WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance in a Friday speech defended President Trump’s foreign policy approach as a way of living out Catholic teachings on peace — hours before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at the White House to further negotiations amid the ongoing war with Russia.
“When President Trump talks about the need to bring peace, whether it’s in Russia and Ukraine, whether it’s in the Middle East, we of course have to recognize that as a policy oriented towards saving lives and carrying out one of Christ’s most important commandments,” the vice president said in remarks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC.
Vance, 40, has been one of the staunchest supporters of Trump’s “America First” policies — and gotten into sharp disagreements with Zelensky over the Ukraine leader’s approach to ending the three-year conflict with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military.
Zelensky called Vance in particular “too radical” last September, as the VP has opposed further US military or economic aid going to Kyiv, saying once, “I don’t care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”
When still serving in the US Senate, Vance also told CNN in December 2023 that it was in “America’s best interest … to accept Ukraine is going to have to cede some territory to the Russians.”
Zelensky has said he wants Ukraine to get all territories back that are currently occupied by Russia.
Earlier this week, Trump said he wants Ukraine to get as much land back as possible but that it will be difficult, since Putin doesn’t want to give any up.
Vance in his Friday address also championed Trump as a defender of Christian communities around the world through his commitment to religious liberty.
“I think we also must recognize it as an effort to protect the religious liberty of Christians, because over the past 40 years, it has often been historical Christian communities who bear the brunt of failed American foreign policy,” Vance told the audience of Catholics in the nation’s capital.
“And that is, in my view, perhaps the most important way in which Donald Trump has been a defender of Christian rights all over the world is he has the foreign policy that is oriented towards peace.”
Trump has said he wants to achieve peace between Russia and Ukraine, and is looking to sign a mineral deal with Zelensky on Friday that would establish a US-Ukraine joint mineral fund.
He doesn’t have a date set to meet face to face with Putin to discuss the war, but has sent his delegation to Saudi Arabia to meet with Russian officials to better relations.
Vance told Zelensky it’s not a good idea to “badmouth” Trump if he has Ukraine’s interests in mind in an interview last week after Trump called Zelensky a “dictator” — following the Ukrainian president’s assertion that Trump was living in a “disinformation space” created by Russia.
He also told European countries at the Munich Security Conference that the “biggest threat” to the continent is not Russia or China, but “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values” it shares with the US, including free speech, democratic elections and the defense of religious liberties.
