The Right Way: Top of the News

Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Top of the News

JD Vance Just Gave Jessica Tarlov a Patriotism Lesson She Won’t Forget

Watching Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters take turns dismantling Jessica Tarlov's talking points on The Five is one of my not-so-guilty pleasures. But Tuesday delivered something even better: Vice President JD Vance stepped into the ring himself, and within seconds, he exposed a glaring blind spot in how the left thinks about loving your own country.

Tarlov tried to explain away a brutal new NBC News poll on American patriotism by chalking it up to simple political math. "Some of it is obviously partisan," she said, arguing that pride in the country naturally dips "when your party's out of power."

"I don't think that's right," Vance said. "Why does that need to be true? That if your party's out of power, you should have less pride in your country?"

He didn't stop there. Vance pointed out that Republicans never operated this way, even when they hated who was in the White House. "I guarantee that when Barack Obama was president or Joe Biden was pretending to be president, that you had Republicans who still said they're proud of America, they're proud of our military, they're proud of the great people of our country, they're proud of our natural beauty," he said.

Then came the gut punch. Vance cited the new NBC News polls, which found that only 29% of Democrats currently say they're proud of their country, and he wasn't shy about where he thinks the blame belongs.

"What seems to me so bizarre about this is that we've allowed a culture to develop where people feel like the country is the country's politics," he said. He went further, tying that mindset to something darker: "I think that's actually connected to the violent rhetoric where if you disagree with somebody, you can justify killing them. It's really, really a bad thing."

He added, "I wish Democrats, all of them, were proud of our country. We should be proud of our country."