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I love a good conversion story. I don't usually do interviews on my daily show.
Vice President JD Vance discusses his conversion to Catholicism, faith, Iran, AI, and political challenges in an in-depth interview with Michael Knowles.
Key Takeaways
- Religious conversion, especially to Catholicism, is often driven by a search for stability and deeper meaning beyond secular success.
- Institutional faith offers a consistent moral framework that can withstand societal changes and personal challenges.
- The political and cultural elite often misunderstand or dismiss the value of religious belief, which remains vital for many.
- AI and global conflicts like those involving Iran pose significant challenges but also opportunities for society.
- Faith and virtue are essential components for personal fulfillment and effective leadership.
Summary
- JD Vance shares his personal faith journey from evangelical roots to atheism and finally conversion to Catholicism.
- He emphasizes the institutional stability and doctrinal consistency of Catholicism as key reasons for his conversion.
- Vance reflects on the emptiness of meritocratic achievement without deeper meaning or virtue.
- The interview touches on broader societal issues including political division, the war in Iran, and the impact of AI.
- Vance critiques the secular elite's dismissal of religious belief and highlights the resurgence of religious reversion among younger generations.
- He discusses the importance of raising children within an institutional faith to provide stability and moral grounding.
- The conversation includes perspectives on immigration, cultural identity, and economic concerns.
- Vance expresses cautious optimism about AI’s potential benefits while acknowledging its risks.
- The interview includes personal anecdotes and reflections on leadership, virtue, and the role of faith in public life.
- The dialogue is framed within the context of current geopolitical tensions and technological advancements.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Overview of JD Vance's Book and Faith
- 03:46JD Vance's Early Faith and Atheism
- 06:52Return to Christianity and Attraction to Catholicism
- 10:44Stability and Doctrine in Catholicism
- 14:13Broader Reflections on Society and Faith
- 20:45Political and Economic Issues Including Immigration
- 26:12Geopolitical Concerns: Iran and Military Strategy
- 33:12AI: Risks and Opportunities
- 36:04Closing Thoughts on Faith, Leadership, and Politics
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I rarely plug politicians' books, but when I heard there was a new book out on a religious conversion, specifically a conversion to Catholicism, I could not resist sitting down with the author, who just happens to be the vice
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president of the United States. With war brewing around the world, political breakdown at home, especially on the right, and AI advancements that threaten to upend all of society and even our view of ourselves, I think we're all feeling a little apocalyptic. So,
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joining me to weigh in on all these matters and more is Vice President JD Vance. I'm Michael Nolles. This is the Michael Nolles Show.
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Mr. Vice President, thank you for being here. It's good to see you. Thanks for having me.
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I'm really sorry that we're not in my usual studio. We're in your town.
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If we were in my studio, we would be in nice big comfortable chairs, maybe with a cigar. This is a little bit more formal, but I really appreciate the opportunity, of course, because I've read a lot of political
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books. I have a lot of friends who are politicians, and most of the books are horrible, and I don't even actually read them. This book, I really, really enjoyed. It's not flattery at all.
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Everyone needs to go out and get Communion by JD Vance. Thank you. Because this touches on something that I care about more than Iran and AI and 2028. We'll get to all of it, which I have to ask about. But this touches on
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something I care about a lot more, which is a religious conversion, specifically to Catholicism. And the way that I know that your conversion is sincere is that no American politician in his right mind would ever convert to Catholicism for
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self-interested reasons. Yes. Yeah. So I have to ask one, why did you do it? And two, you're not the only one. You are in many ways the kind of voice of the millennials and the older Zoomer
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generation here. There's been a big surge in religious reversion and especially to Catholicism. Why? We will get to much more with our vice president friend. But first, you need to go to puralk.com/nolles kl.
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Okay, so, um, before first of all, thank you for doing this. It's good to see you. Thanks for all the way to DC. I know we had planned to schedule this last week, I believe, and I had to go to
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Switzerland. So, thank you for being here. I will never forgive the Iranians for doing that to me, but we're here now.
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We're the Swiss. Uh, but okay, before you get into the why Catholicism, I think you have to get into the why Christianity, then not Christianity, then back to Christianity, and then get there. So, let me give like the 90
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second summary of my faith journey from when I was a kid until I was, you know, 24, 25.
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So, basically raised in an evangelical household, raised by my grandmother, but with like a lot of Pentecostal flavor from my biological father. Um, basically unchurched. I would go to church with my dad, my stepmom sometimes, but mainly it was with my
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grandma. We would watch TBN. We'd watch Paul and Jane Crouch. We'd watch Billy Graham revival. And I realized after my grandmother died, this is when I was 21 years old, maybe 20, but right before I left for Iraq in 2005, Mamal died.
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And I realized that was my connection to Christianity. So there was no institutional connection. That's sort of one of the subtexts of the book, is trying to raise my own kids in a more institutional faith in the hope that it
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takes in a way that I didn't because two years after my grandmother was dead, I called myself an atheist.
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Yeah. Okay. So, I'm an atheist. I become and maybe I always was a stver. I'm obsessed with achievement for achievement's sake.
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And really, Mr. Vice President, shocked to hear it. Yeah. Um, and I get to law school and I'm at Yale and I realized that I've like won all these competitions, the meritocratic competitions that life had told me to win, to win, but I found them
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deeply unfulfilling. And frankly, I found that I was becoming a shitty person in the process or a bad person, excuse me, if you have to edit that out.
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I don't know. What are the rules on? We never go blue on this show. We make exceptions for top government officials.
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Okay. I have terrible language as you know I talk about in the book. It's one of my many non-Christian or, uh, one of my many traits I have to work on as a Christian. Um, okay. So I am at law
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school. I'm doing very well in sort of all the worldly things. I'm doing not so well in the non-worldly things. I fall in love. That woman is now the second lady and soon to be mother of four Vance
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children. Currently the mother of three Vance children. And I sort of realized like everything I've geared my life towards over the last few years is hollow.
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But this person that I'm in love with, she really wants me to be a good husband, eventually a good father. She wants me to care about virtue, about being a good human being in like the deepest sense of the
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word.
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And I kept on returning this idea that the elites who fashioned themselves hyperrational, they didn't believe in superstitious things like Jesus Christ is the son of God. They were the ones who seemed to be the least focused on what
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mattered, the least focused on what mattered. And meanwhile, it was all these sort of bumpkins that I dismissed as subrational, superstitious, who seemed to have things figured out in a much deeper way. So that leads me down the
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pathway back to Christianity. And I think that was almost 90 seconds, maybe a little bit longer. But okay, then it's like, how do you become a Christian in this world? And there are all of these things that attracted me to
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Catholicism. So number one, I really liked the sense that it was institutionally stable. Okay? And again, going back to my unchurched upbringing, when things were going well in my religious life, it was very much attached to like a single individual,
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whether it was my grandmother or a pastor. And sometimes the pastors would come and go. I was really attracted to the idea that like in this church, the mass was more or less the same whether you were on vacation in some faraway
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country or whether you were in suburban Cincinnati. But I also liked doctrinally that, you know, like things didn't change based on who the person giving the homily was.
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And that sense of stability, the idea that Christian doctrine was fundamentally founded on Jesus Christ and the church beyond that, that if it really is founded on Jesus Christ, it shouldn't change. Now, of course, it's going to have to apply itself to new
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circumstances. When Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead, we didn't have automobiles. We didn't have, you know, modern narc-
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quickly because I know we only have an hour. But there is something about the connection between the past, the present, and the future that I really liked about the Catholic Church. This idea that you had your role to play,
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whether it was a big role or a small role in the life of the church. You were inheriting that from thousands of years of history and you would eventually die and hopefully be rejoined with the Lord and you would pass on that legacy to
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some other person who would then carry it on after you. Right. That continuity across the generations I found very very attractive. And one of the things I write about in the book is that sort of one of these existential
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fears that animate me. I've never been particularly afraid of dying. You know, it's funny when we had this sort of situation at the what the Willard Hotel or No, we're in the Willard Hotel right now currently. Where where was the the
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White House correspondents association dinner? Anyway, there was the assassination attempt. It was at the Hilton maybe.
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Yeah. Wherever it was and it was obviously focused on the president, but you know, you hear loud noises and then the guys with the machine guns run in and you're kind of like, oh, something kind of crazy is going on. I I just
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I don't The idea of dying doesn't really scare me. has never scared me whether as an atheist or as a Christian and I talk about that a little bit in the book communion you should buy it um that I've always been somewhat
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troubled by that because you know if you think potentially hell is waiting you on the other end shouldn't you be really afraid of it but I've just never been afraid of dying um what I have been afraid of and
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there's this existential dread that kind of animates me we haven't gotten into this in any of the interviews that I've done but I guess we can get into it here is this idea that the the the the continuity across generations is going
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to stop with us. Yeah. That we inherited something and instead of building upon it and passing it on, it's just going to die with us.
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Feeling of decay and of stasis rather than dynamism and growth. and and that like I felt like the the Catholicism's continuity was in some ways an antidote to that because it's you know yeah there are certainly things you can look at our world I think
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there are things you can look at and be very hopeful about there are things you can look at in our modern world and be very desparing about but if you look at the long history of the Christian faith it's very hard not
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to say that many many other people in many many generations past had it far worse than we did Yes.
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And that gives me a certain sense of okay, like maybe we should stop whining and try to build something rather than just complain about how bad things are for us right now.
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Right. It is the the only the church is the only institution from antiquity that has survived in the west. Yes. Uh all the time. So I I I totally get it and I feel that anxiety. It bothers me whether
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we're talking about a restaurant or we're talking about a monument in Washington DC. It bothers me to see it get dirtier and fall apart and and be neglected even in the minds.
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Abs. Absolutely. Yeah. I I feel that same anxiety and even your story of you come from modest means, you end up at Yale, you become much more conservative and Christian, I guess, as a result of that. Lose a maternal figure and come to
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the faith in a large way through intellectual figures. It resonates. I get what you're talking about. Yeah. In the book you talk about a few of those figures in particular. Augustine Aquinus Rene Gerard. Yeah. 20th century uh Catholic writer about mimemetic desire.
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Yes. Preach. I I I love it. This then leads me to wonder after you were brought back to the faith in no small part through the intellect, thinking of the decline of civilization, thinking about these great writers, thinking about the doctrines and parsing
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differences between them. Yep. Did you have any religious experience? What CS Lewis would call the numinous experience? Did you ever see a ghost kind of thing?
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Um, you know, never never quite saw a ghost, but definitely and you know, one of the things I I talk about in the book and and this is something I'm still very much working on is when I returned to
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the faith, one of the things that had just degraded during my many years of not being religious at all was my ability to pray.
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And so I I can remember distinctively, you know, 14, 15, 16, like talking to God and being able to talk to God in this very natural way.
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And then I start returning to the faith and I go to pray and I'm not exactly sure what to say. And there's this interesting way in which just that prayer muscle had kind of atrophied.
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It's come back. I don't know it's come back all the way. But one of the things again I really liked about the sort of the ancient Christian cannon was all of these prayers that were just you say the
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prayer, right? Of course the most important is the Lord's prayer. There's the glory be glory be to the father to the son and to the holy spirit and and and you sort of go through these these prayers. And I found that that inner
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conversation with God was a very good part of just getting me back into the ritual practice of prayer again. And so, yeah, like August, you know, Augustine was fascinating, Aquinus was fascinating, Gerard was particularly fascinating to me, but like the faith
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can't just be something that you think about. It has to be something that you practice and it has to be something that you feel. And that was very much again something that that was that was part of my my own faith journey. I I write about
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in the book. Um, but the the interesting thing so there's this quote from Pulp Fiction I keep returning to, which is I'm going to butcher a little bit, but it's right after, you know, Samuel Jackson and John Travolta, these gangsters just murder a
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few people and then but they they miss one guy and that guy's like hiding in the bathroom. So he pops out and he shoots at point blank range. Samuel Jackson is totally fine, right? despite the fact that multiple bullets should
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have hit him. And he kind of looks around, he kills the guy who tried to shoot him, and then he has this religious sort of epiphany. And that's really the entire movie from his perspective is this ongoing religious
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journey. Now, what's fascinating about it is is he he talks about miracles and there's this debate between him and John Travolta about whether this counts as a miracle and he says, "Look, what matters is not whether this is an according to
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Hy miracle. What matters is that I felt the touch of God." Yeah. Okay. And just two things sitting here right now when I think about like feeling the touch of God. Okay, one of which I didn't even write about in the book. It just
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occurred to me now, but I'm going to tell it to you. The first one, and I guess he's out of himself now. This is Ross Dalinet and I were having a conversation. This is in 2019 probably.
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And um you know, he at the time was one of the foremost conservative critics of Pope Francis. And my view of of the the papacy is, you know, it's you don't treat it like you're a congressional representative. It's not a political
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office. Obviously, you can have pragmatic disagreements, but like you should have a little respect for it as a practicing Catholic.
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Okay. And so Ross and I were going back and forth about whether he was properly differential even to this person who was, you know, clearly not aligned with American conservatives on a whole host of issues. A very diplomatic way to put it. Yeah.
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Yeah. Yeah. So, we're at a conference. We're having this argument. We're in like the basement of this hotel. There's a kind of an open bar that's been set out for us. And we're drinking too much and talking about Catholicism and
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talking about the Pope. And I make this kind of really stridened argument about the the papacy. And I, you know, even talking about it, it sounds insane, but there's like a wine glass back behind the bar. And it's not like we're in
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southeastern Ohio. It's not like there was an earthquake. just kind of one glass kind of jumps off and shatters on the ground in the middle of this conversation and both Ross and I had this sort of moment. We're like, "Oh,
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that was really weird." Yeah. And again, is it an according to oil miracle? Maybe, maybe not. But I felt the touch of God.
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Maybe if a guy can rise from the dead, the glass can fall off a shelf.
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Absolutely. Absolutely. So that that that that felt like a very powerful moment. I'll give you another just very, you know, stupid moment, but not not stupid. I It's disrespectful uh to God.
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Providential providential but okay. I I I So, there's a church in Cincinnati that uh does really early confessions on either Saturday or Sunday.
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Okay. It's um it's it's it's in the Oakley neighborhood of Cincinnati, St. Cecilia's Church. Okay. And they would always do really early confessions, I think, on Sunday. So, like, you know, if I hadn't gone to confession in a couple
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months, I always wake up really early, but you had to be there by like 7 a.m.
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or something. Okay? So, I'd get in my minivan and I'd go to confession before the kids were even awake on a Sunday morning. Okay? I remember one time distinctively being like, you know, if you weren't in line by 7:15 or sort of
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you kind of have missed your window. I remember distinctively like I woke up at 7:02 later than I normally wake up and I'm like, there's no way I can make it to St. Cecilia's Church. But I just felt
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this little voice like, "Go and try to make it. Maybe the line will be extra long. Maybe you'll get in at the very end." And the ride from my house to St.
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Cecil's is probably a 15-minute drive. I got there in like 8 minutes because every single red light was green.
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Yeah. And like again, maybe every red light was green. Maybe it was just a coincidence of of the universe, but I felt the touch of God. I got in line in time. And just little things like that.
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You know, my attitude on this is I've talked with buddies about this, some of whom are still very very atheist and very non-religious, is like I really do think that there are these moments where God speaks to all of us. You just have
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to be trying to listen a little bit. Yeah. And Yeah. You know, every few months I'll have a little moment like that where it's like, "Huh, that was kind of weird." Like what are the odds that the the
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25 traffic lights from my house to St. Cecilia's maybe it's only a dozen but there are a lot of them that all of them would be green in such a way that made it possible for me to get there very
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quickly. Right. Right. Anyway, we will get to much much more with the vice president.
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our nation's 250th birthday. I've noticed this, you mentioned confession about the state of grace.
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Yeah. And something about the state of grace that's really nice is the priest cuts all the demons off you and so your life is better. But the other thing just about your perception, it seems to me that all those little signs, you know,
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the Christian view of the world is a deeply semiodic view. Every nothing is merely what it seems. You know, it all everything means something. St. Thomas Aquinas begins the sum theologia with that observation and uh in the state of
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grace you kind of see it a little bit more I think but on the flip side when you're in a real state of sin you know Dante trying to walk up the mountain sometimes then God he doesn't just
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whisper at you sometimes he shakes you and says hey idiot you know pay attention why weren't you and so I think yes if you go into a room even of these liberal elites that you assail in the book
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that rightly assale you go into a room and you say do believe in God? No. Do you believe in miracles? No. Do you believe in this that? No. But if you ask them something as silly as have you ever
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seen a ghost? A lot of them will say yes. We all kind of know that there's meaning in the world. So then, so then on this point of all, you go to these very liberal institutions.
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Can I make an observation just Okay. One of the really interesting things about um just the secular, hyper progressive, hyperlberal age that we live in is you realize how many of the rituals and institutions and practices of Catholicism
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show up in the modern world completely divorced from the God part and the grace part of it. Okay. So, we're thankfully, thanks to Donald Trump, I would I would say, um, we're past the point where most people, at least that I see, hang out
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those hideous signs in their yard that say, "In this house, we believe blah blah blah blah blah." You know, love is love, water, whatever. No person is illegal. Okay, so that sign is like such a disgusting butchering of the nyine
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creep and when you realize you're oh my god that people still have this desire to profess to do it very publicly and even to do it in this kind of cadence that you see in the nying creed and of course they do it
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in this in this very politically you know motivated way. Confession is another thing. It's like I I find as a you know Protestant, I find confession deeply uncomfortable. I still do. I I but but ditto and I'm a cradle Catholic,
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you know. It's it's it's just like the craziest ritual. You're going to go in this, you know, tiny booth and sit there with a total stranger and tell them about every terrible thing you've done over the last couple of months. It's
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nuts. But what if you think about it, it is so similar to the ritual of modern therapy, of course.
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And but minus the guilt and forgiveness. Like the thing that's that's that's, you know, I talk about the liberation of guilt. Yes. Yeah. Because there's there's actually, you know, I I've always heard this phrase Christian guilt or Catholic guilt as if it's terrible to
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feel guilty when you do something bad. But, you know, sometimes if I'm impatient with my kid, for example, it's kind of a good thing to feel guilty.
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Yes. To feel like there's an inner voice telling you to be a better human being, a better father, a better husband. So then you go and talk to somebody about it, but not in this like, oh, you know,
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maybe I yelled at my kid because, you know, my hat when I was 9 years old and then I never dealt with the unresolved trauma of it. It's no, maybe that there's certainly an element. I I do believe that everybody's the demons of
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everyone's past continue to follow them around. I write about this concept in the book. But maybe the reason that you know you weren't super patient with your kid is just that you're a flawed human being and you screwed up and there's
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nothing wrong with saying I screwed up. I should feel bad about it and I should make amends. And I think that sort of that seems to me is a much healthier but also much truer to human nature way to
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think about misconduct and right and wrong. Yeah, of course. So there's, you know, I have a buddy actually who put a sign in his yard with the same font and says, "In this house we believe in God the
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Father Almighty, it's a great that's brilliant." Yeah. You see, you see all of it. I mean, the transgender transition, which is, you know, they refer to the past as a dead name. I mean, that is a kind of a
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secular baptism. That's right. You see all of these echoes. So, look, I guess that gets to the first point, which is why are these young people converting especially to more lurggical, traditional, especially Catholic religion? Well, because it it has the
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real version of the things that they're seeking in the world. Okay, I get that.
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Yeah, in harder politics and policy, you're at all of these uh liberal institutions, Yale Law School especially, but elsewhere trapesing around rich businesses and all the rest.
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Sure. Uh and the one thing that everyone agrees on is meritocracy. Now you have two ch probably my two favorite chapters of the book. One is pulling from Pope Leo the 13th encyclical Rayum Navar of new things.
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Yep. The other one is uh borrowing from Thomas Carlilele's mockery of economics is the dismal science. Yes.
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And I these are my two favorite chapters of the book. I was arguing with a colleague of mine. He's a friend and a colleague. I won't say his name. He speaks very quickly. Uh doesn't eat shellfish. I'm not going to say a very
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famous podcaster. But we were arguing about this because I love this perspective of the Catholic social teaching, the critique of meritocracy.
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Yeah. uh the mockery of economics which Edmund Burke starts modern conservatism with mocking the economists offers and calculators who have destroyed western civilization. Yeah.
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But what you write is total heresy and blasphemy compared to the last 30 to 60 years of American conservatism. Sure.
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The one thing no matter what we all disagree on, everyone agreed meritocracy is good and uh that's what the left gets wrong and that we need to double down on meritocracy. You say it stinks. Why?
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Well, I think a couple things. I mean, f first of all, I I think that, you know, I think Aristotle once said that virtue lies in the mean. And like any sort of there there's like the vice and the
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virtue version of anything. I don't think ambition is bad. In fact, I think that if you're ambitious because you want to build, you know, a rocket that goes to the moon, right? We couldn't have gotten to the moon were it not for
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that kind of ambition. or if your ambition is to, you know, build a building that a lot of people live in that that provides comfort and so forth, I think that's good. But I think what we've allowed in our modern society,
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what meritocracy has done is warped it into ambition for ambition's sake. Ambition not to build something beautiful, but to get ahead of other people. Ambition not to make an amazing product, but ambition to make a lot of money for money's sake. And I think that
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we've allowed it that that basic human desire to achieve great and beautiful things to be warped into a vice of just being better than other people. And I think that is sort of what Christian teaching is counseling us against. It's
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okay. You know, I think God makes makes us, you know, all creatures big and small. Some some some of us he makes to be ambitious. I'm certainly, you know, an ambitious person. I'm the vice president of the United States. I think
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he makes some people who just want more normal things out of life. They want a nice job and they want to provide their kids with nice things and that's that's good too. I think that when it becomes warping and disorienting is when it
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becomes ambition for ambition's sake. And what the meritocracy I think the modern meritocracy in 21st century America has done is taught people to want to be better than everyone else.
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And I think it has two really really big problems. First of all, if you're orienting yourself not to some objective truth, but to how other people are performing and behaving, you're not your own person, and you're certainly not
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God's person. You're fundamentally following the crowd. This is like an insight from Rene Gerard. So, at some level, meritocracy is fundamentally derivative of other people. Yes, that's a bad thing.
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The second thing is that I actually think that it God how to put this, but I I think that meritocracy can steal from us a sense of what really really matters. And you saw this at law school. You see it in any elite
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institution. You don't see people bragging about their kids in the same way they brag about their jobs. You don't see people bragging about their relationships as you do the same way they brag about their credentials. And so one of the core lessons of my life is
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that the most valuable thing I got out of law school was friendships. Particularly the relationship with the woman who's now my wife. Those things matter fundamentally way more. Nobody is on their deathbed and looks back and says, this is like the most trit cliche
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in the world because it's true. Nobody looks back and says, "I wish that I had spent less time with my son so that my net worth was $1,000 higher." No one thinks that. And yet, meritocracy trains people to think exactly that when
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they're in the point of their life, when those decisions are made. It's also like the definition of cynicism, which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And you're telling of of these conversations at Yale Law School, is, you know, you
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don't just hear it at Yellow Law School, you hear it throughout our culture. and they just tell you that all that matters is slaving away doing spreadsheets for Mr. McGillicuy at the widget factory to drive up GDP. And so then so moving and
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there's a liberation in it. I mean the the craziest conversation that I had conversations that I had at Y Law School was people who counted themselves as feminists which you know to take like the the the the the positive spin on
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feminism it would be that women should have the right same rights as men. And yet they define success and achievement as spending as much time in a cubicle at Goldman Sachs. I mean, it's enough to make somebody a Marxist and say you have
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like totally internalized a set of ideas that is completely opposed to your well-being as a human being. Like if you think that it is liberating for you to sit in a cubicle at Goldman Sachs, you have been had.
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Yes. And we all got to just admit that before we can make any progress as a civilization.
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No, I mean this is really on the point about Catholic social teaching. This is the point of Rayum Navarum and Pope Leo the 13th was he said hold on communism totally awful terrible you can't be Catholic and communist. Every pope since
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said basically said that uh but also we're not ideological less capitalists who think we need to send our kids to the coal mines. You know they're they're we have to put these things in their proper order. So then that my question
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for you is there's been a massive um restructuring of what conservatism means. President Trump led a lot of that.
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So looking ahead, you are the era parent now. Uh whether you like it or not, you are. So looking ahead to 2028 and beyond, if there's this thing going on even beyond you, this this restructuring of what it means to be a conservative,
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then if it's not creative destruction, uh tax cuts for wealthy people exclusively and uh I don't know u just like GDP ticking up. Yeah. What is Well, first of all, I I think that people need to appreciate how fully they lost the
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argument. So to the point that they've really moved the goalpost. I mean, if you remember when Donald Trump ran for president the first time, the idea of tariffs on imported goods was a heresy in the GOP. It is now the baseline
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position that virtually every Republican politician adopts is like, of course, we shouldn't let foreign countries like prey on American workers and prey on American industries. Immigration restriction.
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Immigration restriction. Again, there is obviously there's a cultural and crime and law and order element to it, but there's also a very powerful economic argument that we don't want to let the wages of immigrants undercut the wages of Native American workers. Again, that
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is just boilerplate at this point in the GOP. And I mean, even things like when the president said a few weeks ago that uh you know, yeah, he absolutely wanted to like seize seize the equity of the AI
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companies and you know, sh, right? And it's like guys, he's the president and he sets the agenda and he just said it. And by the way, nobody really even protested. Yeah. So like the president has already and obviously I'm
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biased. I'm his vice president, but the president has already like completely reoriented the conversation towards what you might call an American developmentalist approach. Like like American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it
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is Milton Friedman. I think that's obviously a good thing. You might disagree, but that's just a normative statement that notice though what what you've just said because for the people who say that betraying some nostalgic retconing of a caricature of the 1980s
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that to to change that in any way would be abandoning American history and the tradition. You say, "Hold on. I just went from Milton Friedman to Hamilton." Exactly. And to some degree, George Washington 200 years backwards in history. Actually, that's very much a
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foundation of of American developmental economics and economic policy. And I do think, you know, I I don't want to say you can go back to the future or, you know, forward to the past, but I I do think fundamentally
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that Hamiltonian tradition is going to be what we see on the American right and will dominate American conservative economic thinking for the future. Yeah.
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Which is not LZ fair. It's actually much more about, you know, building the kind of tools, building the kind of infrastructure that allow human beings to flourish, that allow national and native industries to flourish at the expense of
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a hyper globalized economy. And I think those are the basic principles that are going to carry us into the future. But to me, it's it's fundamentally about the dignity of the human person. The economy is a tool to service the dignity of the
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human person. If a set of economic policies make it easier for a person to raise a family, to earn a living wage, to give back to their community, to maybe go to church on Sunday or to actually spend some leisure time
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building the kind of life that matters. Like that is the sort of thing that we want to be supportive of. Now, obviously to do those things, you do need economic development. But if you turn economic development into a sort of idol, then
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you end up sacrificing a lot of the things that matter most. And I and I do think that, you know, for our friends who are sort of on the more lz fair side of the American right, in hindsight,
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part of why Milton Friedman's ideas made more sense in the 1980s is because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity. And so like being LZ fair in a world where there are
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Christian guard rails on everything is a much different proposition than being lzair in a world where globalized liberalism has become the sort of status quo of American elites. of course because so much of that liberalism uh classical variety or more modern variety
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it it is resting upon a foundation that it did not create you know and a foundation that it it in many ways weakens. So obviously we're think that's exactly right. I think you could say this you could say that about you know I
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have a British friend who has been in in British conservative politics for longer than I have maybe longer than I've been alive. he's, you know, on the on the older side of things. And he he was making this observation about Margaret
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Thatcher to another British conservative who was just scandalized by it, but couldn't push back against it in anything besides an emotional way. He said, you know, Margaret Thatcher, an amazing human being, like a a true giant in the history of of Western politics.
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But like fundamentally Margaret Thatcher was trying to preserve the shop and the community around the shop that her father had when she was a little girl.
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And yet if you look at modern Britain and the result of Margaret Thatcher's policies, you would say that her policies actually got Britain further away from that ideal and not closer to that ideal. That's not, by the way,
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criticizing her. I think she was trying out something in a very new era in a situation where things were quite broken. But we have to be honest like what worked and what didn't work. And I think unfortunately I would say
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Thatcher's politics and a lot of um 20th century conservative politics was it sort of bought the premises of modern liberalism and was not infused enough with the basic Christian underpinning of the West.
Speaker A
Yeah. Einrand is not going to save your culture. It's not going to happen. So then we're we're throwing around all these names. All of our good dead friends.
Speaker A
Five figures off the top of your head. Thinkers, intellectuals, or or statesmen perhaps. Okay, on that cliffhanger, we will get back to the vice president, but first you need to go to leafilter.com/nolleskle.
Speaker A
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Speaker A
I'm not going to say Jesus cuz that's too easy. But that's obviously the one and done.
Speaker A
I think I think that's a gimme. That's the center box on bingo. But so the the three who I think have got to be part of this conversation for me are Aquinus, Augustine, and Rene Gerard. I I talk
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about the three of them and all of them in in in different ways but very very influential to my like own thinking on these topics.
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Um if I so I I probably honestly would put Alexander Hamilton in there or maybe the French economist I always forget his name who basically provided a lot of like the developmental influences to Alexander Hamilton. In some ways
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Hamilton was just applying this guy's ideas. I will get you the name and you can tell your audience later.
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Um, and then if I had to pick a fifth name, it's see this is what's that this is what's very hard about this question. But I I might actually say um again Uh, not Frank Meyer, but the the
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Catholic who was pushing back against Frank Meyer. Well, Meyer converted in the end. He did convert. He converted.
Speaker A
No, I'm talking about his his interlocutor. I can't remember his name, but he had such uh Brent Bozel.
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Brent Bazelle. Brent Bozel. Great answer. But like who ghost wrote Conscience of a Conservative, by the way. Exactly. Which is why that book was so good.
Speaker A
Yeah, that's exactly that is a great answer. That's a I Yeah, I to one of the unsung heroes of 20th century conservatism. He's moderately sung, I should say, moderately sung hero. Yeah, but I also think was way ahead of his time.
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Yeah. Was very thoughtful about what was actually going on in the conservative movement at the time.
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And if you were to look at somebody, you know, one of one of my mentors in in the investment business once told me like the most valuable thing you can do as an investor, as a thinker, is to try
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to identify people who have made discreet predictions about the future and like lean on the people who have been more right than wrong. Predicting the future is inherently, as you know, a very very uh difficult business. Yeah.
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But if you get somebody who's willing to actually say what they think is going to happen and is more right than wrong, that's like a very very important thinker. And I don't think there's a single person in 1950s America who was
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more correct about the future of either the American right or the country than Bozel. Great observation.
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It also reminds me I I the only credit I can take on one of these recently is I I called the Pope's name, but it was wish casting. I wasn't predicting. I just really wanted it to be Leo. I hope that
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turns out. Uh speaking of in the time I have left with you, speaking of international affairs, I understand there's some conflict going on somewhere in the Middle East. The reason that we couldn't do this interview a couple weeks ago,
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uh you you're obviously in this 27 hours a day, correct? By my understand, tell me if I have this wrong. By my understanding, the president said on Monday, we might get peace talks Tuesday. Iran immediately comes out, says we have not scheduled peace talks
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Tuesday. Then we're in a ceasefire, but we keep shooting at each other. Then the Iranians say we can't get a deal because Israel keeps firing on Hezbollah and southern Lebanon. So then Israel and Lebanon get a deal, a peace deal, but
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Hezbollah, which works for Iran, says we're not going to abide by the deal. And then the straight of Horus is open, but some people say it's closed and it's not. But then the Iranians say there are tolls along with Oman, which we didn't
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even bring up Oman yet. And so I guess it seems to me in my layman's understanding, the structural issues pre preventing peace are all the same as they've been for about 10,000 years. So now as we're looking at Schroinger, rest
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of Hormuz or the whole conflict generally. Yeah. What structurally needs to change to bring about peace? Is there any timeline you foresee on that happening?
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Like a a lasting peace and and crucially, yeah, how significant will that be for not just the midterms, but 2028?
Speaker A
Well, first of all, I I I do think that things are much different than they were even a few months ago. I'm not saying they're going to, you know, I can't predict, of course, the future, but so one, there are talks. There were
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scheduled talks, really technical talks building on the negotiation that we've already had. Those are definitely happening tomorrow. One of the things I I find just fascinating and frustrating about the Iranians is they'll say, "No, no, there aren't peace talks ongoing,
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but there are technical talks between the United States and Iran about the peace deal." It's like, okay. So, it's it's a Persian negotiating tactic and a Persian rhetorical device that I I I don't understand, but that is that is
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the way that the Iranians have done have done this. Um, one of the things that I think is underappreciated about the president's approach to this whole region of the world is he likes to reshuffle the deck and then see where the leverage points
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are, where the pressure points are, and see where we can make progress. And that's really where we are right now.
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Things have changed a lot. The Iranian military is much weaker. The Iranian economy is much weaker. Um, you know, Lebanon and Israel are talking to each other directly in a way that they weren't a few months ago.
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They both are sort of broadly aligned. And you know, you could even make an argument that if you if you harmonize the Lebanon Israel peace deal with theou signed between the United States and Iran, what both of those documents
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fundamentally say is that Lebanon's territorial integrity will be respected. Okay. So things have definitely changed.
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I think the question is whether that change is durable. And I don't know when this will air. Probably tomorrow.
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Tomorrow. Okay. So, so I think what the president has said is let's let this play out. There are a few things that we want. We want durable commitments that are verifiable and backed up by inspections that Iran will denuclearize
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their entire country. Okay, we're going to see how we get there. Uh number two, we want to see um what kind of an arrangement actually exists in the Middle East between not just Iran and the United States, but the GCC, Israel, Lebanon.
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We're going to play that situation out. And then on the straight of Hormuz, I mean, I think you actually said it well, which is that the the straight is open in the sense that to oil traffic, we're seeing more oil come out of the straight
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of Hormuz and some some days actually more oil coming out of the straight than came out before the war even started.
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So, there's this element of the um you know where where the world oil economy is kind of getting back into gear.
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That's going to take a little bit of time, but you've already seen the prices come way down. Now, what the cynics will say is, well, if you look at the number of ships that are trafficking, that's actually down from the pre-war start,
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but they're mostly talking about cargo ships and other vessels. At least so far, what we've seen is the oil traffic has reached its its pre-war its pre-war height. So, I think what the president has told us to do is use thisou to sort
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of refill the world's oil economy. Yeah. to refill some stocks and then to see where the hand is. And you know, if the, as I've I've said this repeatedly, if the Iranians are willing to make the commitments that we would like them to
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make and are willing to back those up with verifiable milestones, then we are going to change our relationship with Iran. And if they don't do that, then nothing has really changed except for what we've already accomplished from the
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military campaign, which is a lot. So, we kind of have two options here. We have the option of pursuing a long-term deal with the Iranians, but that requires a significant change in their behavior. We have the option of
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banking our wins and then of course doing things on top of that if the president feels that we have to. And I think both of those options are very much in play and the president's going to let this play out. But what's
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happening right now is he's letting those options play out in an environment where there is significantly less pressure on the world energy economy.
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And this is my biggest frustration with right-wing critics of what we've done over the last few months in Iran is that they don't realize how completely they were losing the political argument because of what was happening to world
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energy markets. Yeah. So what the president of the United States has done, you're talking about the critics who want more bombs dropping. Their attitude is just drop bombs and drop bombs and drop bombs and they can't really articulate to what end. And what the
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president is saying, I'm I'm willing to drop bombs. And he's clearly shown that he's willing to drop bombs, but only if it serves an objective. And so what he's doing right now is taking a lot of pressure off of
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the world economy, the world energy economy in particular, while not giving up a single one of his gains and while preserving a lot of optionality. I I think that's a very good place for us to be in. But there's uncertainty because
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no one could be certain what the Iranians are going to do, right? So then the message if if you're an Iranian, the message you're getting from the US is not, okay, we've settled this, you you get to keep the straight
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of Hormuz and we'll try to play nice. Now, the message is, uh, okay, we're we're going to serve our self-interest by replenishing the oil coffers and get back to us in 60 days, you might have some fire and brimstone coming back
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down. And if you actually behave, you won't, right? And that's that's that's what the president has has fundamentally put out there. Now, it is interesting to me because the Iranians have said, "We control the straits and yeah, we're
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going to let traffic flow for the next 60 days, but then we're going to negotiate over what happens from there." Okay? And what what I find just bizarre about that assertion is that nobody from the Gulf Coast or the the the Gulf
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Coalition countries, the Arab countries in the Gulf and the Omanis who are sort of the main Iranian theoretically partner, all of them have come out and said we don't accept this Iranian tolling mechanism. And so the Iranians keep on asserting something that isn't
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actually happening right now and they don't have a credible pathway to make happen in the future. So I do see this as a bit of a sideshow because fundamentally like their arguments what I what I mean is the side show is what
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they're saying. Yeah. What will actually happen is going to be determined through a combination of negotiation, diplomatic, economic and military leverage. What they're saying right now for the consumption of their domestic audience, it really doesn't matter. What matters is is what's going
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to happen. Something that we're working on right now. And so then if you if you look ahead not just to the midterms but but even to 2028 if this drags on in this kind of stasis the Iranians don't
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behave and the Hezbollah keeps up to its antics and we can't get a peace deal between these three four five six countries. Uh how significant is that for the Republican chances in 28? I don't mean to only come back to 2028 but I think
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it's it it helps clarify what it means for the party. Is this as the president has said, you know, just a digression, sort of a side quest that we had to deal with because of the Iranian nuclear threat, or maybe it is that today. Could
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this become a major moment in the history of the American Empire and the Republican party?
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Well, first of all, I just want to be very clear here like this is not going to end in a place where the Iranians are collecting tolls on ships going through the straight of Hormuz. There's a lot of
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uncertainty because we don't know how the Iranians are going to behave. But that is just one thing that every country in the region including Iran's own allies say is unacceptable. That would be intolerable.
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Unpredictability. Yes, because the Iranians are inherently unpredictable. Their government's very unstable. But I don't think that is going to be a situation that exists. In fact, I feel quite confident that we're not going to have a told straight of war moves in the
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future. But, you know, do you want a question about like could this be something that affects the chances in 2028? Could this be a very important historical moment?
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The answer is obviously yes. But again, how exactly this plays out is very much contingent on the way that the Iranians respond to the leverage the president has put on them. And if they respond well, we're I think we're going to look
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back at this and say we turned over a new leaf. Now, a lot of people are skeptical, including me, that that will ultimately happen. And then if the Iranians perform or behave poorly, then I think that we still have a lot of
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leverage points and to ensure that this ends up in a place that is good for America's objective. So I I think fundamentally there's a desire here for everyone to say this is over or America, you know, the the Democrats and even
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frankly some Republicans are saying, well, you know, this shows that Trump blinked and then other people are saying, you know, it's all over and the Iranians are saying this and and and I would be highly skeptical of what
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everybody says right now. I think Marcos said this the other day. He said, "This is the be this is the end of the beginning." Okay? There is a lot more game to play.
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Yeah. And there are a lot more cards that we're going to see to mix metaphors here. And the good thing about it is that we're served by an administration.
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We're served by a president of the United States who is constantly trying to figure out how to gain an edge for the American people. I ultimately strongly believe we will look back on this moment and say we got to a good
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place. It's going to take a lot of work, not just in the negotiation arena, but in the other arenas, too. You know, I have a great deal of sympathy for the administration actually on this because appreciate it because because look, I
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was I was very skeptical of this intervention before before, during, and after. I I favor restrained foreign policy. But I look at these polls and I I saw a poll a year ago of Americans, especially on the right.
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How many of you think that we should stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?
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90% 80 90%. How many of you want to go to war with Iran? like 10% 20% none and you say well those are in conflict yes and and then even look to bring it into another issue it's interesting at this
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moment that foreign policy rarely rises to the top of conservatives minds it really does seem to be dominating you look at China the Wall Street Journal had this worrisome report out a couple days ago said that uh after anthropic
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came out with the mythos AI they said this is so good it's so dangerous we're not going to release this to the public street Journal reports China just made its own mythos It's out. It's so much for that that we're clearly in in some
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kind of AI arms race. We appear to be in a a cold war. Maybe it's it gets a little hot even sometimes with China. Uh and Americans are divided on this, even conservatives. On the one hand, we want
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to win the arms race with China. On the other hand, we don't want AI to take all of our jobs, build huge data centers in our backyard, raise our energy prices, all the rest. So, you say, "Well, no, I
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don't want to lose the AI arms race, and I don't want the data center in my town." Well, so in the Trump administration and then looking ahead perhaps to to the Vance administration, what does the American foreign policy look like? Because from
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what I can tell, we want the privileges of empire, but we don't want the obligations of empire.
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First of all, I reject the premise of any future advance administration. I'm very focused on being vice president.
Speaker A
No. Yeah, it was very slick, but I I I refuse to accept it. This aggression will not stand. But on the Trump administration's policy, I mean, look, we we've tried and I think we've done a good job of balancing the economic
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benefits with the downsides of artificial intelligence. Okay. And you're right, we don't want to lose the AI race to China.
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I think there's an interesting question about how much China's own AI policy is fundamentally derivative of us. And I don't just mean them copying America.
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That is that is part of it. I actually mean I'm not sure I don't think many Americans have a good understanding of how the Chinese actually think about AI.
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I think there's a part of the Chinese policy set, you know, she's inner circle that probably just wants to dominate the AI arms race.
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I actually think there is a part of she's inner circle that says we don't want to lose to the United States, but we don't want to win either. that they're I think they're a little freaked out by it is what I'm saying.
Speaker A
Yeah, we will get back to the vice president breaking news as as it pertains to politics, the world, the entire international order. But first, I have some news to break on Mayflower because our country turns 250 years old this
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Speaker A
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Speaker A
grown in the shade of New England. This is the kind of tobacco. It's an more aged delicious version of the kind of tobacco I grew up smoking. You'll get notes of cream, almond, toasted bread, coffee, presented exclusively in a
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commemorative box of 10. Each cigar sealed in its own tube. The tubes are beautiful. On the secondary band, you'll find the words from our framers to ourselves and our posterity. It's just killer. It's just a killer cigar. It's
Speaker A
in very, very limited quantity. It was hard to get this tobacco in the first place. I'm telling you, this is a limited batch. I don't want to hear it.
Speaker A
When they're gone, they're gone. You must be 21 years old or older to order.
Speaker A
Voidware prohibited. Conditions and exclusions apply. So where I think that lands for me is, you know, I I am very skeptical of AI to the extent that it leads to like porn slop videos and weird child predation stuff on the internet.
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And I'm more optimistic about AI when it comes to things like curing diseases and solving like very very big technical challenges for the American people. So, you know, because of that, I think we have to we have to strike a balance.
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Like, I'm not super lz fair on some of the applications of AI because I do think that some of the AICOs fundamentally want to control the information economy in the United States.
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They want to sell sometimes very damaging things to our children. They want to get rich in the process and they want to control the government.
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Right? I think that some AI leaders want to build things that are genuinely transformative in a good way. And I don't think that we can be, you know, completely unbiased. There is, you have to sort of pick a side. Yeah.
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And I think in the United States, the side that I pick is pro the people who are building things that are meaningful and valuable and anti the people who just want to like, you know, produce slot videos and make it easier for child
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predators to interact with our kids. The data center thing is interesting. Um, like just if you look at the polling, I've talked to some friends of mine who work in the AI world about this. I don't know if I've ever seen I mean like AI
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data centers are about as popular as herpes. It's unbelievable how bad the polling is. And my view on this is that it's not really about the data centers.
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It's about the energy and that 99% of the backlash to AI data centers is because we're allowing these data centers, especially in blue states where they make it hard to build power to tap into the grid. So an AI data center
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literally means you're going to be paying more electricity so that you know somebody in Silicon Valley can make another billion dollars. Like going back to the point about the dignity of human beings, that is not a good trade. That's
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not a trade that we accept. We should accept. But I think the the most important solution there is just to build more power. And where I think the Chinese are way ahead of us in AI, it's the only
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area is the Chinese are not afraid to build power. We are. And so this is where I think the environmental movement in the United States is going to collide with reality. And it's funny that if if the AI people don't figure this out,
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they're they're going to be the casualty of this war between building power and the environmental movement in the United States, AI data centers are going to be the first casualty. And you know, my advice to the AI CEOs would be something
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like maybe you should support building more power. And maybe, you know, and we've we've pursued policies like this in the Trump administration where you try to force people that if they're going to build an AI data center, they
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can only do it if it's going to raise people's power costs. I can't help but notice that some of the real billionaire obsessives about environmentalism, they've changed their tune. people like Bill Gates, he said basically that global warming was solved. This happens
Speaker A
to coincide with this energy crisis for who knows, maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's providence, who knows? I I know you have to go because you have very important things to do like help run the whole country. I have two brief
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questions before you go and they're sort of like pick a name kind of questions.
Speaker A
Sure. The leading Democrat for 28. I think it's got to be AOC. I know that's probably conventional wisdom, but Well, no. I think the conventional wisdom right now is Newsome.
Speaker A
No, no, I I don't I don't buy that. Um I I think I think he hurt himself with his comment to an audience full of black Americans that I'm low IQ just like you.
Speaker A
Sort of bad in a couple of different ways. How do you do fellow at least two major political gas produced in a single sentence? the major political gas I've had it's it's sort of much less efficient than that.
Speaker A
Yeah. Um so yeah I look I I think all more than off more than any of these other guys.
Speaker A
Yeah. I mean it's funny it's the AOC versus thing. I I guess the question would be who do you think really has the power in the Democratic party? And I if you think the answer is like Wall Street
Speaker A
and the left of center business community then it would be ass. And if you think it's the universities, it would be AOC. So David Brooks made an observation. I I think David Brooks probably hates my guts, but he like
Speaker A
occasionally will say something that I think is genuinely brilliant. And this was one of them. He said that the fundamental problem with today's Democratic party is that the power center has shifted from unions to universities. And if that's right, AOC
Speaker A
will be the nominee. And by the way, I think that's one of the reasons why the Democratic Party of 2026 is so deranged because, you know, you walk into a union hall, even where 70% of the guys are
Speaker A
still voting Demundy like a normal place with normal social values. Yeah. It's not the university like, you know, uh it's it's not the university break room.
Speaker A
Faculty lounge. Yeah, faculty lounge. That's the word that I'm looking for. Right. So I I and this by the way is is another reason why I'm just fundamentally pessimistic about the Dems because you know it's one thing to be a socially
Speaker A
pragmatic left of center Democrat on economic issues but they're just so dominated by the crazy people and they can't it's like they can't figure out the part where they get the economic populism which actually is very popular and I think Republicans should
Speaker A
be more worried about that. Yeah. But every time they get the economic populism, it's with somebody like AOC who's like, "Ah, we, you know, need to tax the rich and give all the money to transgender baseball players who pray on your kids." And it's like,
Speaker A
wait a minute. Yeah. Could you like a very potent political movement would be half of that, whether you agree with it or not?
Speaker A
Yes. Half of that equation is very politically popular. The part where you allow those same billionaires that you're taxing to get rich by selling unlicensed pharmaceutical products to 12-year-old minors to gender transition them. That's the part that makes most
Speaker A
Americans go, "What the hell are you talking about?" And oh, by the way, are you actually against the rich when your social values and your cultural values happen to align with the CEOs of nearly every major corporation?
Speaker A
Yes. Yeah. I mean, you saw it just the other day. The Scott Weiner, this the guy who's running for Pelosi's seat, like like a like a a true deviant, a true I mean, there's like something wrong with that guy.
Speaker A
His crowning political achievement was encouraging pedarasti in the law. That's not an exaggeration. And he was kicked out of the trans march for being too right-wing, you know. So, that's the basically the state party. I uh I think
Speaker A
sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar eats you, my friend. Best of luck. Last question I have for you before I let you go. Last name to name.
Speaker A
Who's your confirmation saint? Augustine. St. Augustine. Yep. That's right. So, that was an easy choice for me. Confessions was such a big part of my own my own faith journey. I write about it a little bit in the book, but
Speaker A
you know, the city of God and everything that he wrote. So, that that's that's an easy one.
Speaker A
And August, we have an Augustinian pope, an Augustinian vice president, maybe soon an Augustinian president. I gave I gave Pope Leia the 14th when I visited him for his inaugural mass. We found a very old copy of Confessions that we
Speaker A
gifted him. That is now what am I going to get him? I don't know. I don't know when I'm going to meet him. Mr. Vice President, such a pleasure. Thank you for being very, very generous with your time. Excellent book. I really I hard I
Speaker A
I'm not even lying as I would be inclined to do for a friend or someone I admire, but this book is really good.
Speaker A
So, go get it. Communion by J. ad Vans. Thank you, sir. Good to see you, man. Thanks,
Topics:JD VanceCatholicismreligious conversionfaith journeyMichael KnowlespoliticsIranartificial intelligence2024 electionAmerican politics
