JD Vance’s ‘The View’ Appearance Draws 3.3 Million Viewers, Show’s Most-Watched Episode in Over a Year

Vice President JD Vance’s visit to ABC’s The View drew the show’s largest audience in more than a year as he promoted his new book and answered questions on Trump administration policy.

Vice President JD Vance’s appearance on the June 16 episode of ABC’s The View drew roughly 3.331 million viewers, making it the show’s most-watched telecast since its post-election day episode in 2024 and its second most-watched episode in nearly five and a half years, according to Nielsen Media Research’s Live+Same Day Big Data Plus Panel Program Ratings.

The View averaged 2.942 million viewers for the week, up 22 percent from the prior week.

Vance appeared on the program to promote his book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith. The book traces Vance’s return to Christianity and conversion to Catholicism, following his bestselling 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

The vice president announced the book ahead of Easter, saying in a post on X, “I’ve been writing this book for a long time, and I’m honored to finally be able to share the full story with you all. Communion is about my personal journey and how I found my way back to faith.”

According to the book’s description, Communion is an “intimate account” of why Vance drifted from the Christianity of his youth and what led him back to faith. It also describes his “spiritual exploration” of Christianity through different stages of life, including as a child, husband, father, and leader, and says the book in some ways picks up where Hillbilly Elegy left off.

During the June 16 episode of  The View, Vance defended Trump on affordability after Joy Behar said the president had called affordability a hoax and questioned money being poured into a ballroom, reflecting pool, “Arch de Trumpe,” and White House cage match while Americans were struggling. Vance said Trump’s point was that “The idea that Republicans caused the affordability problem is a hoax,” adding that inflation reached nine percent under the Biden administration and was at 3.5 percent, which he called “too high,” while saying the administration was doing everything it could to bring it down to 2.5 percent. When Ana Navarro said Trump had said he loved inflation, Vance said Trump meant “he loves the fact that the inflation is going to come down when this war is over.” 

Vance also defended Trump over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files after Sunny Hostin asked about a New York Times report that described Vance as a leading voice behind the scenes for the files’ release. Vance said people should not believe everything they read in newspapers and said reports can contain things that are true, false, or missing context. He said he wanted “full transparency” because Jeffrey Epstein was “clearly a sex predator” connected to wealthy and powerful people, but he disputed the idea that the White House was not committed to transparency, pointing to the Epstein Files Transparency Act and saying “Jeffrey Epstein hated Donald Trump” and that Trump “literally reported Jeffrey Epstein to the police.”