“Are You His Interpreter Or Are You His Vice President?”

Vice President JD Vance spent much of his first guest spot on The View defending Donald Trump and members of his administration, or doing a bit of clean up on some of the president’s remarks.

The interview, to promote his new book Communion, was confrontational yet always civil, to the point where he acknowledged that backstage, co-host Joy Behar had called him “fine.”

But he was challenged as he tried to claim that some of Trump’s remarks had been misinterpreted, including when the president said last week, “I love the inflation.”

“What he said is that he loves the fact that the inflation is going to come down when the war is over,” Vance said. “That’s what he said.”

“That’s not what he said,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg responded.

“Are you his interpreter, or are you his vice president?” Joy Behar interjected.

Vance’s appearance was a rarity: A member of the Trump administration, guesting on a program that currently is the target of an investigation spearheaded by the president’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr.

That probe, over the FCC’s equal time rule, was not brought up, even as ABC is challenging it as politically motivated.

During the hour, Vance, among other things, defended Trump’s response to the Jeffrey Epstein files, albeit he did not directly address the veracity of a bombshell New York Times report last week that the issue became such a crisis for the administration last year that the vice president and other officials held a strategy session in the Situation Room.

During the interview, Vance acknowledged that inflation was too high, but compared it to the levels of the Biden administration. He also said that the economy is being boosted by new investment, the impacts of which have not been fully realized.

The View co-hosts, though, seemed most skeptical as he tried to defend the administration’s policies on deportations.

There also was some back and forth when Goldberg pressed him on the issue of race.

More to come.