The Trump administration has responded to an incident over the weekend involving Vice President JD Vance and his three-year-old daughter, both of whom were surrounded and screamed at by pro-Ukraine liberals in Vermont.
Video shared by WCPO 9 News, which covers Cincinnati, Ohio, showed protesters chanting that “people are dying” and accused the Trump administration of “selling out” Ukrainians. The footage did not show how the confrontation began.
“Today while walking my 3 year old daughter a group of ‘Slava Ukraini’ protesters followed us around and shouted as my daughter grew increasingly anxious and scared,” Vance wrote on X Saturday afternoon.
“I decided to speak with the protesters in the hopes that I could trade a few minutes of conversation for them leaving my toddler alone. (Nearly all of them agreed),” he added. “It was a mostly respectful conversation, but if you’re chasing a 3-year-old as part of a political protest, you’re a sh*t person.”
“Slava Ukraini” is the national salute of the Ukrainian armed forces and translates to “Glory to Ukraine.” The phrase, used by those harassing Vance, has been widely adopted by pro-Ukrainian protesters throughout the United States.
As activists waved Ukrainian flags, voiced concerns about the ongoing conflict and hollered at the vice president that “people are dying,” he responded calmly and thoughtfully, addressing their fears about Russia and expressing hope for a resolution to the war.
“Russia certainly invaded Ukraine in 2022, but there needs to be a settlement,” Vance told the protesters as one woman began shouting over him. As he continued to speak respectfully, more protesters joined in, accusing the vice president of having “no integrity.”
Vance responded: “Ma’am, I am with my 3-year-old daughter now, and I told you, I would talk to you for five minutes,” adding that he did not take his child out “have people run around and yell at her.”
Vance’s communications team responded to the incident, including his communications director, William Martin, who clapped back at Jimmy Rushton, a self-described journalist and Kyiv-based foreign policy/security analyst.
In an X post, Rushton posted a video of what looks to be an intersection in the Vermont community where the incident took place, writing, “Video of the protest has emerged and it’s pretty clear Vance is lying; the protest was at the bottom of Vance’s street, which was closed by police. It would have been impossible for the protesters to ‘follow’ Vance and his family around as he claimed.”
But Martin responded: “Anyone that’s ever been here knows Jimmy is full of shit because the video of these Slava Ukraini scumbags harassing the Vice President’s daughter takes place on a completely different street nearby, as someone who grew up 2 miles from here I knew instantly where it happened.”
He added: “Notice the awning of the storefront right behind him? It actually confirms the VP’s tweet because they would have had to follow him in order to have this encounter in the first place. Jimmy might have paused to consider some of this if he weren’t such a dumb f**k.”
Also, video clips of the incident clearly show that Vance was harassed and yelled at by some of the demonstrators.
The back-and-forth between Vance, his daughter, and the protesters comes a few weeks after the vice president, along with President Donald Trump, engaged in a public spat with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenesky in the Oval Office.
The Ukrainian leader, according to reports, refused to sign a rare earth mineral rights agreement with the U.S. as promised and demanded more in terms of security guarantees from Trump.