Mr. Vice President, thank you so much for joining us. It's an honor to have you on the program. And I'm eager to get to the administration's agenda for peace in the world and prosperity here at home. But first, we do have breaking news today. Israel has just bombed Doha, the capital of Qatar.
President Trump included Doha in his historic trip with Middle Eastern allies. What's your reaction to the bombing of Doha?
Well, first, Matt, I just want to say congratulations. I hear you're a new father; it's the best thing in the world. So, I hope you and mom and baby are all doing well.
Thank you.
But to respond to the point, I mean, look, the president made very clear today that he's not happy about that. We just left the Oval Office and spoke about that. You saw Karoline Leavitt, our great White House press secretary, talked about this. He doesn't think this serves Israel's interests or the United States's interests.
And so, he's not happy about it. But we're going to keep on working for peace despite it and hopefully see this as an opportunity. The one good thing, Matt, is it looks like it probably eliminated a couple of very bad guys from Hamas. So, there's a silver lining even though we disagree with the underlying decision.
But we're going to keep on working to get the hostages home. We're going to keep on working to end the war in the Middle East and hopefully bring some peace. As you know, Matt, the president has had a lot of success thus far. He's ended about seven wars across the world, some of which in Rwanda and the Congo have gone on for a very, very long time and killed a lot of innocent people.
He is very dedicated to this peace mission. He's dedicated to it in Russia, Ukraine, the Middle East and elsewhere. I think obviously the Middle East and Russia, Ukraine have been the most vexing for us as an administration, but we'll keep on at it.
Yeah, they never give you credit for the wars you wind down. It's always the ones that are still in progress. But I do want to get to that conflict between Russia and Ukraine. What do you see as the administration's plan to bring that war to an end?
Well, I think fundamentally, Matt, we're trying to sort of apply leverage to both the Russians and the Ukrainians to try to come to the table and make a deal. And it's interesting, Matt, I've learned a lot about presidential leadership just in the past eight months watching the president maneuver through this process.
Sometimes he is candidly frustrated with the Ukrainian side, sometimes he's frustrated with the Russian side. And he's using every tool that we have at our disposal as an administration to try to get them to the table. I think now we're at a point where we've at least narrowed it to a couple of core issues.
One issue is territorial. The Russians want about uh about 6,000 or so square kilometers that they have not yet conquered through military force. That's what the Russians want. The Ukrainians, on the flip side, they want a security guarantee whether from Europeans or somebody else because they want confidence that if they cut a deal, the Russians aren't going to come back in a few months or a few years asking for more.
And so, we've actually made incredible progress just that we've highlighted and identified these two core issues. The question really is whether the Russians and the Ukrainians are going to walk through that door of peace that the president has opened. We continue to work hard at it. I spoke to Special Envoy Steve Witkoff earlier today about this question.
We're just going to keep on working it, man. And I do think that eventually you're going to come to a peaceful settlement. The question, Matt, is really whether it lasts another year or another month, whether you have another 100,000 or another million, God forbid, people die in the process. And our message to both the Russians and the Ukrainians is this is not in your interest; it's not in our interest.
What is in everybody's best interest is for peace to break out in that region of the world. So, we're going to keep on trying to work to achieve that solution.
You make an interesting point about the durability of that peace, and it seems the United States views investment as one of those tools you described to get to durable cooperation sources. Have told me that Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that sanctions relief could result in Russia moving more of their energy commodities in the US dollar, functionally giving Russia and the United States a lot of control over US energy markets.
That could lower energy costs for Americans. Do you see economic cooperation with Russia as one of the things that could bring an end to some of the hostilities that we want to see concluded?
Yeah, Matt, absolutely. And it's one of the carrots that we've thrown out there and the president's been very open with both the Europeans and the Russians that he doesn't see any reason why we should economically isolate Russia except for the continuation of the conflict. He wants the killing to stop. And then on the other side of peace, he's very open to a whole host of economic arrangements that are beneficial to the United States of America.
I mean, let's be honest, whether you like or dislike Russia, whether you agree or disagree with their underlying arguments for the conflict, the simple fact is they've got a lot of oil, they've got a lot of gas, they've got a lot of mineral wealth. And I think the president is absolutely right that once we get this piece settled, we could have a very productive economic relationship with both Russia and Ukraine in the future.
And frankly, Matt, if we had a better relationship economically in Eastern Europe and that region of the world, it might actually be the best guarantee of a long-term peace. Because once you've got good economic relationships with people, you don't want to blow that stuff up quite literally by restarting a war.
So, it's interesting, Matt, the president is very much on this wavelength. Let's get the piece. Let's create some economic cooperation between Russia, Ukraine and the United States of America, and let's set the table for a long-term durable peace. What we had in the last administration, Matt, as you know well, I mean we were talking about this stuff when we were both on Capitol Hill, is that Biden just wanted to funnel more and more money Into Ukraine, he wanted to give more and more weapons, more and more of America's wealth.
There was no plan and no real effort to engage in diplomacy to try to bring this thing to a close. The president recognizes it's not easy, recognizes that sometimes the Russians and the Ukrainians obviously don't see eye to eye. But we've got an opportunity we think to bring an end to the conflict and to actually create some real prosperity on the other side of a peace.
We're going to keep on working at it. Again, I don't know how long it's going to take, Matt, but I guarantee eventually some sort of peaceful settlement is going to come out of this war. It's just killing way too many people. And I think in their heart of hearts, both the Russians and Ukrainians are exhausted with the fighting.
I do want to turn to the administration's domestic agenda. You've passed your signature legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Tell us how Americans are going to feel the impact of this legislation and its implementation in the coming weeks and months.
Yeah, look, there are working families tax cuts in this legislation, Matt, that people are going to feel. I've seen estimates that suggest the average American's take-home pay is going to go up by $10,000 dollars in four years because of what this bill does. It cuts taxes on overtime; it cuts taxes on tips; it cuts taxes on Social Security.
If you buy an American made automobile, it allows you to deduct the interest on that loan against what you have to pay the federal government in taxes. And of course, it increases the child tax credit. It invests in our families in a very big way. And Matt, I think maybe the most important thing is that it creates a lot of wealth to invest in American energy.
We had an administration under the Biden folks that went to war against American energy. We have under the Trump administration an administration that's trying to make it easier to invest in American energy and build wealth right here in the United States of America. That's going to lower costs for American consumers.
Of course, you've already seen inflation start to cool off a little bit, but there's a lot more in this Big, Beautiful Bill that I think is going to deliver wins for the American people. It was an amazing thing. And the last thing I'll say about the legislation, Matt, is I believe the critical crisis, the critical national emergency that we're confronting when we took over on January the 20th was the wide-open southern border.
We've got over $100 billion in the working families, tax cut to actually allow ICE and other law enforcement agencies to get all the Biden open border folks out of this country. Because if you let 10 million, 20 million people, which is what I think the number is. The number of illegal aliens who came into this country under the Biden administration, if you let them stay, you're basically ratifying the Biden administration's border invasion through inaction.
We've got a lot of resources here to get those illegal aliens out of our country and to make sure that people realize you can't come into the United States illegally without suffering from some law enforcement and that's exactly what we did with this big bill.
You're not even fighting the same battle the Biden administration was fighting. They were trying to convince us the border could never be secure. You and President Trump showed that could be done immediately and now you're working to undo the harm in the interior of the country. How many people do you think you can send home during this four years?
That's a big question, Matt, but I do think that you've seen the pace of deportations ramp up in a very significant way since the Beautiful Bill passed. That's because you've got so many more resources for law enforcement and ICE. And it's not just the direct deportations that you can do, Matt. In some ways, the most significant is that you have people who are self-deporting; people who recognize they're not going to be rewarded for breaking America's immigration laws.
And so, they're going to leave on their own accord. The estimates that I've seen, Matt, suggest that we've got 1.6 million fewer illegal immigrants in our country today than when we took over. I'd like to continue that pace all the way through the four years of President Trump's term, and that would get us 8 million fewer.
I'd actually like to increase that number because, again, nobody really knows, Matt, how many illegal immigrants came in during the Biden administration. I think it was at least 10 million, probably more like 20 million. We want to get as much of those people out of the country as possible. We're making great progress, but it's going to be a long-term effort.
The Trump-Vance administration has really cleaned up Washington DC. It is so noticeable. The criminals are no longer running the streets. What's your message tonight, Mr. Vice President, to Americans living in crime ridden cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, especially those in California? What hope can the administration provide them?
My message to the American people is we don't have to live like this. I think all of us, if we live near a city or we've just gone downtown to take our family out for a meal on a Friday night, we've all had this experience where you pass somebody on the street who's obviously crazy, who's screaming and yelling at your kids, you cross to the other side of the street to avoid that person.
Or maybe, God forbid, you've even been mugged at gunpoint, you've had your car jacked, you know a friend or somebody who's been a victim of a violent crime. This happens, Matt, way too much in the United States of America. And the reason it happens is because of weak leadership because we've allowed the criminals to take over the streets that ought by right belong to the American people.
And so long as we have common sense law enforcement -- this is not even that difficult, Matt. If you look statistically, most of the violent crime in our cities is committed by a very small fraction of 1 percent of the population. If we just throw those people in jail and kept them in prison, we could make America's cities safe for everybody, black, white, rich or poor and that's what we're trying to do. The most important thing that we've seen in Washington, DC, Matt, is the evidence that the American people don't have to live like this.
That if you just do some commonsense law enforcement, you can give the American people back their streets. I would love if we did this in every big American city because I think that American citizens deserve to live safely in these big cities. They don't right now, but it doesn't have to be like this. We just have to change leadership.
Final question for you, Mr. Vice President. You've defended recent military strikes against drug traffickers and cartel members. What do you think the rules of engagement should be when the United States military has the ability to kill someone bringing drugs into America?
Matt, I think the rules of engagement should be similar to what they are in war because we are in fact in a war against these drug cartels. And I understand the concerns about due process. I understand some of the criticisms that have been raised, but this is not a situation where we can send the Navy Seals into these places, arrest them and give them a proper civil trial or criminal trial.
These people are engaged in criminal terrorist organizations. Sometimes they have the backing of organizations that are more powerful than the governments that exist in these countries. And our attitude is very simple, that if you're engaged in war against the American people, you are at risk of having your entire operation literally blown to bits.
And Matt, I actually think it's one of the great things the president has done. For how long have you and I criticized prior administrations of both parties for sending the military to some far-flung corner of the world. These cartels are killing 100,000 American citizens a day and they're in our own backyard doing it. We should be using the military to go after these people.
Thanks to President Trump's leadership, we are. And you asked about rules of engagement. If you're trying to kill our citizens, if you're engaged in these criminal cartels, we're going to treat you like a foreign enemy of the United States because that's exactly what you are.
It doesn't seem like it's unreasonable to suggest that we should have greater control over the Gulf of America than like the Black Sea. It seems to be a lot more aligned with our interests and I'm sure our military members are honored to participate in those missions to protect their fellow Americans. Vice President of America, JD Vance, thank you so much for coming on the program.
Good to see you, Matt. Take care, man.