JD Vance Just Gave Jessica Tarlov a Patriotism Lesson She Won’t Forget

Watching Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters take turns dismantling Jessica Tarlov's talking points on The Five is one of my not-so-guilty pleasures. But Tuesday delivered something even better: Vice President JD Vance stepped into the ring himself, and within seconds, he exposed a glaring blind spot in how the left thinks about loving your own country.

Tarlov tried to explain away a brutal new NBC News poll on American patriotism by chalking it up to simple political math. "Some of it is obviously partisan," she said, arguing that pride in the country naturally dips "when your party's out of power."

"I don't think that's right," Vance said. "Why does that need to be true? That if your party's out of power, you should have less pride in your country?"

He didn't stop there. Vance pointed out that Republicans never operated this way, even when they hated who was in the White House. "I guarantee that when Barack Obama was president or Joe Biden was pretending to be president, that you had Republicans who still said they're proud of America, they're proud of our military, they're proud of the great people of our country, they're proud of our natural beauty," he said.

Then came the gut punch. Vance cited the new NBC News polls, which found that only 29% of Democrats currently say they're proud of their country, and he wasn't shy about where he thinks the blame belongs.

"What seems to me so bizarre about this is that we've allowed a culture to develop where people feel like the country is the country's politics," he said. He went further, tying that mindset to something darker: "I think that's actually connected to the violent rhetoric where if you disagree with somebody, you can justify killing them. It's really, really a bad thing."

He added, "I wish Democrats, all of them, were proud of our country. We should be proud of our country."

“We should be proud of our country. Why does it need to be true that when your party is out of power, you need to have less pride in your country?”@VP discusses why he thinks Democrats don’t want the United States to win. Are you proud to be American? pic.twitter.com/lsrAusJec5
— The Five (@TheFive) June 16, 2026

Vance was 100% correct. The NBC News survey released Sunday confirms exactly the kind of partisan rot he was describing. Just 56% of Americans overall say they're "extremely" or "very" proud to be American, while 29% report having little or no national pride whatsoever. The split by party is staggering: 90% of Republicans say they're proud of their country, compared to only 29% of Democrats. Age makes it worse. Roughly three-quarters of Americans 65 and older feel proud of the country, but that number collapses to just 36% among adults 18 to 34.

And here's the part Democrats really don't want to hear: voters think their party cares more about hating Trump than building anything. The same survey found that, overall, voters said Democrats are too focused on opposing Trump by a six-point margin. Among swing voters, the people Democrats desperately need to win back, that margin exploded to 23 points.

Tarlov tried to dress up Democrat anti-Americanism as a normal political mood swing. But Vance had the receipts and proved her wrong. It’s Democrats who are driving down the patriotism numbers in this country, and it’s because they’re out of power. When 71% of Democrats can't muster pride in their own country, that goes way beyond partisanship. They’ve tied their sense of patriotism to the wrong things. They’ve made hating America part of its identity, and the voters they need most are noticing.

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