The View cohosts roasted Vice President J.D. Vance after he admitted the Trump administration mishandled the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Vance made the comments during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Wednesday, July 15.
The following day, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche returned to the Senate Judiciary Committee for the second day of his confirmation testimony. During the hearing, he defended the Trump administration’s handling of the files.
J.D. Vance contradicts Todd Blanche
Alyssa Farah Griffin was surprised that Vance’s remarks seemed to contradict Blanche’s testimony.
“Todd Blanche was grilled more about the administration’s handling. He more or less said there was no evidence that there was a grand conspiracy with more actors beyond Epstein, Griffin recalled. “But while he said this, and while he’s selling to the American public that he should be attorney general, J.D. Vance was on Joe Rogan.”
Griffin then played a clip of Vance’s conversation with Rogan. “People want to say we mishandled the Epstein release? Guilty. We did mishandle it, especially the communications of it,” Vance admitted.
“What do you think should have been done?” Rogan asked.
“We should have just dropped everything at the very beginning,” the vice president replied. “It takes a little time to review the stuff, to find the stuff, to redact things where you have victims, and so forth. But we should have just done it as quickly as possible.”
Communication error
“Oh, [Donald] Trump’s gonna be mad!” Joy Behar chimed in.
“J.D. Vance was absolutely right there, but I’ve never seen a vice president so undermine the attorney general pick while he’s literally testifying on Capitol Hill that he handled this the right way!” Griffin said. “It was unbelievable. I mean, the president must be mad!”
After watching the clip, Ana Navarro said she disagreed that the problem was simply failed communication. “In that answer, he said that they mishandled it, that they mishandled the comms. I think they mishandled a lot more than the comms. I think they mishandled the substance,” she said.
Giving credit
Navarro gave credit to the people she believes are actually responsible for the files getting released.
“Let us remember that the only reason that we have gotten only half of the Epstein files released is because Republican women — people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, like Nancy Mace, like Lauren Boebert — refused to bend the knee to Trump,” she said.
“It was because these Republican women, because there was a bipartisan vote to force the release of these files, because Trump’s DOJ has been slow-walking this and hiding these files since the moment he got there,” she added.
In November 2025, Lawmakers passed a measure requiring the government to release documents related to federal investigations into Epstein.
A month later, the Justice Department started releasing redacted files, including photos, call logs, grand jury testimony and interview transcripts.
Todd Blanche’s testimony
Similar concerns were raised during Blanche’s hearing.
Epstein survivor Dani Bensky testified that Blanche spent hours with convicted trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell — but none with victims.
“According to public reporting, Mr. Blanche spent approximately nine hours meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell. He did not even spend nine minutes meeting with a survivor,” Bensky said.
Bensky then questioned whether Blanche is the right person for the job, accusing him of being “unwilling to protect Epstein survivors’ personal information” and “resistant to investigate the people who helped Epstein and Maxwell commit those crimes.”