It didn’t take long for JD Vance to dismantle Kristen Welker’s gotcha question on gerrymandering

Vice President J.D. Vance shut down “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on Sunday after she questioned why Republicans would want to give themselves more legislative seats when President Donald Trump’s agenda is already so popular with the American people.

The Texas state Senate approved new congressional district maps on Saturday after Democrats from the Texas House of Representatives ended their “quorum break” on Aug. 18. Vance noted that some of the Democratic-controlled states the Texas Democrats fled to have been gerrymandered for decades.

“First of all, Kristen, you have to ask yourself why Democrats have gerrymandered their states aggressively in the past 10 to 20 years,” Vance said. “If you look, for example, at the popular vote in a lot of these states, in Massachusetts, where 32% of the residents of Massachusetts voted for Republicans, zero Republican federal representatives.”

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“All we’re doing frankly is trying to make the situation a little bit more fair on a national scale,” Vance continued. “The Democrats have gerrymandered their states really aggressively. We think there’s opportunities to push back against that, and that’s really all we’re doing.”

Welker moved on to ask about a Wall Street Journal report that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was reconsidering efforts to start a third party.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is pushing for a new congressional map to be approved by voters in response to the Texas redistricting, calling the new maps the “Election Rigging Response Act” in an Aug. 14 press conference. The new maps would seek to eliminate as many as five seats currently held by Republicans, further cementing Democrats’ political stranglehold over the state.

“Wake up, America. Wake up. You will not have a country if he rigs this election. You will have a president that will be running for a third term, mark my word,” Newsom claimed during the press conference.

California’s House consists of 43 Democrats and nine Republicans after the 2024 elections, as opposed to 40 Democrats and 12 Republicans after the 2022 midterm elections, according to Ballotpedia.

The map Illinois enacted before the 2022 midterm elections eliminated two Republican seats, including one held by then-Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who became an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building. Illinois, which lost a U.S. House seat in the 2020 census, went from 11 Democrats and seven Republicans following the 2020 election to 14 Democrats and three Republicans in the state House of Representatives after the 2022 midterms, according to Ballotpedia.

Despite Republicans Mitt Romney and Charlie Baker winning gubernatorial elections and Scott Brown winning a special election in Massachusetts, no Republican has been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996, when then-Republican Reps. Peter Blute and Peter Torkildson lost reelection bids, according to Ballotpedia.

New York redrew its congressional districts after the 2022 midterm elections, creating a map that endangered as many as six out of the 11 Republicans initially elected to the state’s House. Democrats had 19 seats to seven for Republicans when the votes were tallied after the 2024 election, a significant gain from the 15 seats they had after 2022’s midterms, according to Ballotpedia.

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