Trump praises JD Vance's fraud crackdown, says he's 'doing a great job with his team'

WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump commended Vice President JD Vance on Saturday, May 30, for leading an aggressive federal effort to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending.

The praise came during the president's latest appearance on Fox News' 'My View with Lara Trump.' Trump described the vice president's team as making major headway in addressing long-standing issues in federal programs.

JD Vance-led task force ramps up enforcement

The task force was established by executive order earlier this year and coordinates efforts across agencies to strengthen eligibility checks, improve data sharing, and pursue prosecutions for fraud in areas such as Medicaid, small business loans, COVID-era payments, and federal contracting.

Trump said in remarks shared by the White House Rapid Response account, "@VP's doing a great job with his team, and they've caught already hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud... If we find half of the fraud that's going on in this country—and we will—we're going to have a balanced budget very soon."

The administration has pointed to specific actions, including identifying $6.3 billion in suspect government contracts, deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments from California due to concerns about inadequate fraud controls, and pursuing recovery of over $135 billion in potential COVID overpayments.

Vance has described the initiative as a response to systemic weaknesses that grew under previous leadership. "No amount of fraud is too big or too small," he said earlier this year at a Turning Point USA event. "If you're defrauding the taxpayer, you ought to go to prison, and anybody who's helping you ought to go to prison too."

Vance also praised Trump's leadership during a recent White House Cabinet meeting. "I often find in the fraud task force that there's sometimes barriers that we need to break down," he said. "I'll come to the president and say, Mr President, I need your permission to do [something for] the fraud task force. And he'll cut me off and say, yes, go do it."

Targeting waste across programs and states

The fraud effort has included scrutiny of state-administered programs receiving federal funds, with a particular focus on Medicaid fraud in several Democratic-led states. Vance announced actions such as withholding anti-fraud funding from states not aggressively pursuing cases. 

In one instance, Vance referenced a Minnesota case where an elderly man allegedly died from neglect while a fraudulent caretaker continued billing the government.

Trump has previously dubbed Vance the "Fraud Czar," directing much of the focus toward areas with reported high levels of abuse. Meanwhile, the vice president has maintained that the issue transcends partisanship. "This should not be a partisan effort. Everybody should care about fraud," he said during a roundtable with state attorneys general.

Administration officials say the task force has exposed tens of billions in defrauded taxpayer money in its first two months and referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans for collection.

The White House maintains that recovering even a portion of lost funds would produce meaningful savings and help protect programs like Social Security from future shortfalls.