While President Donald Trump on Wednesday traveled to China with an entourage of family (his son Eric Trump and daughter-in-law Lara Trump), billionaires (Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jensen Huang), and cabinet members (Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth), Vice President JD Vance stayed at the White House and held a press conference to promote what he called the President’s “bold step” of forming the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which Vance leads.
After the press conference, Vance published a long thread on social media to highlight some of the claims he made about the initiative, which he said has “uncovered tens of billions of dollars in defrauded taxpayer money, prosecuted dozens of fraudsters, and stopped billions in suspicious payments.”
Your boss has pardoned these individuals who were convicted by a jury of fraud. They were ordered by the court to compensate their victims.
Those pardons stopped the victims from receiving that compensation.
You want to stop fraud? Start in the Oval. pic.twitter.com/awYtIe8hvS
— Trek3871
Love Not Hate (@Trek3871D) May 14, 2026
Vance’s thread is being met with criticism, as detractors savage the hypocrisy of promoting an anti-fraud task force even as President Trump has pardoned more than 70 people convicted of massive fraud, many of whom have donated to Trump’s campaign. The pardons also mean those convicted are no longer required to pay more than $1 billion in restitution to the victims of their fraudulent schemes.
One X user responded to Vance’s thread by asking Grok, “has the government refunded any of this defrauded tax payer money back to its rightful owners, the tax payers?”
The AI app replied, “the task force has stopped billions in suspicious payments and is prosecuting fraudsters, but no direct refunds to individual taxpayers have been reported. Recovered funds go back to the federal treasury.”
[NOTE: Also at the press conference, Vance announced that the administration will withhold $1.3 billion in federal Medicaid payments from the state of California, and said, “The state of California has not taken fraud very seriously.”]
California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to Vance’s speech and wrote: “We hate fraud. But that’s NOT what this is. Vance and Oz are attacking programs that keep seniors and people with disabilities OUT of nursing homes. Pretty sick. Why has IHSS grown in California? It’s simple: Because California is keeping more people OUT of far more expensive nursing homes!”
Pushing the theme that the administration is unconcerned with rising costs everyday Americans face, Newsom added to his response video of Trump, right before leaving for his trip to China, saying he doesn’t think about the economic woes of the American people impacted by the cost of the war in Iran. “Not even a little bit,” Trump said.
Donald Trump just said it himself:
He doesn’t care about the American people. https://t.co/TWti8rGbEX— Governor Gavin Newsom (@CAgovernor) May 12, 2026