Alex GriffingMay 13th, 2026, 4:35 pm

Vice President JD Vance told a reporter on Wednesday that he didn’t “think” President Donald Trump said a specific quote when asked to react to it. CNN quickly picked up on the odd moment and ran clips of Trump making the comment and Vance denying its existence.

“When approaching the war with Iran, do you agree with the president’s position that Americans’ financial situations should not be a consideration in that decision-making process?” asked NBC News White House Correspondent Monica Alba at a presser.

“Well, I don’t think the president said that. I think that’s a misrepresentation of what the president said, but look, I agree with the president that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon,” Vance replied, adding:

We’re obviously engaged in a very aggressive and very engaged diplomatic process to try to ensure that that doesn’t happen. And the President has a lot of options, as he said repeatedly. There are options diplomatically, there are options on the military side. But the fundamental goal here is the President wants to make the world safe, but particularly the American people safe from Iran having a nuclear weapon.

And one final point I’ll say on that is, nuclear proliferation is one of those challenges that people don’t realize is the biggest threat to America’s national security, and it’s not obvious until it is. Because what happens if Iran gets a nuclear weapon? Then multiple Gulf Arab countries are gonna want to get a nuclear weapon. Then multiple countries from there are gonna want to get a nuclear weapon. The goal of preventing nuclear proliferation is probably the single most important thing that we can do to keep our people safe for the long term. It’s absolutely a worthy goal all these challenges simultaneously.

While leaving the White House on Tuesday afternoon, Trump told reporters, “The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran is that they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.”

The quote quickly grabbed headlines across the media and ran as the lead story on the Drudge Report on Tuesday evening, in bright red.

Watch the clips above via C-SPAN and CNN.

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