VP JD Vance x Megyn Kelly - The FULL Interview

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back, everybody, sitting here with the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance. Mr. Vice President, thanks so much for being here. [00:00:05] J.D. Vance: Good to see you. [00:00:06] Speaker 1: All right, so what happened with the president and the phone call? [00:00:09] J.D. Vance: Which president? Which phone call are you talking about? You mean just back there when he called me? Yeah, just back there, yeah. Oh, okay. I mean, well, you know, he's at the G7. He's about to go to dinner over in Switzerland, and so he just called me to check in on how things are going. Which president? What the update? Well, I meant which phone call. I was like, wait a second. Do you guys have me tapped in there? I didn't think you were in there. Who is feeding you intelligence me? [00:00:28] Speaker 1: They just told us that. That's why you were going to be a little late to say. [00:00:31] J.D. Vance: Oh, I see. Okay. Sorry, I was confused at that. But, yeah, no, we had just a chat about how the G7 was going. Okay. He was asking about how is, you know, what's the progress of the deal? What's going on? What are we hearing? And just the things that you talk about when you're the president and the vice president. [00:00:44] Speaker 1: What is the progress of the deal? What are you hearing? How's it going? [00:00:47] J.D. Vance: Well, I mean, the deal is done, at least the first step of it. And, you know, one of the things I've been doing for the past couple of days is correcting a lot of misinformation about the deal because I've heard so many conspiracies, so many things that just aren't true. So, like, let me kind of run with you what the deal is and what the deal isn't. Yeah. Okay. So, number one, what it says is, effectively, the United States will open the Strait of Hormuz, lift the naval blockade. The Iranians will destroy the dust and then hand it over either to us or to an international organization. [00:01:20] Speaker 1: They will. So they agree to destroy the dust. [00:01:22] J.D. Vance: Exactly. And the third part of it is, assuming they comply with the terms of the agreement, there are all of these economic benefits that can flow to the Iranians. And so what happens? So if you're an Iranian hardliner and you want to be out of this and you want to make this deal, but you don't want to sort of pitch it a certain way to a domestic audience, what you do is you go through the document, you identify everything the Iranians could get, and you say, we are getting it. And then you under-emphasize or don't even talk about all the things that they have to give in order to get those benefits. And so, like, the way that I think about it is there's sort of a, you know, we're at a fork in the road in this entire relationship with Iran. For 47 years, we've obviously had basically a terrible relationship with Iran. They funded a lot of terrorist organizations. There's obviously the nuclear issue that's been in the background, you know, going back well before Donald Trump even got on the political scene. And here's where we are right now. Their nuclear facilities are destroyed. That is just objectively true. Their ability to enrich uranium, to build a nuclear bomb, completely destroyed. Number two, their economy is currently in shambles, right? The blockade and all of the other sanctions have had a very profound effect. And number three, they are in a position where what they're saying is that they want to make long-term commitments to the United States and to the Gulf Arab countries to change their relationship. So that's true whether they comply with this deal or not. Now, if they comply with this deal, I think it's much better for the United States and it's going to be much better for Iran. But if they don't comply with this deal, we've still done incredible damage to their nuclear program. And it's really, you know, we can get on with our lives as a country and they don't get anything if they don't get anything. [00:03:06] Speaker 1: We turn off the financial spigot. [00:03:08] J.D. Vance: Exactly. Well, the way I put it is the financial spigot has already turned off. It's been turned off for a very long time. In fact, we've probably turned the screws even tighter. But we can either unscrew the financial spigot or we can keep it where it is right now, which is fundamentally just very bad for the people of Iran. And I'm like, you know, as you know, I'm fundamentally an optimist about these things. I always try to think about what can do rather than just what can happen rather than just identify problems. But, you know, if we go down the option where the Iranians comply with their obligations under the deal, this totally transforms the Middle East. And it's interesting, you know, there's always this question about how is this the same? How is this different from the JCPOA, the Obama deal that, you know, Republicans have been very critical of for 10, 15 years. And I actually think I could walk you through the substantive differences between what we're talking about and what the Obama deal did. But fundamentally, how did the Gulf Arab countries, the Gulf Coast coalition, how did they respond to the Obama JCPOA? They hated that deal. They thought it empowered Iran. They thought it did nothing for them. They weren't consulted. They weren't a participant in the process. How do they feel about this Trump peace plan? They love it because they see it as a genuine opportunity to transform how the Middle East has worked for the next couple of generations. So I think we have a real opportunity here. But regardless, if it just ends in Iran's nuclear program is destroyed, the war is over, the Straits of Hormuz are opened, that's a great place for the United States to be in. [00:04:36] Speaker 1: How is it, though? Okay. How is that different from where we were before we launched this war? I get how it's different thanks to the strikes we did last June. That was very helpful. Sure. But straight open and nuclear sites destroyed and we're no longer fighting is where we were in February. [00:04:53] J.D. Vance: Well, we did additional destruction to their nuclear facilities and particularly their capacity to rebuild. So if you look, while a lot of people were focused on, you know, we want to replace the Ayatollah with Reza Pavlavi or somebody like that, what the president always said is we want to destroy their ability to project power across the Middle East. And, you know, obviously, people always talk about Israel and Israel, I'm sure we'll get into that during this conversation. But it was just the Israelis, but it was just the Israelis, but it was also the Gulf Coast coalition that the Arab countries in the Gulf who were frankly petrified of the role that Iran played of their ability to project power of their ability to launch missiles and hit some of these energy facilities. But then also that industrial base that produced missiles was also useful in rebuilding their nuclear capacity, right? And so what we've done fundamentally is destroyed that conventional military capacity, also destroyed their ability to rebuild their nuclear program. And then what we have an option to do, and again, it really depends on what the Iranians respond with. What we have an option to do, I think, is fundamentally transform our relationship with Iran. [00:05:57] Speaker 1: I mean, I liken it to what President Trump was doing in that Middle East summit with Saudi Arabia, with whom we didn't used to have the greatest relationship, trying to say, what if we could get along economically? Like, what if we could help make you rich? [00:06:08] J.D. Vance: Correct. [00:06:08] Speaker 1: And like for a U.S. president to look at Iran and even suggest such a thing has many people upset, but if it worked out, would be transformative. [00:06:18] J.D. Vance: Well, it would be transformative. And what the president has said is I want Iran to be a successful country. But if in order to do that, just like with Saudi Arabia, it's actually a great example. You know, if you went back 20, 25 years, one of our biggest concerns with Saudi Arabia is they were funding Islamic radicalism. [00:06:32] Speaker 1: They sent all the 9-11 terrorists. [00:06:33] J.D. Vance: Yeah, a lot of the ideas, the terrorists themselves, but also the ideas that were spreading all over the Middle East, all over the world, were funded, not necessarily by the Saudi government, but certainly by people within Saudi Arabia. The Saudis completely cut down on that, transformed their country, have a great economic and political relationship with the United States of America. And the president's saying if the Iranians are willing to change their behavior in the same way the Saudis did, then absolutely we want them to be a successful country. But the two governments are very different. The two governments are very different, but there actually are similarities too. And again, we just have to go down this pathway, see where we get. If it works out, great. If it doesn't work out, we're still in a good place in our country. [00:07:14] Speaker 1: What do they have to do specifically to get us to turn on the financial spigot? [00:07:17] J.D. Vance: Yeah, so a lot of this stuff is to be negotiated at kind of the technical level of detail. But it's basically, if you think about it, we care about their attempt to rebuild their enrichment capacity. We care about this enriched uranium, this nuclear dust, as the president calls it. We also care about, you know, are they getting along well with their neighbors? Are they funding revolutions in their neighboring countries? Are they funding terrorist organizations? Or are they being good partners with the Gulf Coast Coalition and, of course, other countries in the region? And what we're saying is, the more that you do, the more we're going to try to reintegrate you into the world economy. And that's the basic template of the deal. And I said I'd talk about, like, what the deal is and what the deal isn't. What the deal isn't, you know, we don't list this stuff out specifically. We've been talking to them directly about what this might look like. They seem very interested. But again, we've also been very clear that if you guys don't do this thing, none of the actual benefits are going to accrue to your country. [00:08:11] Speaker 1: How about Hezbollah and Lebanon? Because, you know, that's a proxy. That they're funding. And that could easily queer this deal. It could queer this deal. This weak people fear. Never mind on a go-forward basis. Either side, Israel or Hezbollah. Sure. [00:08:25] J.D. Vance: Look, it's always delicate with these things. And, you know, what we've seen with the ceasefire in Lebanon, and it's been clear, to be clear, a dirty ceasefire. There's been some shooting back and forth. But frankly, there's way less shooting now than there was two weeks ago. There's way less shooting two weeks ago than there was before. So with these things, as the President of the United States said a couple weeks ago, he said, sometimes a ceasefire just means they're shooting less. And that's the progress. And then you get to the next stage. Is it included? [00:08:56] Speaker 1: Is Lebanon included in Hezbollah? [00:08:58] J.D. Vance: It is a regional peace deal. It's going to include the Gulf. It's going to include Israel. It's going to include Lebanon. The idea is this is a true regional peace deal. How do we do that without Netanyahu? [00:09:08] Speaker 1: Sorry, forgive me for an intro. [00:09:09] J.D. Vance: No, no, no. The idea is that if the Iranians comply, then we are going to have a true transformative deal for the Middle East. And if not, they don't get any economic benefits. The United States, we got what we came to do, and we're done. And that's the basic approach. [00:09:24] Speaker 1: We would not turn on the spigot if Hezbollah hit Israel over and over? [00:09:30] J.D. Vance: Well, what I would say is, like, if Iran is funding Hezbollah, we're not going to allow a bunch of unfrozen assets to freeze to the Iranians, right? Now, I want to be clear about this, too, because those are not American assets. There's been a lot of misreporting on this, and people have said, oh, is the United States going to give Iran billions of dollars? No. It would be very, very crystal clear. Even if the Iranians do everything contemplated by this deal, not a penny of American money flows to Iran. But let me give you an example of, you know, one of these things that people, again, have misrepresented. Let's say, for example, that the United Arab Emirates, they've been one of the best allies that we've had in the region. Let's say that they want to invest in a nuclear power plant in Iran. They really can't do that without us lifting some of the sanctions that exist in the global financial system to make that possible. Now, are the Emiratis going to invest in Iran, or is America going to let the Emiratis invest in Iran unless the Iranians change their behavior? No. So all these people say, well, you know, you're giving Iran money. No, no, no. We're saying that if the Iranians change their behavior, we're going to let some of these other countries invest in rebuilding their country and creating some prosperity for their people. That's like a good thing, right? If the Iranians stop funding terrorism, if they're behaving and their relationship is transformed, not just with us, but with the whole region, like that's a thing to celebrate. You know, somebody said, I forget who, but somebody said, you know, this is like doing the Marshall Plan when the Nazis are still in control. And that's wrong on a few different ways. Number one, the Marshall Plan was a lot of American tax money. This is not American tax money. Number two, we're saying you only get the benefits of the bargain if you change your behavior. If that happens, we're talking about a transformed Middle East. That's a great legacy for the president, but more importantly, it's a great one for the American people. [00:11:21] Speaker 1: Well, we have inspections of whatever they are or aren't doing when it comes to nuclear slash enrichment, you know, I mean, and is enrichment even on the table? Because I haven't been able to totally understand what President Trump is saying on that. [00:11:34] J.D. Vance: If they want the benefits of the bargain, enrichment is going to be on the table. And more importantly, verification and inspections is going to be on the table. [00:11:40] Speaker 1: But that means we'd let them do it a little? Like what else are we inspecting? [00:11:44] J.D. Vance: No, look, our plan is, well, what we would be inspecting is the full part of building a nuclear weapon. So I'm hardly a nuclear engineer. So forgive the scientists are going to have to forgive me for this summary. But building a nuclear weapon is the infrastructure to enrich uranium. It's the infrastructure to turn enriched uranium into nuclear fuel. It's the infrastructure to turn that nuclear fuel into a bomb that you can detonate. It's the delivery mechanism for that bomb. [00:12:11] Speaker 1: The cascades and the centrifuges. All of this stuff, right? Can those stay or are those coming out? [00:12:16] J.D. Vance: No, our plan under this deal is, again, the Iranians are going to get a lot of benefits so long as they dismantle that nuclear weapons program. And again, you know, people always ask me, why do you believe them this time? I don't believe them. I don't trust, Megan, I don't trust anything that anybody says. I trust what people do. And the way this deal is structured is that as they do more, they receive more. As they do less, they receive less. And that's the basic structure. [00:12:41] Speaker 1: Now, the reaction to this from the neocons, from the hawks, has been negative already. They're mad that they can't see the Memorandum of Understanding, which I get, actually, in their defense. Why can't they see? Why can't we all see the MOU right now? [00:12:55] J.D. Vance: Well, yeah, so first of all, the president said by the latest Friday, possibly as early as tomorrow, we're going to release the Memorandum of Understanding text. The reason why we haven't released it yet is there are some delicate diplomatic things going on where the Iranians, and not just the Iranians, but some of our mediators, the Pakistanis and the Qataris, have asked us to sequence this in the right way. So I don't, frankly, fully understand it, but there are sensitivities that exist in the Arab and Muslim world that we're trying to be responsive to. Fundamentally, does it really matter if the deal comes out on Wednesday versus Friday? No. That's why we haven't emphasized it so much is because at the very latest, the text is going to be out on Friday. [00:13:34] Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. I mean, you've already signed it, but it's not like legally binding to where you can't undo it. It's a diplomatic agreement. So it's correct. If people freak out, there's an utter meltdown here in the United States, it could always be undone if you change your mind. [00:13:47] J.D. Vance: Exactly. And again, I could summarize this deal in like two or three sentences, which is that if the Iranians change the way that they behave with regards to their nuclear weapon, with regards to their financing of terrorism, we are going to bring them into the world economy. If they don't, we won't. It's really that simple. [00:14:04] Speaker 1: Okay. So here's some of the reaction. Mark Thiessen said if the deal terms are accurate as has been leaked, it's a complete disaster. He's calling this, by the way, the Vance, the Vance deal. [00:14:17] J.D. Vance: I wonder why he doesn't call it the Trump deal. [00:14:19] Speaker 1: I wonder too. There is Ben Dominic, who was on a special report last night, called this the Hillbilly Obama deal. [00:14:27] Speaker 3: I wonder who that's a reference to. [00:14:28] Speaker 1: Seems to be a shot at you, sir. Not bold foreign policy. There's a guy named Yanan Magal, who is an Israeli journalist who's very close with Netanyahu, who's basically his mouthpiece, who called you a lowlife, called Donald Trump a loser. The Israeli ambassador to the United States called this so disappointing. Then there's Mark Levin, who's Ben Rage tweeting about it every five minutes. He demands to see the memorandum. He demands that this be treated like a treaty to where now you have to get congressional approval for the MOU. The Constitution does say you need approval to declare war, which Trump doesn't think he did and didn't seek. But now, and he defended him on that. But now that we're ending it, which you definitely don't need congressional approval for, he wants this treated like a treaty and is demanding you go before Congress, sir. [00:15:17] J.D. Vance: Well, to be clear, I don't think that congressional approval was required. I really firmly do believe that the president, this is not, was never a full scale war in the conventional or legal sense of it. So we definitely made sure that we dotted our I's and crossed our T's here. So I wanted to defend the administration on that point. But it is kind of ironic that they're really, really worried about stopping this thing. But they were completely gung ho about starting this thing. And look, I want to be responsive and charitable to some of these concerns. So first of all, why do they believe Iranian propaganda only about one thing, the peace deal? They don't seem to believe Iranian propaganda, rightfully so, about anything else. So if you're in the position of endorsing Iranian propaganda only when it's related to this peace deal, then maybe you should check yourself a little bit and question your sources. The second thing that I'd say is, what is their alternative? If you look today, Brent crude is around $78 a barrel. West Texas crude is even lower, $75, $73 a barrel. I mean, the numbers float around a little bit. But what that means is lower gas prices for Americans, lower energy costs for Americans. That means that this little blip that we've had of an increase in energy costs, which has caused a lot of people some problems, we're now getting back to normal. And I think that fundamentally, if you look at what they're proposing, they're proposing an endless conflict. They want this to go on until every bomb has been dropped or until every Iranian is dead. That is not what the president of the United States wants. What he said is, I said about this to end their nuclear program, to eliminate their ability to threaten their neighbors and project power, and to fundamentally make sure that no future child would have to deal with a terrorist regime with an atomic bomb. That's why the president set out is, and he's right, that he's accomplished that goal, and now we can get to the negotiation to see what are the other benefits that we can get from this. And frankly, what are the benefits the Iranians could get from this if they behave? I just don't think that people who are criticizing this, one, they're not actually dealing with the reality of what's in it, and number two, they don't have an alternative. If your alternative is just to drop bombs without any clear goal or any clear American interest implicated, then you're not making the wise decisions on behalf of the American people. The president is, and that's why we're in this position. [00:17:44] Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a shot from Sound on Tape from John Podoretz, who is the chief over at Commentary Magazine, which is very pro-Israel, very neo-con-y. Preview, he's not happy. Here it is. [00:17:55] Speaker 3: I honestly don't know if it could be worse. America is going to be in a strategically, tactically, and militarily worse position than it was under Biden. He made a choice to test America's resolve, and he has choked. He has chickened out. He has bled himself dry. Trump, the crazy, lunatic, psychotic, who doesn't care about lives and will do anything and do anything, could not bear the idea of putting a boot on the ground anywhere in Iran and could not bear the idea of a single American possibly being taken hostage, which I understand. I'm not saying that either of those is a good thing, but if you're going to go to war, you have to put boots on the ground. Everyone in the military has volunteered to put their lives on the lines for their country and that the country itself may have to sacrifice in the form of wildly higher oil prices if you think that the American national interest has to be engaged in this process. And if you go into the process and you lose it and it's a complete war of choice, you have made things worse. The situation is worse. [00:19:08] Speaker 1: Thoughts on that? [00:19:09] J.D. Vance: Well, there's a lot to respond to in there, but I actually think, John, I appreciate that because John is kind of giving away the game. He's saying he really doesn't care that much about higher oil prices for Americans, doesn't care about high gas prices, and he wants boots on the ground in a country. [00:19:23] Speaker 1: And doesn't seem to care about casualties. [00:19:24] J.D. Vance: Exactly, and wants boots on the ground in casualties in a country of 95 million people where, again, the president of the United States never said that his goal was to install Reza Pavlavi to become the new leader of Iran. What he said is if the Iranian people want to rise up, great. That's their business. That's between them and their government. What we want is a cessation of their nuclear program, either through diplomatic means or through military means as he ultimately went down that pathway. And I think, Megan, there's actually a deeper foreign policy debate that I think the last few months has sort of papered over here, which is when President Trump uses military power, he's not an isolationist, right? He's not a Rand Paul guy, a Ron Paul guy. Clearly. He never has been, never was. But what he is is a guy who says, if I'm going to use American military power, I want to accomplish a discrete objective. And every single day I saw it very, very much on the inside. He was asking, have we accomplished that objective? Can we stop this? And once we got to the point where people were saying, yes, we feel like we are in a much stronger position. We feel like their nuclear program is destroyed. We feel like they're conventional military. It's going to be impossible for them to rebuild it for very, very many years. He said, OK, then I want you to go and negotiate a deal that transforms the Middle East. And that's what he did. [00:20:42] Speaker 1: I mean, how integral was the sneaking of the oil out of the Strait of Hormuz overnight? Very important. Because to me, that was one of the best things we did. [00:20:49] J.D. Vance: Correct. [00:20:50] Speaker 1: They thought they shut down the Strait and had us by the neck. Correct. We closed up their ports, which gave them skin in the game. But we were secretly getting oil out of there because the biggest pressure point on us has been the prices, the energy prices. [00:21:03] J.D. Vance: That's absolutely right. And so for the first few weeks of this, actually, there was this totally misaligned thing where the Iranians were getting oil out of the Strait of Hormuz, but literally nobody else was. And we kind of flipped that on its head a little bit. We shut down any access they had to the Strait of Hormuz. They couldn't get anything in or out. But while that was happening, we were getting, sometimes it was 12 million barrels, sometimes it was 3 to 4 million barrels, but it averaged out to many millions of barrels every single day that us and the Arab allies were getting out of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran was getting nothing. And that leverage point did increase the pressure on them. This idea of closing the Strait of Hormuz, this has obviously been, in some ways, the biggest strategic back and forth of the entire conflict. That's a card you can play, but if you play it every day, it gets weaker and weaker and weaker. And again, I think that's one of the reasons why we are in a stronger position here and why the Iranians are coming to the table. You know, this, you know, John Potteritz is basically calling, there was this Israeli journalist who said, you know, the president's a loser and I'm a total lowlife or whatever he said. And Potteritz wasn't that far off. What these guys don't realize is we fundamentally have all the cards. Like what, what is it that they wanted us to do besides put 300,000 ground troops in Iranian soil, which we were never going to do. The president felt like he could accomplish his objective using the means that he used. They're mad. He was right about that, by the way. [00:22:29] Speaker 1: They're mad. Trump said help is on the way and that he, they don't think he sent it and they think it's the same leadership and it was bad leadership either way. It's not the same guys, but it's IRGC. [00:22:37] J.D. Vance: That is different. People attack the president on this, but when the president says that we're dealing with more reasonable people, he is actually right. Now, again, my, my attitude is a verification. I trust actions, not words, but we are dealing with people, some of whom our own intelligence agencies say, you know, these are the super hardliners. And what they're saying is, you know what, we are hardliners, but we've realized after 47 years that maybe this is a mistake. [00:23:00] Speaker 1: Well, there's a report out today though, saying that Ratcliffe who runs the CIA has been listening to their Intel saying they don't mean a word of what they're saying. They're not going to live up to any of this. [00:23:09] J.D. Vance: Well, first of all, I'd be skeptical of that reporting. You know, I always see sometimes with my own name on it, administration officials who believe this or that. I'd be very skeptical of this stuff. The, the inner team of the Trump administration, we're actually very tight. We're very close to each other. There isn't nearly the factionalism that people say that there is. So I'd be skeptical about that report, but I'll let John speak for himself. [00:23:30] Speaker 1: Except Scott Besson and Bill Pulte. [00:23:33] Speaker ?: They're not tight. [00:23:34] Speaker 1: They had a fist fight. [00:23:35] J.D. Vance: Scott Besson and Bill Pulte are not super close. That is true. And I say that as admirers of both of them. You've admitted it. But, but fundamentally, that's why the deal says verification and action. Trust but verify. Well, I'd say just verify. Just verify. That's good. What the president says is we don't trust anybody. And I think that's exactly right. He said we don't trust our allies. We don't trust our foes. We trust action. And that's what we have to anchor ourselves to. [00:24:01] Speaker 1: All right. Let's talk about what happened to the GOP base as a result of all this. Okay. Because it's divided. I know you've experienced it yourself. I've experienced it too. It's been sort of a sad, tumultuous, stressful time. It's much more fun, I think, for most of us who lean right or right-leaning independents to be fighting with the left. But it's been kind of civil war-y over on the conservative teams since this whole thing got launched. And the non-interventionalist right feels very betrayed, very betrayed by it. Whether you agree that they've been betrayed or not, Mr. Vice President, what do you say to those people? [00:24:36] J.D. Vance: Well, what I'd say to them is, one, I think you can walk through all the ways in which this has led to a good place for the United States of America. And I'd ask them not to sort of view this purely through the filter. I know a lot of these folks are frustrated with the role that Israel has in all this. We can talk about that. But don't look at it from the lens of, you know, what is it that different people think about it? What do you think about it? Like, fundamentally, do you think... They're against it. [00:25:01] Speaker 1: I've talked to a lot of them. [00:25:02] J.D. Vance: But I'm saying, ask yourself, I think you can make the best argument that the nuclear program is destroyed, the Iranian conventional military is destroyed. We had, yes, a temporary rise in energy prices that's already coming down substantially. And we didn't get, as I said repeatedly, we were never going to get the quagmire that a lot of people were warning about because Donald Trump is just not George W. Bush. So I would say first, the first argument I'd make is look at where we are right now, and I think you can make the best argument that where we are right now is a good place for the United States of America. And again, if we transform the Middle East, this was fundamentally worth it. Okay, the second argument I'd make, this is maybe, is this. Even if you disagree with this particular action, it's completely ridiculous to pick up your marbles and go home. That's not how politics works. And I've been very much on the inside of a lot of these debates and conversations. You know, some people have criticized our immigration policy. Some people have criticized tax policy, or some people have criticized foreign policy. The way that politics works is that you have to stay engaged in the process. You absolutely have to make your voice heard. But right now, right now, we have a very good deal for the American people. And importantly, we have a constituency right now that is saying that we're going to send boots on the ground. They want Donald Trump to send hundreds of thousands of ground troops into Iran. The best thing... Those are Republicans. But we need people to be pushing back from inside the tent. Okay, but wait. [00:26:32] Speaker 1: Some of us push back, and then we're told, and I quote, those who speak ill of Mark Levin are not MAGA. [00:26:40] J.D. Vance: Well, the president, as he does, is pushing back at a criticism of yours that he thought was unfair. [00:26:47] Speaker 1: Not just me. I mean, a lot of the non-interventionalists. [00:26:49] J.D. Vance: But I talked to him last night, and I said, Mr. President, I'm going to go on Megyn Kelly's show, and I'm going to defend the administration's policies. He said, absolutely, I love that. Because, again, he engages. He engages, and he's going to criticize you when he agrees or disagrees with you. I don't mind. He's going to say nice things about you when he agrees with you. But that's what I actually love about the president. He's not like viewing these debates from the outside. He's participating in them himself. And, again, Megyn, the frustration that I've had with, you know, the non-interventionist side has been that the attitude seems to be, we disagree with the president on this policy. Look, we can have that debate, but fine, okay? You disagree with the president on this particular policy, that doesn't mean you can give up on the entire enterprise. [00:27:32] Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree with that. [00:27:34] J.D. Vance: The reason why neocons are so much more effective in politics than the people on the other side in our coalition is because they play the game. They get disappointed, they make their criticisms, and they go back and they live to fight another day. Right now, right now, we need everybody who recognizes that this is a good deal for the American people and that we don't want, like John Potterworth is saying, hundreds of thousands of ground troops in Iran. Make your voice heard. This is where you've got to participate in the process. Disagree when you disagree, agree when you agree, but I don't like this idea of the president did something I didn't like, so I'm out. [00:28:14] Speaker 1: Yeah. [00:28:14] J.D. Vance: I think it's a very immature way to approach the political process. I agree with you. And it's the way to ensure that your enemies always win. [00:28:20] Speaker 1: I've been saying the same because a lot of people have been saying that they feel blackmailed by the whole experience, you know, like I'm just out. And I have been trying to make the point that you can't do that, right? No. You've got to stay. That's right. But realistically, as we – because after these midterms are over – [00:28:34] J.D. Vance: And let me – sorry. Yeah, yeah, you go. Can I make one more point about this, Megan? This is, like, very important. I'm sorry to interrupt. No, it is. So look, the coalition that made Donald Trump the president of the United States and J.D. Vance the vice president of the United States – people have to remember this. It was Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. It was also Mark Levin. It was also a lot of people like John Pottleritz who want a more aggressive foreign policy. What I think is important – I'm never going to say that John Pottleritz is not welcome in the Republican Party. He is. But just as he's disappointed right now, sometimes other people are going to be disappointed at other times. You can't just quit politics because the leader of a country of 330 million people makes a decision you disagree with. [00:29:18] Speaker 1: I agree with you. I know a lot of people don't agree with us here. They're very, very angry over the Iran war. It was, like, their number one issue, and they feel like Trump is not the man they thought he was because he betrayed that promise and didn't explain much about it. And I understand their feeling, too. But I will just say that, you know, Pottleritz and Levin and all those – that's the original Never Trump crew. They hated him, hated him. I was there. I had those people coming on my show saying, absolutely not, never Trump. And then they embraced him like a bear hug just as soon as he decided he was going to attack Iran and was cozying up with Israel, and that's their main issue. And now they're starting to get a little wobbly, and I wonder whether the president sees maybe his new best friends aren't quite as in love with him and loyal as he thought. [00:30:06] J.D. Vance: Yeah, and I would say the same thing to them that I'd say to the non-inventionists who have been a little blackpilled over the last few months. I'd say you don't quit the political process just because the president, who, by the way, has way more information than any of his critics have, is making a decision that they don't agree with. Disagree with it. We have the First Amendment in the United States of America. I'm not saying be a patsy. I'm not saying be, you know, a person who always falls in line. Make your viewpoint understood. But I think this is a very important part. In a coalition, we have a two-party system in this country. You've got, what is it, 80 million people, 85 million people who voted for Donald Trump. Nobody is going to agree with the administration 100% of the time. So, you know, it actually doesn't bother me that Mark Levin is criticizing this deal, even though I think this deal is great for the American people. I'm going to go on a show for the next few days. I'm going to defend it. What would bother me is if Mark Levin said, you know what, the president did something I didn't like, and I'm going to go home. I'm not part of this coalition. Screw that guy. I think that's the mistake that way too many people across our political system make. [00:31:10] Speaker 1: Has any of this influenced your thoughts on a possible run? Don't tell me you're not thinking about it, and I know you gave me that answer. But after these midterms are done, it's on. You don't have three years. You have about six months. [00:31:22] J.D. Vance: I'm not thinking about it, Megan. You have to decide. You're going to have to decide. I mean, you know me, and you know that I'm kind of a procrastinator. I don't make decisions until I have to. It probably frustrates my wife a lot of times. But we still have a name for our baby, and every time my wife tries to talk to me about it, I'm like, well, let's just figure it out when we actually see the baby and see what he looks like and want to name him. [00:31:44] Speaker 1: You know it's a boy, right? [00:31:45] J.D. Vance: We know it's a boy, but we don't have really even a single name that we've picked out that both of us liked, and the baby's coming in about four weeks. I just make decisions when I have to. Yes, after the midterms, I will eventually have to make that decision. Let's make it done. [00:31:59] Speaker 1: If you don't run, I mean, you represent more of the non-interventionalist wing. And you're all over the New York Times is reportedly predicting this would be a disaster. It's going to cause regional chaos. It's going to break apart Trump's coalition. [00:32:12] J.D. Vance: Don't believe everything you read in the New York Times, Megan. Oh, that's okay. There may be tapes now given to Maggie Haberman. Which is crazy, by the way. That was a very weird story. Very weird. You're talking about the Epstein. So just for your audience's sake, there was this story about Epstein that came out in the New York Times. And like half of it or so was BS, and about half of it, you know. [00:32:30] Speaker 1: It's the way it always goes. [00:32:31] J.D. Vance: That's how these stories are. There's always an element of truth. There's always an element of non-truth. But there were certain things in there that legitimately made me worried that people were like taping. [00:32:40] Speaker 1: Yeah, in the situation room. [00:32:42] J.D. Vance: Which, by the way, is like a felony. [00:32:44] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a super dangerous precedent. [00:32:45] J.D. Vance: So that was weird. That story was very bizarre. It was sort of a nothing burger of a story in the sense that everybody sort of knew all those details anyway. [00:32:53] Speaker 1: But the fact that somebody had taped. Well, where I was going with that list of predictions of yours that turned out to be true was if you don't run, who would run that would represent that wing of the party? [00:33:06] J.D. Vance: Well, I think the, you know, committed non-interventionist America First Ted Cruz could be a representative for that wing of the party. Who else you got? He's clearly running for president. You know, I just, I think about how do I be successful in this job? There are a lot of interesting people out there. Some of them won't for president. Some of them won't. I really just don't think about it. Part of it is I'm not, I'm like, as you know, I'm not a sort of person who thinks of all, you know, who are the people I have to be worried about? Who are the people I have to not be worried about? I just live my life. It'll all work out. [00:33:41] Speaker 1: No, in our first conversations in 2017, you were offended that I said you could be a politician one day. I was. You thought you gave up used car sales and volumes. I thought I was insulting. [00:33:50] J.D. Vance: Yeah, now here I am. Look at your ear. There's a secret service everywhere. [00:33:53] Speaker 1: All right, let's talk a bit about your book because I actually do think it's a great book. It's called Communion. It's called Finding My Way Back to Faith. Sure. Here it is right here. You can get it today. And I actually learned a lot about you in this book that I didn't know. I love that you begin it with Mamaw, who is everybody's favorite person. And here is what you say. Mamaw hardly fit the stereotype of a sweater-knitting, kindly old grandmother, and her faith wasn't always, well, perfectly consistent with her own religious upbringing. She loved to say the F word. I don't, I can't relate. And when she died, she owned 19 loaded handguns. Mamaw's God suited her. Loving and forgiving, but tough, demanding, and possibly packing. So you credit her with giving you the gift of faith. [00:34:37] J.D. Vance: That's right. [00:34:37] Speaker 1: How did you get to the point where for a time you lost it? [00:34:40] J.D. Vance: Yeah, it just didn't stick. And I think this is one of the many reasons that motivated me to write about this is, you know, I've got three little kids. I've got a fourth on the way. We take our kids to church every Sunday. And for some kids, even though their parents believe, even though they pray, even though they try to raise their kids to be followers of Jesus Christ, it just doesn't stick. And part of this was sort of trying to understand why didn't it stick for me. And I think there are a couple reasons for that, Megan. And I think one of them is that fundamentally I started to care about things that were, if not anti-Christian, then just were totally separate from Christianity. Like, I don't know what it is. It's maybe just an innate character flaw that I have. But I just cared so much about making as much money as possible, getting the best job, going to the best. Look, I had this fever for rising. Well, when you come from nothing, that can happen. Which, again, there is a legitimate urge there, right, which is provide your kids stability, provide your kids some of the things that you didn't have. I think that's all well and good. But what I had was way more beyond that. It was ambition for ambition's sake. [00:35:43] Speaker 1: You described it as a striver. You said I was a striver. [00:35:45] J.D. Vance: I was a super striver. And, you know, I got to law school, and I had, like, all of these outward markers of success. I'd fallen in love with Usha. We were dating at the time, but not yet married. And I started to think to myself, like, am I a good person? And the answer that kept coming back is, no, I care way too much about stuff that doesn't matter and way too little about stuff that does matter. And then at the same time, like, I have this self-impression. This is back in the era of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the new atheists. I have this impression of myself of, like, I'm super rational. I form opinions based on reason and intellect. And there are all these bumpkins who believe in things like Jesus, and it's just a superstition. But yet, all of those people who believed in Jesus, or at least a lot of them, were very good people. They were much happier. They were much more well-adjusted than some of the people I saw in the elite circles that I was running in. You sell a corridor. I call it rays of light, where there were these little pieces of evidence that there was some deeper truth to Christianity, and that it motivated something that was very good and very powerful. Like, it wasn't a conversion on the road to Damascus. But I just, I fell away from my faith, I think, because I cared too little about the things that mattered. And falling in love and getting married and becoming a father started making me care about the things that do matter. [00:37:06] Speaker 1: I'm thinking about St. Michael. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. That's right. There may be he was for you, right, in that church in France. Is that where you had your light bulb moment? [00:37:17] J.D. Vance: Yeah, we were on vacation, and I was, at that point, I would have called myself a Christian, but I was kind of thinking, like, what kind of church is home for me? And, you know, I grew up in sort of a Pentecostal or evangelical tradition, a lot of speaking in tongues, really good music. You know, I also had, you know, my uncle was Catholic, and I had some Southern Baptists, and my friends, it was a very, it was like a hodgepodge of American Christianity. But what I was attracted to in my own church, in Catholicism, was just the sense that it was, like, stable, right? Things didn't change that much. [00:37:54] Speaker 1: Never. [00:37:55] J.D. Vance: That's exactly right. [00:37:57] Speaker 1: I love it. There's always going to be a male priest up there. You know exactly what you're going to get. There's not going to be a homily on accepting trans children like I saw in the Episcopal Church. [00:38:06] J.D. Vance: And you go to church in New York City, or you go to church while you're on vacation in France, you go to church in rural Ohio, and it's the same readings. It's the homily might differ from church to church, but like you said, there isn't, you know, this is why we should have men playing in women's sports. [00:38:20] Speaker 1: There's not going to be a pride flag hanging outside. [00:38:23] J.D. Vance: And, like, more importantly than that, there were just a lot of people, good friends of mine, who were good Christians, who were good people, who were good role models to me. They were good husbands and good fathers. They had what I wanted to have, and they were Catholics, and that kind of led me into the church. And so, but that said, even though I was sort of attracted to this church, that was in the peak of some of the sex abuse investigations that were going on. And this is the summer of 2018. There was a really bad investigation that I think came out of Pennsylvania. And I've got a little baby boy, and I'm reading these things, and I'm like, it felt like, on the one hand, I'm really attracted to the stability of this church. On the other hand, this is some pretty icky stuff. And I just was thinking a lot about it and trying to reason my way through it. And we're in this church in France, and Usha's, like, you know, in the bathroom somewhere. She's not even in the church. So it's me, my son. He's, you know, a year old. He's asleep. And it's just one of these beautiful old cathedrals, and it's the perfect time of day. So the light is shining through this beautiful stained glass window, and you can kind of see, like, the specks of dust in the light. And I just had this feeling of, like, you know, I belong here. And it's not always perfect. That's one of the great lessons of the Bible is God takes these people who are deeply, profoundly sinful human beings, and he actually chooses to reveal himself through them. And you can't just, like, again, pick up your marbles and go home because there is a sex abuse scandal. The fact that there's a sex abuse scandal means that you need better people, that you need people who are committed to what's good in this institution so that you can actually try to fight against the bad. And that feeling of belonging has ultimately led me to be baptized about a year later, and we've been going to church every Sunday ever since. [00:40:14] Speaker 1: And you're raising the kids Catholic. [00:40:15] J.D. Vance: We are. [00:40:15] Speaker 1: And I know you point out in the book, I only have about a minute left, but after Charlie's death, you were both feeling devastated, you and Usha, and then that's when you found out she was pregnant with your fourth child. [00:40:31] J.D. Vance: Yeah, so this makes me very emotional to talk about because, you know, after Charlie got killed, the next day, it was 9-11. I'll never forget that because I was supposed to go to New York for the 9-11 memorial service, and I flew out to pick up Charlie's body. And then I flew he and Erica back to their home in Arizona, so I flew out to Utah and then to Arizona. And Eric was devastated, and, you know, you know both of them, knew both of them very well and know Erica very well, and she was just crying and so upset, but she said something that, like, really stuck out at me, which is, I wish that we had had more kids. And that just hit me like a ton of bricks, and a couple months later, Usha became pregnant with baby number four. [00:41:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I'll stay in my lane, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear if that baby winds up with at least a middle name that sounds familiar to us from that family. All right, I'm going to stay out of it. I'm sending lots of love to her in the last few weeks of this pregnancy, and to you as well. We're praying for you both every day. God bless. [00:41:32] J.D. Vance: Appreciate it. [00:41:32] Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on. Don't forget, the book is called Communion by J.D. Vance. Check it out, and we'll see you soon.