When Matt Tardio, host of Speak the Truth podcast, asked him if he would change anything about his previous comments about them, Vance responded:
That useful idiots thing — I was spouting, I was pretty pissed off, I was pretty mad. I gotta own it. I said it. But…yeah, that is a product of anger and a loss of temper and a lack of, admittedly, a lack of understanding of a lot of things that were probably going on behind closed doors.
Previously, Vance — who has spent the last several years fighting in Ukraine — had criticized his cousin and Trump for the tense exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office two weeks ago.
“They are wrong. The Russians are not about to forget our support for Ukraine. We are Vladimir Putin’s useful idiots,” he reportedly told the French newspaper Le Figaro.
The vice president later said in a statement, according to The Daily Beast, “I love my cousin Nate, and never spoke publicly about his service in Ukraine because I didn’t want to endanger his life more than it already was.”
“As far as his criticisms, I have no interest in arguing with him in public, but I do feel the need to address one issue in particular: his failed effort to contact me,” the vice president said, adding that his cousin could have contacted his mother, father, or sister, and that they are “regularly” in touch.
The vice president’s cousin expressed regret over his comments, telling Tardio: “You’re allowed to, like, say something and then be like, hey, now I saw some new evidence that shows me that that’s maybe not correct.”
He also said, regarding a recent interview he did on CNN where he was asked “tricky” questions, that he has learned he should not go on national television if he is not prepared.
“If I’m not prepared to pick up things on the fly and know how to respond to them, then I should keep my ass off national television,” he said.
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