'Insane': JD Vance hammered online after threatening World Cup soccer fans
Vice President JD Vance stirred swift outrage online Tuesday after delivering a warning to international visitors attending next year’s FIFA World Cup in the United States.
“We will have visitors probably from close to a hundred countries,” he said at a White House event. “We want them to come, we want them to celebrate, we want them to watch the games.”
“But when the time is up, they’ll have to go home, otherwise they will have to talk to Secretary Noem,” he added about Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was sitting a few chairs down from him.
The remarks, which came amid the Trump administration’s hardline immigration crackdown, quickly ignited social media as critics lobbed their own warnings to visitors of the global sporting event.
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“Honestly, just watch it from the safety of your sofa, folks.” UK-based traditional media illustrator Luke Ridge posted to his Bluesky account.
“Quite a way to motivate foreign tourists,” Wall Street Journal chief foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov posted to X.
“Trying to decide if Vance is our most sycophantic VP of all time,” University of Illinois professor Kate Clancy wrote on Bluesky. “Please, no one come to the World Cup. We don't deserve your tourism dollars and you don't deserve the dangers.”
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann predicted the World Cup would relocate altogether.
“Relax on Vance's insane threat to jail international World Cup ticket holders if they don't leave the country immediately rather than stay here and spend tourism money,” Olbermann wrote on X. “Watch. FIFA will be moving the World Cup elsewhere.”
“Wow weird no one wants to come here,” podcaster John Brooks concluded on Bluesky.