{"id":272556,"date":"2026-06-20T11:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/272556\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T11:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:15:08","slug":"opinion-will-the-real-jd-vance-please-stand-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/272556\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Will the Real JD Vance Please Stand Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">\u201cI guess he really has become Catholic. I happen to like the line: \u201cBut I found liberation in guilt.\u201d And so I said, hey, he\u2019s the real deal. Welcome, welcome, JD. I\u2019m Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. And this week I am here with two of my favorite people, columnist Carlos Lozada and contributing writer E.J. Dionne. Guys, it is so fantastic to see you. Thank you. Likewise. Good to be here. I bet you say that to all your favorite people. I cannot confirm nor deny. How many favorites can you really have. I\u2019m not taking your abuse. I\u2019m not. I take it all back. I hate you both. But while I hate you both, I am extremely excited to talk to you guys this week because we\u2019re going to dig in to Vice President JD Vance\u2019s new memoir, \u201cCommunion.\u201d It\u2019s all about Vance\u2019s faith journey, how he grew up Evangelical. He lost his religion eventually came around and embraced Catholicism. So we\u2019re going to talk about the book. We\u2019re going to talk about his relationship to faith and what all of it reveals about the man who may be the future of the MAGA movement. But first, I feel like we should do a little grounding. So I want us to go back 10 years to 2016, when vances breakout book, \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d was published. So at the time he was a young graduate, from Yale Law School. He was working for venture capitalist Peter Thiel. And the book, which told the story of his extremely rocky upbringing, was welcomed as something of like the Rosetta Stone for explaining to blue state Americans in particular, the class dynamics of the emerging Trump era. So I want from each of you to just give me your thumbnail impression of Vance at that time, based on that book. So I\u2019d never heard of JD Vance before \u201cHillbilly Elegy.\u201d I\u2019m assuming that was the case for a lot of people. And so my entire view of him was mediated through the book. He seemed like a thoughtful person. He\u2019s a good writer. This \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d is a much better written book than \u201cCommunion.\u201d And he was trying to give flesh to those debates over clash and culture and economics that were emerging around the 2016 election. It was a Trump book that never really mentioned Donald Trump. My friend Jennifer Senior, who was at the time a book critic at The New York Times called the book \u201ca civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election,\u201d and I think Vance fulfilled that role very well. E.J.? I think that there are two things about this book that relate to that one. One, clearly, this is the second book in a contract, or was originally envisioned as the follow up to a very successful book, because he gives it away in the book where he says, this original manuscript was done a long time ago. And I think what that does is two things. One, I think he\u2019s trying to clean up some of the impressions left by the first book. He\u2019s kind of kinder to his family, kinder to everybody here, because he got some real criticism for how he treated Appalachia in that book. And secondly, he decided not to publish whatever he wrote in that first draft, because he then suddenly became a senator and the vice presidential nominee and vice president. So this book has a feeling of several books at once. The sequel to \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d the story of his conversion to Catholicism, and then a lot of political stuff about how to understand him. So I think at times you could see the seams of these three or four projects as you read the book. Oh, definitely. It has a cobbled together feel. But Carlos, how do you think this new book kind of fits into or builds on the story he\u2019s been telling about himself? Yeah, everything with JD Vance is about transformations. It\u2019s about journeys that he\u2019s taking from one version of himself to another. In \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d well, first, it\u2019s a story of his ancestors moving from the mountains of Kentucky to Southwest Ohio, where he had a chaotic, kind of abusive childhood. He makes it to the marines, then to Ohio State, then Yale Law and adapts and becomes a different person at each step. \u201cCommunion,\u201d which is published almost exactly 10 years after \u201cHillbilly Elegy,\u201d is about a different passage. It\u2019s about his move from his early Christianity to atheism to Catholicism, so much so that he is even now engaging in political and doctrinal battles with the pope. It\u2019s not bad for someone who was baptized less than seven years ago. It\u2019s almost like he\u2019s filling in another side of the story that is happening at the same time as the action in \u201cHillbilly Elegy.\u201d And in fact, as E.J. said, he started writing this book right after finishing that first one. And by the way, it\u2019s funny that he has gotten into that fight with the pope. At one point, he has a sentence. My basic view is that too many American Catholics treat the pope as a political figure, and should instead keep a more respectful distance from Vatican politics. And I do think this book is going to be excavated quite a bit for sentences like that it would at least seem to me contradict some of his other behavior. Yeah, I think if we\u2019re looking for consistency or hypocrisy or there\u2019s a lot to get into there. But as far as both of you have mentioned that he spent a lot of time in \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d disparaging his background, his family, the culture he was raised in, and this is a much more conciliatory, almost apologetic tone. So what is your read on that. Is this some epiphany he\u2019s had. Is this more cynical. Kind of. Carlos you first. I mean, I think people do evolve over time, especially if the first &#8211; if you\u2019re prominent or important or interesting enough to write multiple memoirs, \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d was, you\u2019re right, very disparaging. I thought at the time and rereading it now of the world that he grew up in. He talks about the hub of misery that he experienced in the 80s and the 90s and how it was almost always the fault of those who were suffering it. And he blamed the culture. He didn\u2019t blame big, amorphous political or economic forces. It\u2019s very much a personal responsibility kind of book. Whereas in \u201cCommunion\u201d he is far more understanding his grandmother, his mamaw, looms very large in both books. And the first book, he quotes her as saying, \u201cnever be like those effing losers who think the deck is stacked against them.\u201d And the second book, she\u2019s kind of a softer presence. He says she\u2019s the woman whose life has taught me the most about Christian love and virtue. She\u2019s still intense, but a little bit less so. \u201cCommunion\u201d is less about the dysfunction of his early life, and more about the faith that he drew out of that life. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s necessarily a contradiction. It\u2019s a matter of emphasis, I think. See, I think if he did a trilogy, the third volume would be how I burned one bridge after another, because I think one of the striking things about him is this constant reinvention, as Carlos suggested. So this book, he\u2019s trying to put himself right with Appalachia after that insult, but then he goes and trashes his Yale Law School background. And again, some ironies in the book. He seems to trash the Ivy League\u2019s meritocratic structure, which is very odd for somebody who goes into law school. Silicon Valley makes a lot of money, runs for Senate, gets elected vice president. That looks pretty meritocratic upward mobile to me. But he trashes Yale Law School and wants to make himself a kind of a Paladin of the people. You\u2019re not sure where he is going to land. And that\u2019s why I suspect the third volume of the trilogy. If it comes, we\u2019re going to go to a different place again. I don\u2019t know if he\u2019s going to become a Southern Baptist again, but it just does not seem stable to me. Oh, I\u2019d be there for that. As a lapsed Southern Baptist, I mean, \u201cCommunion\u201d does read to me like a book by a man who is a deeply anxious personality, carries serious, real scars from his childhood. Who doesn\u2019t really know who he is even now and certainly doesn\u2019t know what he wants people to think about him. I mean, as you note, he denounces early elites, but he quotes them endlessly in this book and he surrounds himself with them in his life. He decries materialism, but he\u2019s a former venture capitalist. His mentor is Peter Thiel, and it\u2019s very hard to even get a handle on what he wants as a Catholic from the church and specifically the Pope in terms of involvement with worldly issues. Sometimes he wants less, sometimes he wants more. His arguments about what he wants from society are also a little confused. I mean, he laments that work obsessed delivery dads don\u2019t get to spend time hanging out with their family anymore. Not to nitpick, but married dads today spend much more time taking care of their kids than they did in the good old days. And he laments that professional couples outsource chores that keep you grounded in real life. O.K, great, but the chores he lists are pretty much all what used to be done by full time Housewives, which is a model I\u2019m betting wouldn\u2019t fly in his own house. So when you boil it all down, he basically strikes me as someone who grew up with tremendous instability and is constantly braced for disaster. And he thought that clawing his way out of poverty would solve not just his economic troubles, but all of his existential angst. And then he wound up disappointed that the elite world he landed in had its own deep flaws, which, O.K, duh. But the Catholic Church has given him structure and a sense of history and permanence. And now he seems upset that he can\u2019t find a way to map that onto the world outside of the church. And I think that\u2019s what I took away from this is just like somebody deeply, still searching for something that\u2019s going to make him feel better and just kind of desperate to take what has worked for him and map it onto everything. No, Michelle. I think there is a one sentence proof of this, or at least indicator of the truth of what you just said. The sentence that really hit me as the truest sentence in the book is when he writes, I am permanently terrified that things will unravel. And it\u2019s quite clear that in the solidity the long term existence of the Roman Catholic Church, the complexity. But of clarity of its theology clearly appeals to him. E.J., you mentioned the word unravel that he\u2019s a man afraid of things coming apart of things unraveling. And that\u2019s actually a point of consistency with \u201cHillbilly Elegy.\u201d When you said it, I started looking through my copy and because it rang a bell and he says that when he was about nine years old, things began to unravel at home. That\u2019s and those kind of things, Mark, you as a child from the very beginning, this is of constant fear of his. I see what you mean, Michel. When you think that this is a book that\u2019s scattered, that\u2019s a guy who doesn\u2019t really know who he is, what he wants. I don\u2019t disagree with that. My interpretation would also be both a little kinder, but also just a bit more cynical at the same time. I think this is a book by a guy who has deep political aspirations. By the way, I think the guy who wrote \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d also did. It\u2019s when I finished that book. At the time, I was like, this guy\u2019s going to run for something. But I think that what he\u2019s trying to do in \u201cCommunion\u201d is to satisfy all sorts of different constituencies. And so what looks like scattershot, kind of all over the place is him thinking like, O.K, this is for this group, this is for that group. And that\u2019s what politicians, especially sitting politicians do. \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d managed to have widespread bipartisan appeal because it confirmed the elite liberal suspicions about the working class pathologies of like the Trump voters, but also affirmed up by your bootstraps ethos of conventional conservatism. So there\u2019s something for everyone. Here there\u2019s something for everyone. Approach doesn\u2019t work as well. Because as E.J. said, it\u2019s multiple books at once. Here\u2019s some religion, here\u2019s some stuff about why social media is bad. Here\u2019s why those people at Yale Law School were too ambitious. People read \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d in order to understand, the anger and the needs and the concerns of the White working class Vance himself was just a vehicle for that understanding. He doesn\u2019t have that luxury anymore of that distance. We read \u201cCommunion\u201d to understand JD Vance. And so not only is the book not as good, but it\u2019s a harder sell. So the part that I really found most intriguing was what he is kind of peddling it as which is his journey, his faith journey. I grew up as noted, I grew up Southern Baptist. I kind of totally relate to his angsting about the Protestantism that he grew up in and all its emotion based and the charisma and so much of it being based on whether you\u2019re having a very intense personal experience with God. And I totally get how he wound up drawn to Catholicism. But I\u2019m coming at this as someone obviously, who grew up in the Hellfire and brimstone side of this. I want the take of you guys because. Because you\u2019re cradle Catholics. Both of you Yeah I still am one. I want to say on that point, I said, I guess he really has become Catholic. I happen to the line. But I found liberation in guilt. And so I said, hey, he\u2019s the real deal. Welcome welcome, JD Yeah, right. Exactly and then he talks about guilt and forgiveness and the importance of forgiveness. That\u2019s all pretty conventional stuff. And there are moments when I\u2019m reading this and I say somebody with my views could have written some of this, which surprises somebody like me with JD Vance, his analysis of rerum novarum, the great social encyclical of Pope Leo 13, which has inspired the current Pope Leo. Written when industrialism was on the rise in defense of workers\u2019 rights, in defense of a decent society where people earned a family wage. Those pages are pretty damn good. As a description of all of that. The problem is he has a really tough time reconciling that with the policies of the Trump administration with some of the basic policies of the Republican Party. He picks a little bit here and a little bit there to say, see, we\u2019re consistent with this. But I think, again, it\u2019s this conflict between JD Vance, who really wants to be sometimes this social justice Catholic and at other times still needs to conform to his role in the Republican Party. Now, I suspect there is going to be some knocks at some of what he says about business from our friends over at the Wall Street Journal. I\u2019m very anxious to see how they deal with this part of JD Vance. But he has a lot of trouble here. The other thing that strikes me and Carlos and I talked a little bit about this before, it\u2019s not exactly Christian nationalism, but it may be Christian nationalism Lite because he\u2019s obsessed with the collapse of Christian civilization. And he gets really angry at Europe for becoming more secular. There\u2019s a moment when he goes into an empty church in France. It turns out I think there was somebody in there, as he notes, and he says, this is what\u2019s happened to the faith of Europe. And, he wants to say that Europe and the world have forgotten the virtue of Christian civilization. I guess, without wanting to say that actually coming to terms with modernity, for Catholicism, for Christianity was actually a pretty good idea after the rise of Nazism and fascism. So, on the one hand, there are moments where you say this looks authentic, but then you\u2019re still left with some real questions about how does he really reconcile his actual politics with what he\u2019s writing here. Carlos, do you want to get theological before we dig more into the politics of it all. Sure, yeah. As a product of Catholic grade school, high school and college, Notre Dame guy, I\u2019ll go for it. Bring it. Go go, Irish. Bring it. So the way in which he loses his initial faith early on is that he kind of gets bored by it. He says Christianity felt too wishy-washy. He became an atheist later military and in college and certainly at, aggressively secular Yale. But he really says that when he comes home from Iraq in 2006, he was no longer a Christian. And so what\u2019s interesting to me is that what draws him to Catholicism is not any kind of dark night of the soul, not some big transformational experience. Though he does mention some moments, but it\u2019s really the intellectual core of the faith. He thinks and reasons his way to Catholicism. He\u2019s asking himself the big questions. Why does an all powerful and loving God create a world with so much suffering in it. He thinks of his own upbringing, where he says he suffered the mortal sin of despair. And he finds some solace in Catholic thought and theology on this. He\u2019s drawn to the sacraments to the ongoing practice of the faith of grace as a process, as a ritual. But he really seems brought to this more by his mind than his heart. And he even he even says this. He says, I am most comfortable engaging with the intellectual elements of the faith. He has to push himself to be more sacramental, not just intellectual, to pray, not just to reason. And I was wondering what you thought about this because in my experience, it doesn\u2019t seem like an uncommon path for adult converts to Catholicism. Since they\u2019re not born in the faith, they\u2019re not immediately steeped in the sacramental traditions. They often drawn to it by that very deep intellectual tradition of the church, which, of course, is very appealing. I\u2019m not saying one is a better route than the other. In my father\u2019s house, there are many mansions, right. But do you see this in what appeals to converts to the faith. I feel that very much. And I think that\u2019s a really good description of what he says here. And I think that sense of Catholicism as an intellectual faith really does appeal to a lot of people. And at this moment, I think the flow into the church is more from if you will, conservative intellectuals, people who look at the long tradition of the church. It\u2019s really I want the wisdom of the ancients and the early church. And so, yes, I think he\u2019s in that stream. And this is when I could sneak in my favorite theological innovation that was in his book. This is early on. This is more the \u201cHillbilly Elegy\u201d part of the book, but you have the NRA theology of salvation here, where he is arguing with his mama, his grandma about if people die and are buried, how can they go to heaven. And then they go back and forth and JD finally comes up with this great metaphor. I quote from the book, he quoting himself. So the soul is like the bullet and the body is like the casing. And God shoots off the bullet to heaven, but the casing gets trapped here on Earth. That was wonderful. I think probably we had some sermons on that when I was growing up. I think what struck me, and obviously the intellectualism seems to be more what he\u2019s comfortable with. He does mention that he grew up and learned to be very suspicious of emotion driven experiences. But also, as the child of dysfunction and abuse, and had alcoholism and substance abuse in his family. And he saw all this complete chaos, it makes very clear that he likes the structure of Catholicism, which is not which is just yards beyond what the Protestants can ever come up with. The ritual that there is a program toward working toward having your soul be ready for heaven. It\u2019s not just that it happens in a flash. And I totally get this. I always found this a problem with the faith tradition that I grew up in, and it\u2019s just. But it clearly was an issue for him as well. And he talks about how it isn\u2019t just a one and done thing. The Catholic Church kind of has a program and a ritual and some structure for everything. And for a kid who grew up with no structure and no sense of permanence, he clearly loves being able to track Catholic history going way, way, way, way, way, way back. But again, what disappoints me is that such a tiny fraction of what\u2019s in this book, and he has to obviously, because he is a sitting vice president with very deep political ambitions, he has to make it political. So I want to talk about that and get a little bit granular here. He delves into his political views, but it is notable that beyond lightly touching on immigration and tariffs, he mostly avoids talking about his boss and what he\u2019s been asked to do in his current position. What do you guys make of that. Carlos, you want to start. Sure I mean, he\u2019s in a tough spot with Trump, right. Trump essentially put Vance in the pole position to assume leadership of MAGA down the road when he picked Vance for BP. So, he\u2019s bound to him in a way. But now that Trump\u2019s popularity has severely declined, Vance needs to find some ways to separate himself from the boss. Ironically, it sounds a lot like what happened to Kamala Harris. And that did not work out super, super well. It\u2019s not a great job, BP. Except, of course, that Trump may not necessarily endorse Vance. The way Biden endorsed Harris, he might let Rubio and Vance duke it out. We can get into that later. So Vance needs to be both a Mega Man in this book, but also a different man. His own man. And in this case, what he decides on is to be a faith man. So almost it\u2019s like putting Trump in Pence in a blender. Which is not necessarily the most appetizing concoction that you get at the end. I was thinking Trump, Pence and Vance walk into a bar. How do we finish that. But the political part of the book, I found actually most disturbing of all. And I agree with you utterly, Michel. It\u2019s remarkable how little Trump is in the book. There\u2019s just enough Trump so he can get by to the next day, and the next month and the next year, and doesn\u2019t get attacked by Trump. But where he does go, actually, Trumpy is really disturbing. There\u2019s a moment of Putin apology in the book. He holds on to the idea, which is in a way, already been discredited by the facts that Ukraine can\u2019t win this war. And he actually talks about an argument he has with someone where he\u2019s saying that Putin is actually popular in Russia. It\u2019s not just oppression. Every independent, objective effort to measure Putin\u2019s popularity, he writes, had found high levels of support among rank and file Russians. Why does he want to still defend Putin in this book. I don\u2019t know. And then the last area where I think the politics is particularly disturbing, and it\u2019s who he is in his defense of nativism. He goes, he says, well, I\u2019m not really nativist. We have a right to control immigration. But the harshness, harsh moments in that party tries to say, they\u2019re not harsh, but it\u2019s a very hard line look. So that is the clearest signaling to the omega part of the party, which seems like his authentic view of the world. But I think political folks are going to focus a lot on that and say, I guess this is who he is politically. It may be that\u2019s the most authentic part of the book. One one thing I found interesting is he\u2019s semi quasi apologizes for the childless cat lady\u2019s comment, but he doesn\u2019t apologize for the reading. The cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. He So why, by the way. Correct I mean, of course, the lie that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Ohio and why one and not the other because childless cat ladies was all on him. Whereas just JD Vance, the thing he said to Tucker Carlson in 2021, the lie about Haitian immigrants. Trump embraced that. And so he. And so there\u2019s no way JD Vance is going to set that aside in the same way that he tries to set aside the childless cat ladies, and the lie about the Haitians fits in with his views on immigration. So he doesn\u2019t really want to do that, but he doesn\u2019t. He can\u2019t afford to alienate women in large numbers, older women, women without children. So he\u2019s got to back away from that one for political reasons Yeah, I did find the approach to women in this book fascinating. One area that I thought was particularly interesting was his handling of his marriage. He\u2019s taken a lot of criticism and in office for not standing up for his wife. She\u2019s been criticized as overly ambitious. He goes out of his way in this book to say that ushe has actually never been the kind of ambitious he\u2019s criticizing and that he didn\u2019t love her at all for that. And he talks about his just complete dependence on her and how fantastic she is. And I\u2019m sure I have no doubt he loves his wife. I am not questioning whether they have a great marriage or not, but it is. It is clearly also serving a political purpose in terms of trying to walk back some of his jerky bro reputation and his snottiness about women, although he is a genuine natalist. He really, really wants everybody to go out there and have some babies. And no matter how hard he tries to soften the whole childless cat lady stuff or things like that, he can\u2019t help overstating his case. It\u2019s just like you see where he comes from politically and that he just even when he\u2019s trying to soft pedal stuff and be gracious, he can\u2019t. So at one point he\u2019s like, well, of course babies are downstream of romantic love, and a society without children is a society that loses that to or whatever. And I\u2019m like, well, one, the idea that romantic love is the basis of marriage is a very modern one. So just step back. And two, no, that\u2019s also not true. Now you can get into the difference in how parents behave versus non parents and the family ties and stuff like that. But he\u2019s not content to do that. Well, in fact, I think that is central to his argument. And I\u2019m glad you brought up natalism, because that\u2019s a really another important theme of this book. And he links this so closely to Christianity and religion. In the book, he says the more religious a country is, the better it fares in family formation. And then there\u2019s this really interesting sentence. Abandonment of Christian culture has coincided with an apparent decline in our collective will to live because we\u2019re not having babies, we\u2019re not procreating, we\u2019re not creating the next generation. Now, I\u2019m sure intellectuals and conservative intellectuals can argue about that, and they would probably agree with that. But that\u2019s a really remarkable statement for someone to make. And it shows again, I think this is central to who he is. He talks a lot about being a dad. And I think that feels authentic to me. I want to give him all that. He really seems to take joy in the idea that having children has kind of saved him from some of the instability of his earlier life. And, maybe I found some of that a bit more convincing than the rest of the book. But again, it\u2019s very hard to read this book without thinking it\u2019s a construction of some kind. And which parts are mostly constructed and which parts are authentically him. One of one of his great fears. Seems to be that he\u2019s somehow condemned or fated to pass along the instability that he experienced to his children. That\u2019s something that feels very, very genuine in the book. It\u2019s this really reoccurring concern he has. And one thing that feels a little less genuine, in the category of trying too hard is when he makes these big declarative statements about, what he thinks about the role of women in society, and he says, speaking of being a dad and a husband, he\u2019s like, well, as it happens, I do think husbands ought to share the burdens of household labor with their wives. It\u2019s the right thing to do. And, and it\u2019s like he wants a medal for that. It\u2019s just a little odd. The last thing I\u2019ll bring up on the cat lady\u2019s thing not to obsess over it, but it\u2019s interesting to me, it\u2019s interesting. It\u2019s interesting to me that he brings it up here again five years after saying it. Like when he first did it, it was back in 2021. And, he said, we\u2019re effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they\u2019ve made. So they want to make the rest of the country miserable too, right. Then later, when he\u2019s running for Vice President, he goes on Meet the press, talks to Kristen Welker, and he tries to say that it was a joke, right. That I was just being sarcastic. But actually, if you continue with your original quote, he\u2019s making a very specific, substantive point. It\u2019s not sarcasm. It\u2019s not funny. It\u2019s not just owning the libs to own the libs. He\u2019s saying that it\u2019s just a basic fact. Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Pete Buttigieg, who has children, by the way, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does it make any sense that we\u2019ve turned our country over to people who don\u2019t really have a direct stake in it. That\u2019s how it connects to the nationalism argument that somehow if you have children, then you actually really care about America, and therefore you have more of a stake in the future of the country. And we should pay attention to you more than if you don\u2019t. Now, in this book, it\u2019s clear that he knows this thing continues to haunt him, right. Because he brings it up again and he doesn\u2019t really say he\u2019s sorry, but he goes a little bit more in the direction of regret when he spoke to Kristen Welker. He said, I regret that people took it the wrong way, that Democrats lied, that kind of apology. I\u2019m sorry that you got your feelings hurt by me being a jerk. The worst. But, but here he actually says, look, this was an error. It was a failure. It was boneheaded. It just. Which to me, just suggests that he realizes he\u2019s going to continue having a problem with female voters, and that could really be a problem for him. There\u2019s one other tension here that really came out at the end of the book. He was very close to Charlie Kirk and that seems like a real relationship. And this is a book about Catholicism. Charlie Kirk is not a Catholic, although I am told that Charlie Kirk had a kind of Catholic side and understood JD Vance\u2019s attraction to Catholicism. But he wants to tell evangelicals, even though I am a Catholic, I am still connected to you. Because guess what. Baptists and other evangelicals are an important part of the constituency. He would need to put together. And so again, there is this kind of I say this and I believe this, but don\u2019t worry, I\u2019m also this other thing too. Maybe picking a fight with the Pope helps in that regard too. Yeah maybe why he got to be that. Don\u2019t pick a fight with a Pope. But I do think you\u2019re right. He\u2019s signaling. I think this whole book is signaling to religious conservatives that I know you may be questioning where I\u2019ve wound up and some of the things I\u2019ve done, but I really am one of you. Even when this administration as it has disappointed a lot of religious conservatives of late on the pro-life issue. I think he is trying to create some space and reassert himself as I think, Carlos, you said, he\u2019s the faith man. But looking ahead, Vance is going to have a lot of competition for that MAGA mantle and the Republican nomination. He\u2019s going to have a lot of his colleagues coming for him. And in a recent New Yorker cover, it featured a UFC cage match fight between him and Marco Rubio, with President Trump kind of dozing in the audience, which seems about right. So if Rubio is his biggest rival and rival, and Trump doesn\u2019t seem to care. How well positioned do we think Vance still is to inherit the mantle. I mean, not that Rubio will be the only one Ted Cruz, I\u2019m sure is coming for him. We have these parlor games. So we\u2019ve been playing of late as to how many people are trying to throw JD Vance under the bus so that they\u2019re better positioned for 2028, but what do you guys think about his chances and where he stands right now. I have no idea myself what the Republican race for president will look like in 2028, assuming Donald Trump agrees to leave the White House. And I think, no, no, no, we\u2019re not going there. I think I had to say it. But I think that there are really two possibilities. The way we think of now is who is the successor to Trump, who can get Trump supporters because they loom so large in the primaries. If this thing keeps going South, I think there\u2019ll be room for some other kind of Republican who will make a case. It\u2019ll be tricky because there\u2019ll still be a lot of Trumpists no matter what he does. But he\u2019ll say, if we want to survive, we\u2019ve got to move on. And so maybe it\u2019s wishful thinking for the Republican Party, but I am looking to stick with the theme of this book, of the thing that is unseen, of the person that is currently unseen in that field. O.K, Carlos. I share E.J.\u2019s reluctance to try to predict what will unfold here. If there\u2019s anything we\u2019ve learned in the quote unquote Trump era is that things happen that you don\u2019t necessarily expect, as Trump likes to say, we\u2019ll see what happens Vance, I think, is well positioned to capture the MAGA mantle. I don\u2019t know if that will be enough to win the nomination, right. Or certainly to win the presidency. Rubio may have broader appeal among more conventional Republicans if those still exist, or certainly among independent voters, especially in a country where people are tired of whether it\u2019s war or inflation or a sense of so much sense of chaos. The irony in the context of Vance\u2019s books is that the more things unravel, which is always JD Vance\u2019s fear, the harder it\u2019ll be for him to be the heir apparent. And we\u2019ll let you have the last word with that. We\u2019re just going to land this plane. Guys thank you, as always. Thank you. Learned a lot to see you guys. Bye<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI guess he really has become Catholic. I happen to like the line: \u201cBut I found liberation in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4840,153,12618,9,11,10],"class_list":["post-272556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-catholic-church","tag-donald-trump","tag-j-d-vance","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}