. He has independent wealth advisers who manage his money. He is a wealthy person. He has had success in business,” he said. “He’s not making these stock trades himself, and your question imputes that… It doesn’t say it exactly, but a reasonable person listening to that question would assume the president is sitting around and doing that; he’s not.”
“Second of all, you’re right, I’m a big fan of banning members of Congress from trading stocks, so is the president of the United States,” he added. “All of us believe that nobody should be taking proprietary information gained from public service and buying and selling stocks… We want to ban that process. And I think the way to lead by example is banning that process, banning that approach, and making it illegal, which is exactly what the president has proposed doing.”
Vance took the first question of the briefing from Breitbart News, which occupied the new media seat on Tuesday.
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