Vance says deportations should start with 1M, defends 'thought experiment' giving parents more votes

WASHINGTON -- Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance defended his past comments on women and families without children, the Trump campaign's proposals to deport undocumented immigrants and more in a wide-ranging interview with "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl, which airs in full on Sunday morning.

Despite the race tightening in recent weeks as Vice President Kamala Harris has taken over the Democratic ticket, the Ohio senator emphasized that he and Trump are "extremely confident" in their chances of winning the election.

"I think we're going to win. I also think that we have to work as hard as possible for the remainder of the election to try to persuade Americans to vote for us," Vance told Karl. "That's the name of the game."

Vance elaborates on 'pro-family' views

The senator has come under fire for repeated comments made about childless Americans, including one during an interview in July 2021 with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson where Vance described leading Democrats including Harris as "childless cat ladies."

In a speech before a conservative group, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which preceded that interview, Vance also suggested that people with children should have extra votes.

"The Democrats are talking about giving the vote to 16-year-olds, but let's do this instead," Vance said in the speech. "Let's give votes to all children in this country, but let's give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power."

Vance told Karl his notion was a "thought experiment" in response to Democratic proposals to allow younger voters, and not a policy stance.

"Do I regret saying it? I regret that the media and the Kamala Harris campaign has, frankly, distorted what I said," he said. "They turn this into a policy proposal that I never made. ... I said, I want us to be more pro-family, and I do want us to be more pro-family."

Vance added there are "policy positions behind my view that the country should become more pro-family." He went on to talk about the economic struggles that families are facing, citing the increased cost of goods, rising medical bills and other costs.

The senator said that he and Trump have a plan to lower the cost of housing and food but didn't provide details during the interview.

Trump said in an interview with Fox News last week that his solution to bringing down costs was, "We're gonna drill, baby, drill."

Trump has also advocated for more tariffs and tax cuts as part of his economic policies.

Vance responds to mass deportation plan: 'Let's start with 1 million'

The senator brought up the ongoing migrant crisis and again blamed Harris and the Biden administration's policies, such as ending "Remain in Mexico."

When asked how he and Trump would accomplish their stated goal of mass deporting as many as 20 million immigrants - a proposal experts previously told ABC News would be a "nightmare" -- Vance said they would take a "sequential approach."

"I mean do you go knock on doors and ask people for their papers? What do you do," Karl asked.

"You start with what's achievable," Vance said. "I think that if you deport a lot of violent criminals and frankly if you make it harder to hire illegal labor, which undercuts the wages of American workers, I think you go a lot of the way to solving the illegal immigration problem."

"I think it's interesting that people focus on, well, how do you deport 18 million people? Let's start with 1 million. That's where Kamala Harris has failed. And then we can go from there," Vance said.

Vance agrees with Trump that VP picks don't matter to most voters

During an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago last month, and just a short time after Trump announced Vance as his running mate, the former president raised some eyebrows when asked whether Vance would be ready to be president "on Day 1" if needed.

"You can have a vice president who's outstanding in every way, and I think JD is, I think that all of them would've been, but you're not voting that way. You're voting for the president. You're voting for me," Trump said, without addressing whether Vance would be ready on "Day 1."

In the interview with ABC News, Vance said he agreed with Trump's view.

"They're voting for Donald Trump or for Kamala Harris, not for JD or Tim Walz," he said. "I also think that he's right that the politics of this really don't matter that much."

However, Vance stressed he's "absolutely" sure Trump is confident he could step up as a commander in chief if needed.

"What I think that he does believe because he made it the main focus of his vetting process, is, 'Do I think this person can be president on day one if, God forbid, something happens? Yes,'" Vance said.

Vance repeats false claims about Tim Walz's policies

During a rally in Montana on Friday night, Trump pushed falsehoods about Democratic vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz's policies concerning transgender youth, accusing the Minnesota governor of signing "a law letting the state kidnap children to change their gender."

Walz has signed legislation aimed at protecting the rights of transgender individuals to access gender-affirming care, which can include gender-affirming surgeries but also services like counseling and non-surgical medical procedures like hormone therapy and puberty suppressants. The law does not allow what Trump claimed.

Vance said he didn't fully watch the late-night rally but repeated some of those false claims in the interview with Karl, saying Walz "supported taking children away from their parents if the parents don't consent to gender reassignment."

He referenced Walz's recent statement at a rally accusing Republicans of not "minding their own damn business."

"One way of minding your own damn business, Jon, is to not try to take my children away from me ... if I have different world views than you."

Karl pushed back, calling the "kidnapping" characterization "crazy."

The April 2023 law that Walz signed in the wake of other states curtailing or banning access to gender-affirming care has been mischaracterized by Republicans.

The Minnesota law protects patients who come to the state to receive gender-affirming health care, even if the patients live in a state where such care is illegal. The law also specifically allows the state's courts to assume "temporary emergency jurisdiction" in cross-state child custody disputes where a child has been unable to obtain gender-affirming care and is in Minnesota to do so.

The executive director of LGBTQ+ advocacy group OutFront told The Washington Post that under the law, courts can settle parental disputes over whether their child should get this care, but it doesn't result in the parent against such care losing custody of their child.

Vance pushes back on white supremacist Trump once dined with who recently insulted his wife's race

Karl also asked Vance about a racist attack targeting his wife, Usha, from white nationalist live-streamer, Nick Fuentes, who Trump dined with in November 2022.

In a recent livestream, Fuentes said, "What kind of man marries somebody named Usha? Clearly, he doesn't value his racial identity."

"My attitude to these people attacking my wife is, she's beautiful, she's smart. What kind of man marries Usha? A very smart man and very lucky man," Vance said of his wife during the ABC News interview. "If these guys want to attack me or attack my views, my policy views, [or] my personality, come after me. But don't attack my wife. She's out of your league."

Trump faced significant blowback for dining with Fuentes, along with rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) back in November 2022 at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. At the time, Trump said he did not know who Fuentes was and that he was brought to the dinner by Ye. In a statement given exclusively to Fox News Digital, Trump said, "I had no idea what his views were, and they weren't expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn't have been accepted."

But the former president has not denounced Fuentes' white nationalist views beyond that, or the recent comments about Usha Vance.

In the interview, Vance contended Trump had "issued plenty of condemnations," and did not question the former president's dinner with Fuentes.

"The one thing I like about Donald Trump, Jon, is that he actually will talk to anybody. But just because you talk to somebody doesn't mean you endorse their views," Vance said, adding that Trump has been close and friendly with his family.

ABC News' Quinn Scanlan contributed to this report.