[The following is a transcript of Will Cain's interview with JD Vance in La Crosse, Wisconsin. It is transcribed as it aired. Video courtesy and copyright Fox News. Source: https://cqrc.al/fox-news-20250828]
We're here at a steel fabrication facility in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where Vice President JD Vance spoke today about the Big Beautiful Bill, highlighting the impact on the manufacturing industry. It is his first trip to La Crosse since the day before the 2024 election. And, today, he spoke with us about his visit.
This is a steel manufacturer, employs a lot of good people, use a lot of technology. So people, I think, sometimes assume that manufacturing is sort of old, dirty, doesn't use technology. This is a good business. This is an example of leaning into American investment, American innovation. Obviously the people here have great jobs.
And you know my story, Will, but I grew up in a town where we were shedding manufacturing jobs because politicians had made stupid decisions. We're now adding manufacturing jobs and adding productivity in this economy thanks to the things that the president and the Republican Congress have done.
Our conversation was wide-ranging. We talked, yes, about the Big Beautiful Bill and the economy, but we also talked about freedom of speech. We talked about the canary in the coal mine that is Europe. We talked about that tragic incident yesterday in Minneapolis. And, yes, we talked about that moment of him dropping the national championship trophy this few days before the number one versus number two matchup of my Texas Longhorns against his Ohio State Buckeyes.
More of that exclusive interview coming up with the vice president.
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I asked Vice President JD Vance about all of this today, and here was his response:
This is just an unbelievable tragedy. And we have to remember that there are a couple of families who yesterday had the worst day of their lives, and it's not going to get much better from here because of what this evil person took from these families, which is these two beautiful kids. That's my first response to it. My second response to it is, I'm praying every single day, multiple times a day, that, while two deaths is tragic, three deaths is even more tragic, and I hope it stays at two, because there still are some kids who seem to be in pretty serious condition at the hospital.
So we're praying for their swift recovery. And I think on the broader stuff, I mean, look, clearly, this person was a mentally deranged human being. Clearly, it was a transgender individual. We're going to learn a lot more and I think the FBI and local authorities ought to try to get to the bottom of this.
But you don't go and shoot up innocent children unless you were a clearly screwed-up person. We're so soon after this tragedy that I think that it would be nice if we as a country could unite, say a prayer for these innocent victims, say a prayer for the kids who are still recovering, that they make a full recovery, focus on the investigation and getting to the bottom of this thing, and not immediately make it about politics.
And my final point on this is, when I see far left politicians say, how dare you offer thoughts and prayers, you need action, I don't care about your prayers, I care about what you're going to do to prevent this from happening, why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't you pray for the speedy recovery of these kids, who literally just got shot yesterday, while at the same time committing to making sure this doesn't happen again or that it happens as infrequently as possible?
I don't think there's anything inconsistent about saying a prayer to God for these innocent, beautiful kids, while also thinking constructively about how we're going to prevent this from happening the next time. You can do both of those things. You can hold a thought -- two -- both of those thoughts in your head at the same time.
And, Will, if you are a politician or you're a media commentator and two beautiful babies just got murdered while praying, and your politics force you to condemn prayer in response to it, you ought to get new politics, because something very wrong has gone on inside your soul.
All right, more of that sit-down with Vice President JD Vance coming up.
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All right, earlier today, I sat down with Vice President JD Vance for an exclusive interview in Wisconsin, where the vice president highlighted the effects of the Big Beautiful Bill on the manufacturing industry. It was a wide-ranging conversation. Here is part one of my exclusive interview.
Glad to have you in Middle America. You bring up Middletown, Ohio. It's a lot like La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Very similar.
It's not unlike my hometown of Sherman, Texas, all about 40,000 to 50,000 people, manufacturing towns.
Yes.
And there's a lot of excitement today, but it hasn't always been that way, to your point.
That's right.
Whether or not it's been job loss, an opioid crisis, a cultural malaise and a sense of loss of purpose, I believe, is deeply rooted in what's happened in Middle America. What do you think that's done to America?
Well, I think it was very bad for our country. And all these problems are very connected, right? You take a dad who's got a good middle-class manufacturing job, is able to support family, a couple of kids, and then that job disappears. Well, now the family is feeling financial stress that it wasn't 10 years ago, it wasn't 20 years ago.
So, sometimes, families dissolve in the wake of that. That stress affects the kids. Some of those people turn to drugs, and all this stuff is very connected. And if you look at what the president is trying to do, it's also all connected. And I think that that it's why it's leading to this very early days of an American renaissance, because you bring jobs back, you give people hope, optimism, you give them a little extra money to spend in their pocket, maybe some of those people go and start a business.
But then, simultaneously, we're focused on the southern border because we don't want this poison to come into these communities and destroy people from fentanyl and other related problems. So, I kind of think, in the same way that America's decline was a problem of interconnected issues, I think this American renaissance led by the president is also interconnected.
And we're trying to work on all these different problems, because, if we solve all these problems, it leads to a virtuous cycle.
Well, the Big Beautiful Bill is big. It is interconnected as well.
It is.
What would you say to the people that are sitting right on the other side of this curtain? By the way, there is a beautiful bridge being built right on the other side of this.
Yes.
But what would you say to them about the Big Beautiful Bill and how it begins to address the depth of what you just laid out, those problems?
Well, I'd say, look, it's all connected. We're going to talk to -- obviously, in a little bit to the crowd that's assembled. We're going to say a few things. Number one is, you have got the biggest amount of money for border enforcement that we have seen in our country's history. Those criminal cartels that are bringing the fentanyl into places like Wisconsin that are killing people by the bushel, we are now going to war against those cartels in a way that we have never done before because of that Big Beautiful Bill.
We have also got incredible working families tax cuts to reinvigorate the economy here in Wisconsin. So, you have got the child tax credit going up. You have got no tax on overtime, no tax on tips; 27 percent of Wisconsin workers worked an overtime shift in last year; 5 percent of Wisconsin workers rely on tips either in part or entirely.
So this is going to mean a lot more money in people's pockets. And, of course, if they got more money in their pocket, they can spend it on American-made products. And that's the final point, is, the president of the United States, this is not the main part of the working families tax cuts. We're going to make it easier to save and invest in the United States of America.
The tariffs, of course, are separate. But it's all connected, because if we make it easier to build things in the United States of America, we're also making it harder to build things overseas. This generation of failed American economic policy, where we rewarded companies for putting factories in Mexico or in China or somewhere else, no, we have got to reward people for putting factories right here in Middle America, right here in Wisconsin, employing good American workers to make great American products.
That's the whole purpose of President Trump's economic agenda. And, again, it's already bearing real fruit. But it's going to, I think, lead to a great American renaissance over the next three years.
I saw this, this morning, that in 74 out of 100 metro areas in the United States, half of all starter homes are unaffordable for the average American worker.
Yes.
You're the first millennial vice president. You have personal experience with people of this generation not being able to make that leap, that first economic leap into adulthood, homeownership. Is the system rigged?
Oh, the system is absolutely rigged. I mean, look, you go back to the four years of the Biden administration. From 2021 until 2025, when we took over, the average price of a new home doubled. That's a 100 percent increase in four years. That priced millions upon millions of young Americans out of the housing market.
Now, there's a little bit of good news here, because, even though we have only been in power for about seven months, you have already seen home prices flatten off a little bit. They have gone up, depending on what metric you believe, about 1 percent, maybe less than 1 percent. That's a big, big improvement.
But there's so much more that we got to do. And this is why the president of the United States goes after Jerome Powell for being too late, because, of course, the housing crisis in this country is really two things, number one, that the prices are too high. We have made some progress on that. In some ways more importantly, the interest rates are too high.
So even if you can afford the top-line dollar value of a home, if the interest rates are way too high because the Federal Reserve isn't doing its job, that also makes the American dream of homeownership unaffordable. So we're really working on both of those things. We got to lower interest rates. We got to lower housing prices.
We have made, again, progress, but it's early, and we realize there's a lot more work to do.
Absolutely, the system is rigged. You have been a longtime critic of the system. But now you're the vice president of the United States and one could argue you are the system. So how do you fix a rigged system?
Well, we inherited a rigged system, but I think that in seven months we have already made a lot of progress to fix this. If you go back to, again, 100 percent housing price increase in four years under Joe Biden, we have already seen that level off under Donald Trump. Now, to fix the rigged system, you ask that question, you got to understand the root causes here.
Why did housing get so unaffordable for American citizens? Two big problems. Number one, I already talked about. Interest rates were too high. Number two, you had way too many people in this country who are competing against American citizens for scarce homes. And that's the illegal immigration problem. Why has housing leveled off over the past six months?
I really believe the main driver is that you have had negative net migration into the United States for the first time in 60 years in this country. You cannot flood the United States of America with 20, 30, 40 million people who have no legal right to be here, have them compete against young American families for homes, and not expect the price to skyrocket.
It's a simple supply and demand. You increase the demand, you're going to increase the price. And the final thing I want to say here is, we're working on issues right now in the White House every single day because we want to make it easier to build homes too, because, in the same way that getting illegal aliens out of this country means fewer people competing against young American families, we also want to increase the housing stock in this country by making it easier to build.
So, we're working on all this stuff, but, man, we got to be honest. The system was rigged against Americans, especially young Americans, for a very long time. We're making progress to unrig it, but it's going to take some time.
[Commercial breakl]
Here's part two of my exclusive interview with JD Vance.
You spend a lot of time talking about Europe, the migration crisis of Germany, of England.
Yes.
You have talked about free speech. Why is it so important for you to focus on Europe?
Well, I think, in some ways, the problems of Europe mirror the problems of America. And anything that I have said about Europe, I have said 10 times and is even as true or more true in the United States of America. We, of course, had a wide-open southern border under Joe Biden. I think the Europeans have got to learn the hard lessons.
What happens is, you get higher crime, you get less cultural cohesion, you get more just problems that come from importing millions and millions of low-wage foreigners in your country. The Europeans have got to learn that lesson in the same way that I think the United States had to learn that lesson. You have seen -- in the same way that the Biden administration went after social media companies to censor their fellow citizens, you have seen the very same thing happen in Europe, where, rather than debate ideas, you have certain European leaders who would rather censor their fellow citizens.
So I think, fundamentally, there's so much cultural similarity between us and Europe. Obviously, the United States was born out of a European country, the United Kingdom. I think it's important to recognize those cultural similarities. And, importantly, what's happening in Europe does affect the United States and vice versa.
And so I think it's important for us to step back and say, look, the West, right, that's Europe and America together, we got too comfortable with open borders. We got too comfortable with censorship. And I think the president has shown that, if you go in the other direction, if you close down your borders and actually give free speech to your people, you can really energize the culture in these countries.
Europe is the bedrock of Western civilization.
That's right.
It's the foundation of Western civilization. And that seems to be not just questioned, but under threat. Have you seen the story out of England where the English flag has simultaneously become controversial and patriotic? Some in that country see it as a sign of protest, others see it as a sign of patriotism.
And it's a little reflected what's happening here in America.
Yes, that's exactly right, Will. Again, so much of what happens in Europe happens in America and vice versa. Sometimes, we're on the leading edge of a trend. Sometimes, they're on the leading edge of a trend. But I remember back in the crazy BLM summer of 2020, I had a buddy of mine say, I was going to put the American flag out today, but I'm worried that some BLM person is going to ransack my house or come and vandalize it in some way because they see the American flag somehow as this controversial symbol.
It's not a controversial symbol. Nothing should be less controversial than the American flag. It's the one thing that, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, should unite us all together. We should all love our country, be proud of our country. So, again, some of these trends where you have Americans worried about flying the American flag because they think their house is going to get vandalized, first of all, that's crazy.
Second of all, you see the same things happening in Europe. And I think we just have to be on guard against this stuff. We -- it's OK to be proud of your country. It's in fact a good thing to be proud of your country. And we should push back against the crazies who say we should be so ashamed of our culture and of our heritage that we shouldn't be willing to fly a flag.
It's craziness. We got to call that craziness out. I'd encourage our European friends to follow suit.
You brought up how interconnected every single one of these problems are, from culture to the economy. But if I could say to you, you could snap your fingers, politics be damned, and you could fix one problem at the root of all of this in America --
Oh, man.
You have folded mass migration. You have folded immigration. You talk about the family unit. But what would be the root unit you would snap your fingers and fix?
It's probably the migration problem. And I think, again, the president of the United States has shown in just a few short months what you can do. We have got illegal border crossings effectively at zero. We have got net migration negative in this country for the first time. And why do I say that? First of all, I think it's very hard to feel like you're part of the same country when your leadership brings in tens of millions of people uninvited.
So that sense of shared American identity, the sense that we're part of the same American family, I think that gets destroyed when you import 20, 30 million people without any democratic check on it. So that's number one. Number two, I think it's terrible for the wages of working-class people. You see this in every place where you bring in low-wage immigrants.
It's bad for the wages of Americans who just want to work a good job and earn a good wage in their communities. And the third thing that I would point out is crime and drugs. We know that while most, of course, even illegal immigrants are not bringing in fentanyl, they are used by the cartels as vectors to traffic this illegal poison.
And so it makes the opioid problem worse. It makes wages worse and it makes our sense of common American identity worse. I think the migration issue really is the root of what went wrong during the Biden administration. By the way, it's why the Democrats are so obsessed with it. You ask yourself, what does the modern national Democratic Party believe in, what do they fight most aggressively for, they fight most aggressively to continue to flood the United States with millions and millions of low-wage immigrants.
The fact that that is the reason for existing for the Democratic Party should make all Americans sort of step back and say, what the hell is wrong with these people?
Zohran Mamdani is the leading candidate for mayor in New York City.
A great example. [Laughter]
Yes. Your Mamaw, by the way, I think was a lifelong Democrat.
She was.
What do you think it says about the left that Zohran Mamdani is a leading candidate for a big political office as a Democrat? And what would your Mamaw say about modern Democrats?
I think Mamaw would say, this is crazy. I think that she would say the modern Democratic Party doesn't represent her at all. By the way, there are two things that Mamaw -- yes, she was a lifelong Democrat. She believed in standing up for working people. She believed in good wages for a good job. She was a -- her husband was a union Democrat for 40 years.
And that's really where it came from. But, one, she thought politicians ought to have a sense of humor. Democrats, the one thing they should learn from President Trump is to laugh at themselves a little bit. They don't have to be so serious. They don't have to get offended at everything. Sometimes, it's actually a good thing to have a sense of humor about our political process.
And the second thing is, Mamaw, she was a Democrat who loved this country and felt gratitude for this country. She had multiple relatives who served in World War II, who served in World War I. She remembered that war like it was yesterday. She would tell me about World War II and her brother and her dad going off to fight in the Pacific.
Does Mamdani -- when you hear him speak, is this a man who feels gratitude for the United States of America? Is this a man who feels grateful for all of the opportunities, the incredible bounty of this country? I don't know the guy, but my sense is, he's had a very good life in this country. It would be nice for him to occasionally show a sense of gratitude, instead of just attacking the United States for all of its problems.
You bring up humor. Gavin Newsom sure thinks he's a comedian in these days on social media. [Laughter]
And so does much of the left. His polling numbers have gone way up since he started mimicking President Trump on social media.
Yes.
What do you make of Governor Newsom?
I make of Governor Newsom that -- you said he's mimicking Donald Trump. And I think that's exactly right. The lesson of Donald Trump, the lesson of President Trump in American politics is, you have got to be authentic to yourself. And when I see Gavin Newsom trying to act like Donald Trump, that's the opposite of authenticity.
He's not trying to be Gavin Newsom, whoever that is. He's trying to be a fake carbon copy of Donald Trump, and it just doesn't work. You can't -- you can't mimic the king. You can't mimic the master. You ought to just go and be yourself. And I think the American people would like that a lot more than a cheap imitation of the president of the United States.
All right, lastly, on a lighter note, I'm disappointed to see your blue tie. I, as a specific rebuke to you and The Ohio State Buckeyes -- [Laughter]
-- today chose a burnt orange tie. [Laughter]
OK. Oh, man.
This weekend, we have number one versus number two --
Yes.
-- University of Texas versus Ohio State.
That's right.
Let's just revisit what has to be one of your most embarrassing moments as vice president. I can't even imagine. What is it like to drop the national championship trophy?
It's awful. Let me tell you, it's awful. [Laughter]
And my friends gave me hell for it. And it's one of those moments I will never live down. I didn't break it, though. It was made of solid, good steel, I guess.
The base fell off. I did analyze it play by play. The base fell off.
Yes. Yes. Yes. No, so I could give you a whole backstory about it. I didn't know that there's -- so it's not that the base fell off. The base is meant to come off.
Right.
You're not meant to lift it up by the base, which is the mistake that I made. You're supposed to just take the trophy out of the base. So, anyway, that was the first error that led to a series of problems. But I looked at the line yesterday, and I think Ohio State, we're 12-point dogs to Texas.
No, you're favored. I believe you're favored by three. You're at home. You're number two. We're number one.
OK, we got to look. OK. I thought I --
We get the point, Vice President.
Somebody sent me -- somebody sent me a line. Yes, that's what I was saying, because we're at -- we're in Columbus. Somebody sent me a line that had us minus-11.5. And I was like, that sounds crazy to me. I think it's going to be a good game. You guys have a hell of a team. Obviously, Archie Manning has good genes, as the president would say.
So, hopefully, he doesn't have too good of a day in Ohio Stadium.
You have a prediction? [Laughter]
Oh, man.
I have one, Texas Longhorns by a million. [Laughter]
Oh, 34-23 Buckeyes.
All right, I can't wait to see you afterwards.
That's a confident prediction.
All right, thank you, Mr. Vice President.
All right, man, good to see you. Thank you.