JD Vance praises Elon Musk, talks One Big Beautiful Bill, and more | Greg Kelly Reports

0:00 So, um, how does it feel? I mean, you got here so far, so fast. I don't think anybody fully appreciates that. Three years ago, four years ago, at this moment, you were just you were you were a regular guy. Yeah, I was just a guy in the private sector and here I am vice president of the United States. Well, uh, first, it's obviously a testament to the country, the opportunities that you get here. But, you know, man, I I just I just pinch myself every single day. I walk into the Oval Office. We get to do great work with the president of the United States and I just realize what a blessing it is to be able to do the job that I get to do and it's it's very cool. I mean for the whole family I mean my you know pretty much my whole crew has been to the Oval Office. They've all met the president. Uh my kids are kind of constantly coming and going and we have all these amazing photos of the kids you know watch walking down the

0:45 West Wing you know colonade where the president walks with world leaders. We we have you know we've been able to go to Camp David with the kids. It's just such an amazing experience. And I just try to relish it and try to do as good of a job as I can. You know, not since Nixon have we seen this kind of rise, though. And you're faster than than he when you were in Europe. It it just seemed like you were born for the role. It was just it came so easy to you. And I guess I know this sounds corny or whatever, but when did you realize you could operate at that level before? Did you do you know what I mean? Yeah. I I I know what you mean. I just try not to think about it too much. I mean, the way the way that I think about it is this is a job. It's a very important job, but it's a job. And I just try to do as good of a job as I can. And I think if you if you sort of stop and think, "Oh my god, I'm in the Oval Office with the president of the United States and we're

1:31 making world historic decisions." I I think sometimes you get too wrapped up in it, you just got to do as good of a job as you can. Focus on the tasks in front of you. And that's how I've approached everything. It's certainly how I approached this one. One other thing on this. Um, you're the vice president of the United States. We know what the Constitution says, but if you were to describe your job, a job title in the civilian world, like are you the operations manager, a CEO to President Trump's chairman? Like, what is this job most like, if any job in the civilian world? That's interesting. I I'd actually love to hear the president give an answer to that question. Uh what is my job title? The way that I think about it is the president is the chief executive, but he needs an extra set of eyes, an extra set of hands because there's a lot to do. And I'm the guy that he trusts to go and do it. And

2:17 that's what I try to try to accomplish is, you know, the president maybe has to meet with a world leader, but you need somebody on Capitol Hill talking to congressional leaders or people in the Senate. Or maybe the president needs to be talking to congressional leaders and he needs somebody over in India talking about issues that matter to the United States. I just try to be an extra set of hands for the president because it's a big job and so long as you've got that trust with the president, I think, you know, he's able to give me a lot of responsibility and I just try to again do as good of a job as I can for the American people. News of the day, Elon Musk is leaving. We kind of knew it was going to happen. Are you going to miss him? Yeah, I am going to miss him. Elon's become a very good friend really over the campaign and certainly over uh his his time in Washington. I mean, you know, he and his kids have come over to our house and, you know, had dinner with our kids. So, I'm very close to him. I think what he's done is really

3:02 incredible. Uh people sort of forget that when he came into to the US government, we had never had a fullscale effort to actually look at are we spending the American people's dollars wisely. And he found in a very short period of time over $170 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse. I I think there there's also an effort by the media to sort of say the Elon era is over. And I think that's actually totally wrong. Now, he has obviously a day job and he's got to go back to his day job to run his companies. But the Doge effort will continue. Elon will continue to be an important adviser uh for both me and the president. And most importantly, the job the job of making the government more efficient, of not wasting people's money. That has to continue. I think it's one of the most important mandates that we got from the American people.

3:48 We're going to keep on executing on that mandate. As you know, he said, I think on CBS that he was, you know, a little bit disappointed in the big beautiful bill. He said it uh increases the deficit doesn't decrease. So, you know, is he leaving not under a cloud obviously, but he seems a little bit disappointed? No, I don't I don't think so. I think what I would say though, you'd have to ask Elon, but my sense of Elon is look, he's a private sector guy and sometimes the government just doesn't go as fast as private sector guys want it to. I've certainly experienced that frustration. I know the president's experienced that frustration. Uh, but I think we've done more in the past four months than any administration in American history. And when it comes to cutting spending, you know, you heard the speaker, I think, say yesterday that they're going to start voting on some of the Doge recision packages. It's going to be

4:34 candidly a harder go in the Senate because the Senate you need 60 votes and we only have 53 Republican senators. So, look, I think Elon's entitled to have his opinions about the function of government. I still think the big beautiful bill is the way to go. I think it's good for the American people and I and I think that we can both cut spending but also make sure that we keep tax rates reasonable for the American people. So, um the the war I don't want to call it a war, but obviously President Trump, you have concerns about elite education in America, Harvard University, and I do too and it's great and college is too expensive, but are we getting closer to the point where we might have something of a brain drain? I I haven't heard that phrase in a while, but I'm hearing that, you know, people at Johns Hopkins are getting nervous and they, you know, they're going to Finland. They're they're leaving and

5:20 they're concerned about the long term. They do kind of do some important work, these these schools. Look, they do do important work, but I make a couple points about this. First of all, I I've heard a lot of the criticisms, the fear that they were going to have a brain drain. If you go back to the 50s and 60s, the American space program, the program that was the first to put a human being on the surface of the moon, was built by American citizens, some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War II, but mostly by American citizens who had built an incredible space program with American talent. this idea that American citizens don't have the talent to do great things, that you have to import a foreign class of servants and and and uh professors to do these things. I just reject that. I actually think we invest in our own people, we can do a lot of

6:06 good. You've heard that criticism in particular as the president has talked about cracking down on foreign student visas and their abuses. But I think that's actually an opportunity for American citizens to really flourish. And here's the second and maybe the most fundamental point, Greg. These institutions do an important job. But if you back up and look at American higher education over the past 20 or 30 years, there are a few incontrovertible facts. Number one, the hard sciences, particular biology, we have a terrible what's called a reproducibility crisis. Meaning most of the papers that are published in biology, they don't replicate. They're not good science. So even our elite universities are not often doing good science. Second important point, these institutions sometimes by their own admission are engaging in explicit racial

6:52 discrimination, often against whites and Asians in explicit violation of the Civil Rights Act. If the people's government can't come in given those problems and say, "Look, we got to have some accountability here. You can't violate the Civil Rights Act. We got to make sure that if we're funding science with federal money, you're actually doing good science." That's called accountability. That's not going to war on these institutions. And and let me just make one final point about this because I care a lot about this. I want these universities to reform and to accept that they are part of an American body politic. That if the American taxpayer is frustrated with these universities, they've got to reform. What they're doing instead, what too many of them are doing is saying, "Oh, the Trump administration, this is dictatorial. This is fascism." No, this is democratic accountability. And I

7:37 think the universities ought to see it as an opportunity. If they do that, they're going to get better and the American people will be better off because of it. Information, truth, is freedom is Newsmax. It's real news for real people.