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Vance responds to Wiles’ claim he’s a “conspiracy theorist”

The vice president said he only believes in conspiracy theories that are true

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U.S. Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) arrives for the Senate Republican leadership elections at the U.S. Capitol on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
U.S. Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) arrives for the Senate Republican leadership elections at the U.S. Capitol on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Vice President JD Vance responded to allegations that he is a conspiracy theorist made by Susie Wiles.

In an explosive article from Vanity Fair, the Trump’s chief of staff dished on the current White House. She candidly told the outlet that Office of Budget and Management Director Russ Vought is a “right-wing absolute zealot” and said President Donald Trump has “the personality of an alcoholic.”  When she came to Vance, she said his support of Trump was a “sort of political” calculation and added that Vance has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.”

Vance said he  “had not looked at the article” at an event in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, but still addressed the allegations against him. He played off the characterization as an inside joke.

“Sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true,” Vance told the audience. “Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time.”

Vance went on to say sarcastically that he believed “a crazy conspiracy theory” in 2020 that claimed masking three-year-old children could lead to hampered language skills, before turneing his ire toward former President Joe Biden.

“I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job,” Vance said. “It turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it.”


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Vance downplayed the article and defended Wiles.

“I’ve never seen her be disloyal to the president,” Vance said. “If any of us have learned a lesson from that Vanity Fair article, I hope it’s that we should be giving fewer interviews to mainstream media outlets.”

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