J.D. Vance

If you were to ask yourself in 2025 what an American is, I hate to say it, very few of our leaders actually have a good answer.

Is it purely agreement with the creedal principles of America?

I know the Claremont Institute is dedicated to the founding vision of the United States of America.

It's a beautiful and wonderful founding vision, but it's not enough by itself.

If you think about it, identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence, that's a definition that is way over inclusive and under inclusive at the same time.

What do I mean by that?

Well, first of all, it would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Must we admit all of them tomorrow?

If you follow that logic of America as a purely creedal nation, America purely as an idea, that is where it would lead you.

But at the same time, that answer would also reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists.

Even those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

And I happen to think that it's absurd, and the modern left seems dedicated to doing this, to saying you don't belong in America unless you agree with progressive liberalism in 2025.

I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong.

Honestly, after 49 years, there's a lot of, of course, mistrust between Iran and the United States of America.

You're not going to solve that problem overnight.

But yeah, I think the people we're sitting across from wanted to make a deal.

And I know the president of the United States told us to go out there and negotiate in good faith.

That's what we did.

That's what we're going to keep on doing.

Well, first of all, Brett, I think the president was posting a joke.