Visiting the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Vice President JD Vance Thursday reflected on his journey of faith from a Christian to an atheist to a Roman Catholic as part of a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the legacy of the 37th president and the prospects for peace in Iran.<\/p>\n
In a conversation with Richard Nixon Foundation President and CEO Jim Byron, Vance mostly talked about his second book, \u201cCommunion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Byron noted the book had reached No. 1 on the bestseller list, Vance said with a chuckle, \u201cA few weeks ago some reporter asked me, `What\u2019s the difference between me and (Gov.) Gavin Newsom. \u2026 People actually bought my book.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance recounted how his grandmother defied stereotypes as a pistol-packing woman in Ohio who had weapons stashed throughout her home to always have one within arm\u2019s reach as she lost her mobility. But she was also someone with a \u201cvery deep religious faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she died, he said, and he went on to the war in Iraq, \u201cI sort of lost my faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the book was an exercise in meditating on the idea of why people raised in faith drift away.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf your only connection (to faith) is a loved one \u2026 then you\u2019re faith is always going to be at risk when that person passes away,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n
Vance said he went through a know-it-all phase as a young man.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was motivated by reason \u2026 by smarts,\u201d he said, adding he considered his grandmother then as \u201csuperstitious\u201d and called her a \u201csimpleton.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201carrogance from rejecting my faith\u201d led him to be \u201cmuch more open to \u2026 crazy ideas,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In college he was lured to the more intellectual arguments about Christianity, which led to his baptism as a Catholic in 2019 when he took St. Augustine\u2019s name, he said.<\/p>\n
He said to this day, \u201cI cringe when I think of the things I said back then\u201d during his \u201carrogant atheist phase.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Byron asked him about the chapter in the book titled, \u201cMore Money, More Problems,\u201d Vance made a joke about Sean Combs, the rapper who coined the phrase with one of his biggest hits.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a millennial so I believe that\u2019s the wisdom of the great Christian theologian, P. Diddy,\u201d Vance joked before pausing and apparently considering the rapper\u2019s scandalous trial and conviction for prostitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho we\u2019ve found out the last couple of years is not a Christian or a theologian,\u201d Vance said with a laugh. \u201cSee? I\u2019m going to get in trouble for all kinds of things and that\u2019s one of them. That will be an attack ad in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance said he was \u201cfascinated by Nixon as a character in history,\u201d and added that Nixon was \u201cenjoying a bit of a renaissance\u201d of late.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Watergate happened tomorrow it would have been a 12-hour news story,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n
The vice president compared the campaign finance cheating scandal and cover-up Nixon orchestrated that forced his resignation before he was impeached to the investigation of President Donald Trump\u2019s campaign\u2019s ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow the deep state took down Richard Nixon is not all that different from the same people and the same institutions that tried to do the same to Donald Trump in the first administration,\u201d Vance said. \u201cThere\u2019s a parallel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance added, \u201cI\u2019ve always liked Richard Nixon,\u201d who he said was a \u201cpolitical genius.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vance said the \u201ccoalition\u201d that Nixon built that won a landslide victory in 1972 was more like the one Trump did to win in 2024 than what President Ronald Reagan did in 1984.<\/p>\n
\u201cReagan could not have won his landslide in 2024,\u201d but Nixon could replicate what he did in 1972 in 2024, Vance said.<\/p>\n
Vance said Nixon also got out of the war in Vietnam \u201cout of a position of strength,\u201d and accused Trump\u2019s critics of \u201ctrying to change the mission\u201d Trump had when he started a war in Iran to \u201cdestroy\u201d the country\u2019s military and prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople say that\u2019s great but you should have a different objective,\u201d Vance said. \u201cHe refuses to give in to that impulse.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the Trump administration has achieved what it set out to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not over yet, but so far so good,\u201d Vance said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visiting the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Vice President JD Vance Thursday reflected on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,24264,6161,38421,23652,152007,28768,2176,23653],"class_list":["post-375129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-book","tag-faith","tag-latest","tag-linda","tag-reflects","tag-vance","tag-visit","tag-yorba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}