Vice President JD Vance held a press briefing on Tuesday and was not in the mood for lectures from the White House press corps.

A reporter from The Independent, Andrew Feinberg, launched into a lengthy monologue about President Trump’s recently released financial disclosures, claiming they showed stock trades in companies the President had publicly promoted.

Vance shut it down with precision.

Mediaite laid out how the exchange unfolded after Feinberg pressed Vance on the stock-trading angle:

Feinberg opened by pointing to President Trump’s recent financial disclosures and saying they showed many stock trades in companies the President had talked up at official events, at the White House, and on Truth Social. He tried to connect that with polling about Americans describing the President as corrupt, then moved into the argument that public officials should not be trading individual stocks.

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Before the reporter had even finished, Vance cut in and called it “a hell of a question.” When Feinberg kept going, Vance asked him to get to the point: “Okay, what’s the question?”

Once the actual question finally arrived, Vance called the setup a “doozy” and said there are different ways to ask a question. His point was simple: reporters can ask for information, or they can deliver a speech accusing the Vice President, the President, and the entire cabinet of being terrible people before attaching a question mark at the end.

The exchange was captured in full by multiple outlets, and it quickly went viral.

NewsBusters added the broader briefing context and noted that the stock-trading exchange was one of Vance’s sharpest moments of the afternoon:

The briefing covered several hostile media lanes, including the Justice Department weaponization fund, Iran, and the President’s financial disclosures. But the Feinberg exchange stood out because Vance did not simply answer the stock-trading question.

He first challenged the format of the question itself, pointing out that the setup was loaded with insinuations before the reporter ever reached the actual ask. Vance then pushed back on the central premise.

He said President Trump is not sitting in the Oval Office on a Robinhood account buying and selling stocks. Instead, he said the President has independent wealth advisors who manage his money, and he argued that the reporter’s framing left listeners with a misleading impression.

Vance also said he supports banning members of Congress from trading stocks and said President Trump supports that too. The reason, he argued, is that public officials should not use proprietary information from public service to buy and sell stocks.

Feinberg’s question centered on Trump’s financial disclosures, which were released recently and showed investments in various publicly traded companies.

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As NOTUS reported, the disclosures detailed Trump’s stock portfolio, which included trades in companies that the President had discussed publicly.

The President is not prohibited from owning or trading stocks, and his disclosures were filed in accordance with federal requirements.

What Feinberg tried to do was turn a routine financial filing into an indictment, complete with a 90-second windup that sounded more like a cable news monologue than a press question.

Vance was not having it.

As Mediaite noted, the Vice President challenged the entire premise, calling it a “hell of a question” only after pointing out that it was barely a question at all.

This is what the White House press corps has become: reporters who use their time at the microphone to editorialize, then tack a question mark onto the end and expect the administration to play along.

Vance made clear that this administration will not.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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