Speaker 1: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Kylie Cast. I'm Kylie Griswold,
Managing editor at The Federalist. Please like and subscribe wherever
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to email the show, you can do so at radio
at the Federalist dot com. I would love to hear
from you today. I am so happy to welcome to
the show. Frank DeVito. Frank is Senior counsel and Director
of Content at the NAPA Institute, but today he joins
me in his personal capacity as the author of the
brand new book jd Vance and the Future of the
Republican Party. Frank and I dive into jd Vance's faith,
his views on abortion and what that will look like
in a future Republican Party, as well as all of
the ways that libertarianism and fusionism have failed the Republican
Party and conservatism generally. So, without further ado, please welcome
to the show, Frank DeVito. Frank Devido, thank you so
much for coming on the Kylie Cast.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: It was a pleasure to read your book, so I'm
so excited to get the chance to talk about it
and to talk about Jade Vance. This is a little
bit topically different from some of the things we've covered
on this show before, but certainly something that's on the
minds of a lot of people as we head into
the midterms and then, I mean, twenty twenty eight is
going to come at us quickly, so I think a
lot of people are wondering kind of what a post
Trump America looks like and will it look a lot
like Trump or will it look very different from that?
And you approach some of these themes in your book,
jd Vance in the future of the Republican Party. So
let's just start from the very beginning. Why don't you
tell the listeners kind of what led you to write
this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, thank you.
Speaker 3: So I think the main reason is probably what you
identify like this is coming right, jd Vance's I mean
I started. I think I thought of the idea right
right after the election in twenty twenty four, and my
thinking was kind of this. So the importance of jd
Vance to me is obvious. Right when Trump was picking
his VP, he could have picked somebody who checked a
demographic box, right.
Speaker 2: He could have picked a woman.
Speaker 3: He could have picked a black man or a Latino,
somebody who would kind of try to garner votes from
a certain demographic. He could have picked a vice president
from an important swing state. But instead he picks this,
you know, young white Christian guy from a safe red
state in Ohio. To me, there's no other good reason
that I can see except you're picking a potential successor
to your presidency and to the MAGA movement, right or else?
Speaker 2: Why would you pick him?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: There are better choices if you're trying to bring.
Speaker 3: In new demographics or to win the election, so to me,
it was just instantly it's Vance's race to lose for
twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: I think he's the heir apparent, if you want to
use that term. And I think.
Speaker 3: Since I started writing the book and finish the book
and now publish the book, I think that's confirmed. I
won't say that it's a sure thing, but he is
certainly the front runner, and by huge margins. And so
the first reason was simply I think Vance is probably
going to be the presidential nominee for the Republican Party
in twenty twenty eight, and therefore should write a book
about him, right, But I think it was also particularly
interesting to me as like a kind of conservative nerd,
you know, I write in this space of conservative culture
and religion and policy and legal issues.
Speaker 2: And things like that.
Speaker 3: And so normally, when you're profiling or studying a political
figure right on the American scene who's like a potential
presidential candidate, I don't want to say it's kind of boring,
but you don't have a lot of like really deep
intellectual stuff. You're going off campaign speeches and the typical
stuff that politicians do. But Vance kind of came up
as like one of my people right, like the conservative
intellectual nerds.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: He wrote the Hillbilly Elogy memoir that made him famous,
of course, but then right after that, when he became
a household names, he's writing op eds. I'm really interesting
matters of politics and policy. He writes a long form
essay at the Lamp about his conversion to Catholicism. He's
really high level engaging with matters of political philosophy at
places like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the American Conservative. So
he's just a much more interesting politician from my perspective
to write about. If you really want to dive in
and see what does this person say, what does he think?
What has been his kind of his consistent prior through
a decade of being a very public figure, even before
he was a political candidate.
Speaker 2: To me, that was really interesting.
Speaker 3: So you have the personal interest, you have the obviously
he's going to be important, but I think he's important
not just because he's a future presidential contender, but he's
a presidential contender at a really important time in the.
Speaker 2: History of the Republican Party.
Speaker 3: Right, So what the Republican Party looked like in twenty fifteen,
the day before Trump came down the escalator to the
day to today in twenty twenty six, completely different, right,
the policy priorities, the tone, the awareness of what time
it is in America, if you will, the voters who
make up the Republican Party, everything's completely different.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Trump has realigned in in a way transformed the Republican Party.
So there are new alignments of voters, of policy issues,
of all of this to contend with. But Trump is
a unique, like enigmatic figure, right if Trump's person, his charisma,
his style, like he has been very clearly the head
of this movement as it's completely shifted the Republican Party.
So as he goes away, now he's a lame duck president,
he's in his last couple of years of his term.
And therefore, of his influence over the Republican Party, what
direction the party takes after Trumpe, It's an open question
and those are.
Speaker 2: Big shoes to fill.
Speaker 3: And so I think who that successor is makes more
of a difference than your normal presidential primary campaign.
Speaker 2: So for all those reasons.
Speaker 3: Like somebody's people are going to write books about vance
Hillbilly elegy is his story, but it's definitely not the
last word on who this guy is as potentially our
future president and leader of the party, and I just figured.
Speaker 2: I would do it first.
Speaker 3: I had the idea right after the twenty twenty four elections,
so well, let's see if I can be first to
the party here and write something influential on the topic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and it really is a great collection of his
essays and ideas and just a place to find kind
of where he aligns ideologically in one space. Very helpful.
I think a lot of Trump voters breathed a collective
sigh of relief when Trump picked Vance as his running me,
partly because I think there was a lot of confidence
going into that election that you actually don't need to
do as much coalition building, like the coalition is here,
we don't need to try to, you know, pick a
token candidate to appeal to some random demographic like of
course Trump needed a vice president Pence figure in twenty sixteen,
which I think you also talk about in your book.
But by twenty twenty and then twenty twenty four, you know,
he had already sort of locked down the base of
Christian support at least as much as he was ever
going to, and so he didn't really need that, and
I just think there was this sigh of relief because
it's like the Trump Maga movement is not actually just
a Trump movement. It's an America First movement that will
hopefully long outlive Trump. And I think that was a
big relief to many people. And I think too, like
I actually read your book in tandem with Hillbilly Elegy
because I had never read that book. I was familiar,
so familiar with it just because of the work that
I do, but but I was like, I've never actually
sat down and read this book. So I'm gonna I'm
gonna read both of these and it's just so interesting
because I know one critique of Trump is that he
has this populist rhetoric and he seems to get you know,
blue collar Middle America workers. But JD. Vance gets gets
them because he actually grew up among them, and it's
just a very different it's a way more relatable, tangible thing,
even if you didn't grow up in you know, Appalasia
as a hillbilly family. There's this sense that here's this
guy who grew up even worse than I grew up,
who can actually get the plight of these people who
have seen their towns hollowed out when manufacturing was offshot,
and he's just such a unique figure in that way
to even to even maybe supersede Trump in many ways
as we as we move forward with the New Right.
I want to dive right into some of the ideas
in your book. You talk about this concept that Jade
Vance actually talks about in hill Billy Elegy, which is
brain drain and how people move from their talents. They
go get degrees, they get credentialed, they basically become part
of the elite class, and then they leave and they
essentially contribute to the hollowing out of their communities by
taking their talents and their intellect elsewhere. And I would
love if you could kind of explain a little bit
more about that and the way that jd Vance thinks
about it, but also just whether jd Vance's ideas about
that are sort of a rebuke to the current Ben
Shapiro way of thinking of the just move ethos that
like that communities don't matter that much, that if you
can't afford to live where you want to live, the
solution is just to take your talents and yourself elsewhere.
What do you think about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: When I was in law school, there were a couple
of libertarian speakers who would The phrase they use was
vote with your feet, right, if you're in like a
blue state that's taxing you to death and there are
no prospects, then vote.
Speaker 2: With your fee.
Speaker 3: You make your thoughts known by going to a red
state that has better prospects. And I think that's just
an I've written on this before this book. This is
just a grossly inhuman way to live, this kind of
global take that we you know, we have cars and
airplanes and so you just go wherever. But kind of
a central tenet I think of being human is that
we are from a place, right, So there are obviously
reasons to move, right, like one of them is being
elected vice president, or you have to be in DC,
even if you're from Ohio. Yes, sure, not saying this
is an absolute nobody should ever move, but I think
it should be the norm. I think the norm should
be you're from a place, These are your people, this
is your extended family, this is your community. And it's
not good for individuals to uproot and be somewhere where
they're not divorced from, not just like their extended family
and the community that they grew up around. But the
multi generational effect of that right to build really deep
cultural trust. It's really important when you have these churches,
these neighborhoods where generations have been there, right, you know
your neighbors, you know them, but also like your parents
knew their parents, or your grandparents knew their grandparents. This
kind of this build a trust that's that's really important.
And I think about it in our own church community
here in Pennsylvania where I'm where I live, and it's
just created something so powerful when people have the intention
of I'm going to be rooted here. This is where
I'm going to raise my kids. This is where I'm
going to hopefully raise my kids to stay when they
grow up. You have these communities that have known each
other for generations, so there are potential marriages, friendships. Business
people do business with each other because they you know,
if I need if I need a plumber, if I
need a doctor, if I need an electrician.
Speaker 2: We pretty much.
Speaker 3: Everybody we patronize is from our parish. This is a
really important cultural fix, right, So it's important for building
healthy American communities, but and it's also healthy and better
for individuals So to go back to vance the brain
drain thing, it's it's a disaster for communities but also
for the individuals who are are sucked up into it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So just to use like one particular example, if you
have somebody from middle pick pick a state in the
middle of the country, right from Arkansas, really smart, really talented,
naturally gifted, gets a scholarship and gets to.
Speaker 2: Go to Yale, right, and now you're a Yale grad.
Speaker 3: So the sky's the limit and every cultural force right
is going to tell you. Everybody you've met at Yale,
the professors, the peers, the recruiting companies that are on
the campus, you're going to tell you you're going to
go back to your little town in the middle of
nowhere county in Arkansas. I mean, you can make all
these millions, you can go whatever consult for McKenzie, You
can go to law school, and you can be in
one of the big white shoe law firms in Boston or.
Speaker 2: New York or DC. Why would you ever want to
go back to Arkansas?
Speaker 3: And what this does is, for one, obviously it's bad
for that town in Arkansas who just lost one of
their most gifted people who could be right mayor or
a huge business owner who could help revitalize that town,
that county.
Speaker 2: But it's also bad for the person because.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it's alluring the white shoe law firms
and the big consulting firms, but being a cog in
the wheel of one of these mega corporations in a big,
nameless city where you don't know anybody, and the policies
are terrible and it's busy and crowded and expensive, Like
I think most people would probably actually be happier going
back to their town and their family and their community
and being a force for good in like a normal place.
So you can definitely see vance advocates for this that
this is a huge thing that we need for cultural
renewal of the forgotten Middle American towns and counties and states.
And he's also lived it pretty vocally himself, right, he
did the Marine Corps and then he did Yell Law School,
and then he was in Silicon Valley for I know
what it was, maybe a year or two. I mean,
he writes this op ed about why he goes back
to Ohio, and this was well before he announces a
Senate run. And he goes and he opens a fund
in Cincinnati and Ohio, where he's from, and he makes
just this case. He's like, I've seen you know, Yale,
and I've seen Silicon Valley, and these people are just
living this existence that's just so divorced from all the
people that I grew up with.
Speaker 2: You know, He's talking.
Speaker 3: About families in Silicon Valley and how hopeful and optimistic
they are for the future and for their kids and
their financial prospects and all of this stuff. He's like,
this is nothing like right, the divorced, dysfunctional, messy, drug addicted,
unemployed people that I grew up around. And there was
just such a huge disconnect between the elites that he
was living around and the people that he grew up
with that he he chose the people he grew up
with and went back to try to do some good
in the place where he's.
Speaker 1: From, and then ended up doing that in many ways
by being elected to the Senate to represent the interests
of these people that are are legitimately his community, They're
his people. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about
Vance's poisoned Garden analogy what it means and then also
just kind of how that idea informs his adoption of
a more muscular conservatism. I know there's a lot of
debate right now about what conservative, what conservatism should look like.
Should we use power? Should we not? Of course Jade
Vance has a very specific take on that. But how
does this idea of the poisoned Garden inform that view?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I would I think even the poison Garden
gives you a particular like the time and place in
America maybe warrant different government action. But I would just
back up and say, at least for myself, and I
think Bance shares at least some of these instincts, is
that we've been dominated by a fusionist platform in the
Republican Party since probably at least the nineteen sixties, right
the Goldwater era, where basically libertarians who are very skeptical
of government power for almost any purpose, right and social conservatives,
and then like anti communist talks where all this kind
of this alliance, and it was assumed that this was
just kind of a cohesive thing, like this is conservatism,
this mix of libertarianism and anti communism and all that.
And so what I think we've lost is this kind
of classical understanding that man is a political animal. Right,
government is a natural thing, right in civilized in a society,
when men are living in the same place, you're just
naturally going to have government.
Speaker 2: It's not this this.
Speaker 3: Artificial thing that social contract, you know, we agree to
like form these communities. Now, anywhere there are people, there's
going to be some kind of government, and that exists
to promote the common goods that people can live in
peaceful ordered societies. The idea that libertarianism like hands off,
keep the government out of everything, is conservatism is incorrect.
So I just want to make that point. That's my point,
not Vance's per se.
Speaker 2: But I think that the.
Speaker 3: Poison garden analogy is really important to kind of maybe
bring those who are libertarian leaning along to realize how
inadequate that response is to the current moment, even for
people who maintain very strong limited or anti government sentiments.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So Vance writes this poison garden analogy. It's a little
like paragraph or two in his forward to Kevin Roberts's
book that came out pretty recently, where he basically says, Okay,
imagine a garden. Right, you have this garden, and you
in a healthy garden, right, the soil is healthy, the
rain is good, the sun is good, everything is working.
The gardener's job is pretty limited, right, some weeds you
make sure the sunlight and the rain or you know,
everything's irrigated. But the job of the gardener is not
very interventionist, right, There's not much that he has to
do for the garden to prosper.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: But then you take the trigger happy gardener if you will.
Who's like, all right, well, if we add fertilizers and
we add you know, pesticides and all this stuff, then
we can we can make the garden better. Right, Less
less vegetation is going to die. So you add, and
then you add, and then you add, and pretty soon
you've poisoned the garden. Right, So you have this soil
that's now corrupted, nutrient depleted, literally poisoned. At that point,
you can't just remove the intervention, right. It's not enough
to say, okay, gardener, you're intervening in too many places.
Pull out, right, stop adding pesticide, stop adding poison. Just
go back to your limited role of pull a few
weeds and let the sunshine in the rain, and because
now the thing is poisoned. Right, So this is the
analogy and I maybe take it a little farther than advance,
but I think what he's doing here is really instructive,
is that at this point, if the government is the gardener,
and our institutions and our whole American culture is the garden,
it's poisoned. It's poisoned by liberalism.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So like all of our institutions are deeply infected. Right,
the administrative state is so filled with career employees who
are going to thwart any administration that they don't like.
Speaker 2: Our media, as you well know, is.
Speaker 3: Pretty strongly in the grips of leftist at least mainstream media.
The corporations, the school systems, the universities. Everything is so
poisoned that it's not enough in this era to say, okay, gardener,
just stop the intervention, stop the big government.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: If we have this world where like Facebook and Google
are arguably more powerful than most nation states, right, and
the school systems, the media, there is so much influenced
by these organizations that are not the federal government that
to just say we need to go back to limited
principles of government. Right, Private enterprise rain, let local government
solutions rain. Get the government out of all of these things.
That's not going to solve our problems. At least that's
the argument. There's just there's too much here that is
poisoned that simply telling the government don't act is not
It's not going to fix what ails us. It might
it might help in some areas where the federal government
is aiding in bad things, but ultimately there are places
where I think it's legitimate. And also it's it's perhaps
necessary for the federal government to actually act instead of
just removing itself from things if we're going to get
anything like a return to sane, healthy institutions.
Speaker 1: Right right, And I think his analogy is very apt.
But then you take it one step further and you
write about libertarianism a little bit and freedom and what
that freedom should be and what it's not freedom to do.
And I just want to read a couple quick passages
from your book here. Actually they're not quick, they're a
little bit long, but I think they're so good and
they really stood out to me. So just against this
idea of libertarianism being the solution to our culture woes.
The freedom to choose is not itself the good that
society exists to foster. It should be fairly obvious that
not all free choices are good choices. Why are we
free to own guns? Not because freedom to own guns
is good, but because it is good to fulfill one's
duty to defend one's family and one's neighbors from evil.
We value free speech in order that truth might be spoken.
We value religious freedom so that people might worship God
in spirit and in truth. Freedom is so important because
of the good things it allows us to choose, not
because it is good in itself, so so important, And
then you continue, Yes, freedom and individual choice are important.
But if freedom is put on a pedestal as a
good in itself, we are often choosing to leave people
in communities lacking good jobs, ravaged by drugs, and torn
apart by these political decisions for so called freedom. That's,
of course, exactly what we saw in Vance's book. These
are political decisions, not requirements of freedom. Leaving individ jewels
and communities subject to the choices of drug companies and
transnational corporations is a political choice. Allowing private actors to
make decisions that are bad for many people in the
name of freedom does not leave Americans with very good
options from which to freely choose. Freedom for its own
sake is not conservative. Say it again, Freedom for it's
own sake is not conservative. It is not necessary or
inevitable for conservatives to always choose freedom over government action. Excellent.
I think you just took Vance's ideas and just expanded
upon them. But I thought that was really good. And yeah,
I wasn't expecting to get into such a good exposition
of libertarian libertarianism in the book, So thank you for
writing all of that.
Speaker 3: It's right, thank you. Yeah, I think it's just worth
pointing out. And this is one of my greater issues
in the other things that I write, certainly in the book,
that I think a lot of people are stuck in
a libertarian and beyond that, like a kind of neoliberal
framework where we look at every political problem, every political
issue in a very narrow historical lens, as if like
the there was no history of political thought before eighteen
hundred or pick your time.
Speaker 2: And I think it's really toxic.
Speaker 3: I think this idea that freedom from government intrusion is
itself a good and is a really problematic thing. I
think there are a lot of places where practically it
is just good to have more freedom rather than more
government intervention because certain freedoms we'd rather allow more of them,
like a little more speech, a little more religious exercise,
even if it's leading people to say or worship in
false ways, because when the government puts its hands on
the scale, it usually makes things worse, or a lot
of time it does. So it's a good practical argument.
I just think it's really important to keep that in mind,
that we might want more freedom because we don't trust
the government, but that let's not make that into a
conservative principle, that freedom from government isn't intrinsic good because it.
Speaker 1: Isn't correct, or that the things that we call free
are actually free. For instance, a lot of libertarians will
point to free markets. Well, the markets that we have
now are really not free at all, so we're not
even working within a free framework. So let's talk about
Trump a little bit. I know, one of the key
criticisms that I've often hurled at, that I've often seen
hurled at jd. Vance is that he is a Trump
flip flopper, that he was never Trump and he only
is now pro Trump so that he could get in
Trump's good graces and look, it worked. You know, YadA, YadA.
Can you explain why Vance did evolve from being never
Trump to pro Trump and why, unlike many of the
people in Congress or people who were never Trump and
then oh magically had an epiphany internet pro Trump, why
Vance is not hypocritical in that same way.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, one thing that I'll start with and then i'll
actually I'll go into the core of the question is,
first of all, people who throw that Advance that he
flip flopped on Trump for political expediency, like, come on now,
because a lot of the people who are saying that
and like targeting Vans are also in the wings saying
it shouldn't be Vances, it should be Rubio in twenty
twenty eight. And I like Marco Rubio, so this is
not a shot at him, but come on, I mean,
Rubio was like the public fights between Trump and Rubio
in the twenty sixteen primary were.
Speaker 2: Extraordinary and kind of entertaining.
Speaker 3: And now Rubio is like one of the most revered,
talented Trump acolytes in the administration. Right, So I mean,
this is everybody. The reality is when one person dominates
the party and you're part of the party, of course
there's going to be some realignment behind Trump going on.
But that being said, yeah, there are a lot of
people who frankly would like to just pretend that they
were never virulently never Trump anti Trump, and that they've
always been maga and like, what are you talking about?
Don't bring up my past right before Trump? Vance has
acknowledged it. Yeah, the interview you're referring to, think it
was that New York Times interview that he did in
late twenty twenty four where he talks about this in
some depth. And I thought it was a really insightful
answer as to how Vance pivoted on Trump. Not just
as a defense of Vance, but I think it's a
really good articulation of the kind of Trump versus never
Trump divide and the Republican Party today. And so what
Vance says basically is that what he can about, like
his core policy commitments haven't really changed. How do we
make America better for as many common Americans so that
they can get married, have kids, raise kids, and support
a family on a meaningful income from meaningful work. How
do we make the American dream accessible for as many
people as possible.
Speaker 2: It's what he wanted in.
Speaker 3: Twenty sixteen, it's still what he wants in twenty twenty
six So what changed, he says, And I think he's
I think he's being honest here, and I think it's
very convincing. Is I didn't change on politics. I didn't
change on my primary policy commitments. What I changed on
is my view of American institutions and how bad they are.
Speaker 2: Right, that's the crux of the argument, he says.
Speaker 3: Listen, in twenty sixteen, you know, Vance was young, he
was kind of a new figure on the political conservative
intellectual scene, and he was fairly optimistic about America, about
its institutions, and the idea is kind of okay institutionally,
America's maybe not in the best place. Things have swung
kind of to the left, but these things happen and
hopefully they'll swing back toward the right. Basically, things aren't great,
but they're not decaying.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: If that's your pretty optimistic view of America, that our
institutions are intact. We need to do some work to
get better candidates and reform some stuff, but we're in
okay shape, then then Trump is like a terror right.
He's like dropping bombs for no reason. Right, Like, who
is this caustic, bombastic person who's like firing people up
and telling them that, you know, things are terrible and we.
Speaker 2: Don't need this. This is toxic. Right. But so that's
pretty much where Vance was early on.
Speaker 3: And then what he says is as time goes on
is he gets more involved in the political scene and
is writing and commenting and thinking through all of these
political questions. He actually starts to come around to actually,
you know, I'm interacting with the school system and the
corporate elite and the Silicon Valley tech elite, right, and
the university system.
Speaker 2: He goes to Yale, he does all these things.
Speaker 3: He gets a lot more exposure to the institutions and
then particularly focused on the institutions of government, and starts
to realize, actually, maybe it does look more like the
eleventh hour, Like maybe things are really as bad as
Trump said, Like maybe maybe a lot of our institutions
are actually so bad that they can barely be recaptured.
Maybe we need to rebuild things, Maybe we need to
blow a lot of stuff up figuratively. Yeah, maybe maybe
this maybe Trump was right, Like if things are as
bad as the Maga folks say they are, then actually
Trump's responses are maybe warranted, right, And so I think
like I said, I think that explains vance's changed. It's like, Okay,
I think Trump is necessary. I think Trump is right.
I did because I've woken up to how bad things are.
I think that's legitimate. But I think it also if
you look at, like anyone listening to this or you Kylie,
think about like the never Trump Republican conservative folks.
Speaker 2: That you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, some are just completely unhinged, but like there
are people who are in good faith, like they're they're smart,
honest conservative people who really just cannot stand Trump and
the MAGA movement. They think it's brought us away from
principled conservatism. Okay, and then think of the Maga folks
that you know, And I think this is a really
big difference. I think this actually is one of the
good explaining criteria that can help us understand what's going
on here, is that if you look at those never
Trump kind of folks who are actually conservatives, they think
that he's the wrong solution because they don't see that
the problem is that bad. It's like, yeah, I mean,
we need to do better. We need more conservative people
in government, we need more conservative journalists and professors.
Speaker 2: But what like what Trump is pitching this is toxic.
But if you think that the institutions.
Speaker 3: Really are as bad, then you're a lot more likely
to accept Trump and MAGA as the correct medicine for
what ails.
Speaker 1: Us right, which I think is why over time so
many people have joined the Trump coalition who were not
initially in it. And it's because different things open your
eyes to how corrupt these institutions are. You know, many
people prior to COVID didn't understand how corrupt government public
schools were because they weren't looking over their child's shoulder
every day seeing the type of curriculum that they were
being exposed to. And that's just one or you know,
in the hospital system, you know, if you weren't really
going to the doctor, you might not have noticed, like
how politicized healthcare has become where now you can go
and you're in a place that should be ruled one
hundred percent by science and instead they're asking you for
your pronouns on the first form you fill out, you know,
And so once you actually begin to see how broken
some of these institutions are, it makes Trump make a
lot more sense. And therefore, yeah, vance's political evolution as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker 3: If I give one more example, because you're right on
COVID opened a lot of minds to write how deeply
infected the schools were and the health system certainly. The
other one too, I think was in twenty twenty was
the Floyd riots, right where like we're being told there's
a pandemic, stay at home, we can't spread this thing.
But then all of a sudden there are like riots
in the streets and you have Democrat politicians coming out
and like marching with them, right, who were telling you
stay in your home, this is a pandemic and a crisis,
but burned down the cities in the name of racial
justice or something, and we're okay with that. Like police
forces are standing down, they're like no arrests being made.
It's like, yeah, something, something is deeply wrong, I think
twenty twenty. And then the trans movement also the in
the that peaked probably in twenty two to twenty three, really.
Speaker 2: Woke a lot of people up to how bad things are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, screaming in the face of a police officer
is an essential thing that needs to happen. But your
church choir is a super spreader, So stay home yes.
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Speaker 1: Since we're still kind of on the Trump trade, let's
talk Trump versus Vance on abortion and maybe in light
of the March for Life, we're just coming off of that,
you know, maybe maybe that speaks to some of this.
But you write a little bit about this in the book.
How are Trump advanced the same on abortion? And do
you think, I mean, how are they different? And can
conservatives trust Dvance more then they can trust you know,
a transactional second term Trump on this issue moving forward?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So I mean, I for what I would say, yes,
So I think what first of all, what did Trump
and Advance have in common? I would say that they're
both political realists who are very skeptical of how much
can be done to advance the pro life agenda, especially
with federal legislation in the current culture. And like I've
done some writing on this, actually you're the Federalists published
my piece on the March for Life that I wrote
just depending on when this drop's probably about a week ago,
and I think it, well, it woke Vance up when
he saw the Ohio referendum just becut be a disaster.
But also you look at the cultural numbers, right, Like
there's a Pew study from I think twenty twenty four
that shows like barely a majority of Republicans are in
favor of restricting abortion in most or all cases. So
you combine that with the Democrat numbers total number of
people willing to restrict abortion in most or all circumstances,
you're like thirty percent maybe, And so I think it
is not it's not caving on this issue to say
there is very little that can be done here. So
I want to make a couple points on this, if
you don't mind, because I think it's a really important issue. So,
for one, for the non compromising pro life people on
this issue who are very critical of the Trump Vance administration.
For one, I feel you like I'm I'm a Catholic.
I've been spit at and cursed at it, praying at
abortion clinics, like I'm part of the part of the
movement here, and I would like to see abortion completely gone.
Speaker 2: The problem is, and.
Speaker 3: I'll credit my friend Ryan Anderson at the Ethics and
Public Policy Center made this point at an event before
the march that I was at last week, or he said, listen,
if the abolitionists of abortion could get what they want
and ban it tomorrow, it's not going to hold in
this culture like when What we've seen from the polling,
what we've seen from referenda, even in deeply read states,
is that people have been conditioned by forty nine years
of row to take abortion for granted as something that's
there if people want it.
Speaker 2: Need it, quote unquote, and nobody needs abortion.
Speaker 3: But if they have the choice between restrict most of
all abortions or make abortion pretty much legal all the time,
they're going to choose make abortion legal all the time.
Speaker 2: Like people are.
Speaker 3: You can do some things to make some restrictions possible,
but you go too far and the culture is just
not there. The appetite for banning abortion, and even in
red states is not good. And what Ryan Anderson and
I had a back and forth about this the other
day where I said, you know, this has happened before,
where constitutionally there was a case where in our history
it was said that a certain class of persons is
actually entitled to constitutional rights, and so you can't enslave
them or in this case, kill them without due process
of law. Right, they're entitled to equal protection under the
fourteenth Amendment. So I think that Ryan is right, and
a lot of the scholars on this are right that
Actually I think under the Fourteenth Amendment, unborn children are
properly persons that should not be denied life, liberty, or
property without due process. So I think constitutionally you can
make the case that abortion is unconstitutional, it should not
be allowed anywhere because it's depriving unborn people of their rights.
But this happened in the eighteen fifties, right where Abraham
Lincoln gets on the stage with Stephen Douglass at the
debates and says, hold on, if the black man is
a man, he's entitled to all the rights that men
have under the Constitution. That was constitutionally correct, but it
took a four year long war to actually iron that out.
So I think we need to understand in that case,
it was even a war could be fought right because
the North was pretty much aligned behind abolition by the
time Lincoln is elected president. So I'm being a little
round about, but I do it for a reason. Then
there was actually an appetite for a civil war over
that issue. Now I don't even think there is. I
think if tomorrow there were five votes on the US
Supreme Court, there.
Speaker 2: Are not, by the way, there might be two. But
if there were five votes to.
Speaker 3: Say unborn child is a person under the fourteenth Amendment,
abortion is now banned in all circumstances across the board
in all fifty states, I think you would see a
constitutional amendment to the United States Constitution that would enshrine abortion.
I think it is that unpopular to completely restrict abortion.
That flies in the face of natural law. It's a sin,
it's a crime, it's a terrible thing, but it is
a political reality. So that's my kind of case to
the pro lifers that we do. I hate having to
be a political realist on the murder of unborn children.
But I think we do because I don't see what
we can do otherwise in this climate. So sorry to
take a lot of time on this, but I think
it's worth saying.
Speaker 1: No, I think it's super important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, please go on.
Speaker 1: Oh No, I was just going to say, I think
there's two things that really frustrate me, and one of
them is I mean, like, except the obvious of the
murder of onborn children, also not having the right climate
to advance something that's much more pro life than what
we're seeing now. But it's really frustrating to me how
much how much of an effort there was to overturn ROW.
I mean, we had fifty years of people fighting tooth
and nail to get this overturned. Meanwhile, all the useful
people who were leaning on ROW because it allowed them
to fight against something that they never thought was going
to be overturned. And so you know, once Roe was overturned,
it kind of exposed a lot of pro life people
as now really pro life. They just, you know, because
it was convenient to be pro life, because there was
nothing you could even do about being pro life because
Roe was there, you know, Row and Casey, and then
Roe gets overturned. And I think you even say this
in the book about the dog catching the cars. It's
kind of like, you know, Republicans, conservatives were caught with
their pants down because all of our resources, all of
our time and energy was put toward you know, overturning
Roe v.
Speaker 3: Wade.
Speaker 1: Well, now we have a bunch of Americans who are
ticked about that and no real good messaging or policy
framework or anything. So you see all of these trigger
laws going to effect, you know, all kinds of stuff,
and like the States weren't ready for it. You know,
it gets thrown back to the states, and the States
are just kind of like, uh, you know, and now
we see you know, even more abortion than before. So
that's frustrating. Thing Number one. Number two is and I
know you do talk about Vance's comments on mifipristone, which
is the abortion pill, which is how the majority of
abortions are carried out these days. I think what's frustrating
is that there is so much of an opportunity to
not religious arguments, not you know, not even like this
is a human being arguments, Because if people have been
conditioned to believe that this is a clump of cells.
It's going to take more than somebody saying no, it's
a human being for them to like agree and believe that.
But you have so many scientific arguments to make right
now about the dangers that this poses to women. I mean,
you bring up Ryan Anderson, the Ethics and Public Policy
Center study showing how dangerous, how much worse the abortion
pill is, then the FDA has ever admitted or will
ever admit. I mean, there's an opportunity here too, from
a strictly scientific angle to whack you know, the way
that the vast majority of abortions are performed without even
needing to change public opinion or getting into a constitutional question,
you know, because you can do it from a scientific way,
So like, why is that not happening? And then you
have JD. Vance saying things like you know that he
supports mifipristone. I think that was from interview at one point.
And I'm somebody who generally likes Gdvance, but this issue
is so frustrating to me because it's so important, and
I think there is an opportunity and we're missing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll say a couple things.
Speaker 3: For one, I've become I used to be much more
interested in the like natural scientific claims of the personhood
of the un warngest to me, it's obvious, right, there's
anything other than at the moment of conception is artificial.
So oh no, a child's you know, becomes a person
at heartbeat or at three months or when they can
feel pain or when they're born. It's all arbitrary because
it's the same same set of DNA, same person is
in there from the moment of conception.
Speaker 2: And so those are all like completely arbitrary arguments.
Speaker 1: But it rings hollow when we even have you know,
like the Carnegie stages of embryonic development. I mean this
is like enshrined in like scientific you know, the standards,
you know.
Speaker 3: So anyway, continue, I will say, I think I'm a
little more jaded on the philosophical theological reality of where
people are at today that I don't know how much
those hold. I was just make a old pop culture reference, now,
I suppose, but like in the Batman the Dark Night
movie where I forget the scene, but Anne Hathaway's character is,
you know, like, oh, you know, we have this, we
have that, and the enemies are surrounding them, and Batman
looks at her and his gravelly voiced Christian vales as
they know.
Speaker 2: They just don't care.
Speaker 3: And that's kind of how I feel more and more,
and it troubles me greatly. But I think even if
you can prove to them, like, no, this is a
human being, like nothing changes biologically from day of conception
a month one to month six to that would justify
you know, killing here, but not here. I don't know
how many people care. I'm kind of I'm increasingly convinced
that without some kind of a religious, like serious moral revival,
that we're not going to get there on the culture
any other way.
Speaker 2: I hope I'm wrong.
Speaker 3: I hope that reason will start to grip people on
this issue, but I've gotten maybe more pessimistic about that
in recent years. But that being said, I want to
cover two more points to the of the question that
you asked. So I covered why Trump and Vance I
think are how they're similar on this issue? How are
they different? And how can we can we trust Vance
more than Trump? I would say, yes, they are different,
and yes we can trust Vance more than Trump on
this issue. Frankly for this reason. So for one, Vance
is a committed Catholic convert. He takes the faith seriously.
We've seen before the Ohio referendum really jarred him at
how unpopular this issue had become. Vance was adamantly pro life,
Like he talked about the consistent ethic being you know
that's an unborn child from the moment of conception, like,
you can't justify any abortions. I think we know what
he thinks on a philosophical level on this. So the
big difference I think is I think Trump and Vance
both realize how politically fraught and limited the solutions are here,
but I think they're different in that.
Speaker 2: Listen Trump.
Speaker 3: Trump came on the scene with an America First agenda
and a couple of very particular issue areas that he
cared deeply about, right, immigration and the border being overrun,
destroying our country, the trade deficit and how we were
just getting destroyed by globalism, right, and the way we've
outsourced everything and we're not We're just getting destroyed on
foreign trade. Many said some things about stupid foreign wars, right.
So these are Trump's core commitments. It was clear from
day one he was always going to make deals on
pretty much everything else.
Speaker 2: And that includes social issues like abortion. So I think
to the.
Speaker 3: Pro lifers who feel betrayed by Trump, I would just say, listen,
I think he was fairly consistent, Like he made pro
life statements. He was the first president to actually address
the March for Life in his first term. But this
was never like a pro life crusader candidate who was
going to be like our hero on abortion.
Speaker 2: Ironically, he did more.
Speaker 3: For the pro life cause than many of his predecessors
and the party I think.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'll take a transactional pro lifer who actually
delivers on the transaction than somebody who just pays lip
service to it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, any data and.
Speaker 3: I will say, I'm sorry, But to the commentators who
are saying that, like the Trump vance administration is so
pro life and that's such a break from all the
pro life Republicans we've had, I'm sorry, spare me, but
the pro lifers who are hardline on this issue.
Speaker 2: Before Roe was overturned, and.
Speaker 3: You pointed this out a minute ago, like before Roe
was overturned, it was a supposed constitutional right. Nobody could
ever do anything to restrict abortion. So it's very safe
for Republican politicians to say rah rah, I'm pro life
to campaign and fundraise from the pro lifers, and they
were never going to have to do anything about it.
So I'm sorry, but people who were more pro life
than Trump Vance in the pre.
Speaker 2: Dobbs era not a convincing argument to me at all.
Speaker 3: But I think contra Trump, right, who was always transactional
on this issue, I think Vance cares very personally about
this issue. I think he has real Christian convictions that
abortion is the taking of a life that's made in
the image and likeness of God, and that whereas he's
a realist. But I think we can count on Vance
to do what he thinks is politically and politically possible
on this issue, whereas I don't think that's the case
for Trump. I think Trump will do it as much
as he thinks is necessary to keep the base together
and to compromise on the issue. So I do think
they're different on that. And then I do want to
touch on the last thing you said on this. I
know a lot of time spent on this issue, but
it's an important one.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: I think it's the only place in the book where
I'm actually critical Advance in a serious way. So I
do want to make that known because I'm not a
pure advance accolyte, though I'm a big fan obviously.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: It's important to be a realist on this issue. I
think that you can say, as a Christian, as a Catholic,
in my Advance's case, out of political prudence there you
could get up and say, I'm pro life. I would
like every abortion to stop in this country. The numbers
are not there. We have no political ability. There's no
political will at the federal level. If we try to
ban abortion in especially on those levels, if I try,
if we try to ban mifepres stone through legislation or
presidential you know, executive action, if we try to restrict
access to IVF through those channels.
Speaker 2: It's not going to work.
Speaker 3: Like the numbers are so bad on this that all
that's going to happen is we're going to lose elections
and we cannot move the needle on this until the
culture is pro life. So while I hate abortion, I
want it to end, we can't act on this. You
can do that, I would say, as a Catholic, as
a Christian in public office, because there's nothing.
Speaker 2: You can do.
Speaker 3: But what happens when you say instead of there's no
political action we can take on this issue. But I
support MiFi crestone access or I support the you know,
the creation of babies that are going to be discarded
through IVF. That's no longer political prudence. That's supporting something
that is intrinsically evil. So, especially looking at this to
a Catholic lens, we cannot do that. And I've talked
to people who know Vance and who spoke to him
in the pro life movement right after that famous twenty
twenty four I don't think he quite He almost said
we support He said he supported the Supreme Court's decision
to take no access action on mifipres Stone, and it
kind of looked like he said, we support abortion pill access,
and you can't do that. So I've heard that he
kind of regretted the way that came out. I think
he knows the difference between what's politically prudent and what
you can't say as a Catholic. But to the extent
that people in the MAGA world, especially Catholics, want to
say no, no, we support IVF and first trimester because
there's no will for we can't support these things. And
it's really important that we use the bully pulpit that
our Catholic and Christian politicians have to not accidentally or
inadvertently say that we're supporting things that are evil, so
might be prudent not to take action.
Speaker 2: But we can't support these things.
Speaker 1: People, right right? Yeah, Well, and I would love to see,
you know, in a potential future Vance administration taking a
little more seriously, you know, stripping FDA approval from these
dangerous drugs, you know, relying on real science like the
Epp study and not fake fake science like the FDA.
You know, maybe enforcing is it, the commerce clause against
people who are shipping mithipristone to red states. I mean,
there's there's things that can be done without even you know,
without trying to pass legislation at the federal level that's
abolitionists that bans abortionne you know, It's like I understand
that there are things that are politically not feasible that
you genuinely can't do, But there are things that we
can do. And I would hope, you know, even in
like a post Trump Vance administration, that we would be
able to take even one more step toward towards some
of these things that are so important, and that would
go a long way, because it's also important to condition
people's consciences to view human life as human life. And
of course, like you can't force them to see something
that they can't see, you know, you can't just change
public opinion by changing the law. But if you if
you act like human life is human life, then you
begin to teach people that human life is human life.
If that makes sense. You know, the law does condition
our consciences, and so it's important to make whatever moves
we can in that direction, which I think you would
agree with as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, and to.
Speaker 3: Steal one more thing that I've I've gotten from Ryan
Anderson and from Aristotle obviously, but you know, so the
Aristotelian virtue of courage, right, All the virtues have their
two corresponding defects or extremes, right, so courage is needed.
Speaker 2: It's a virtue.
Speaker 3: And on one side you have rashness, or you know,
and on the or and on the other side you
have cowardice. Right, So on this issue especially, I think
we need to be very thoughtful about what we're doing
because on one side, as I've said, you don't want
to be rash and just charge in and do things
that are politically impossible and that are just going to
make the pro life movement go backwards. But we also
don't want to, in the name of prudence, become cowards
and not do what we can do. Right, So yeah,
let's let's try to find the virtue and avoid the extremes.
Speaker 2: Not easy, but very important, not to be a coward
in the name of prudence.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly right. Since we're already kind of talking
about this, can you speak to ways beside abortion that JD.
Vance's Catholic faith have that that has shaped his governance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I mean he got a lot of flak
for this, But the when when the new administration came in, right,
and we had the immigration crackdown, began to close the
border to deport people here illegally, right, Vance, in the
face of people basically saying this is uncharitable, it flies
in the face of Christianity or what have you, he
invokes the the Catholic understanding of the Ordo a mauris right,
the order of love.
Speaker 2: Right. This became like big.
Speaker 3: He he tweeted something and like every commentator in the
world was writing about whether Vance was interpreting the Ordo
amorys correctly, and I'm not a theologian, but he goes
he's going back to Saint Augustine and then especially Saint
Thomas Aquinas, and they're talking about you know, love like
the willing of the good of the other, right, not me,
but the other person. It doesn't require the same thing
of us toward every person.
Speaker 2: Right. The love that.
Speaker 3: I owe my wife and then my children is not
the same as what I owe my next door neighbor
or my co workers is not the same that as
what I owe you know, people that I've never met
before and foreign countries. That's just that's just obviously true.
I can't love everybody the way that I love my wife, right,
and so so vance in Bosh right, right, that will
be disordered. And I think it's a real by the way,
I think this is a real problem among especially on
the left, But of abstracting charity, abstracting love and duty
to get out of actual commitment.
Speaker 2: That's hard.
Speaker 3: And I could just give you one example, the green movement,
the environmental movement, right, Like, it's so much easier to
do what a lot of folks on the left do,
and it drives me nuts. I have some of them
in my extended family, like people who will vote on
like climate change. We need to restrict carbon emissions, we
need to restrict all of these things that are like
out there and arguably are doing nothing for the actual
climate crisis. But meanwhile, like those same people are going
through like rolls of paper towel and like wasting all
like plastic everywhere there are plastic bags and we're throwing
out garbage, and like, meanwhile, I'm not really on board
with any of the climate, like carbon emissions kind of legislations.
Speaker 2: I think it's kind of create like ineffective in doing anything.
Speaker 3: But I do care about things like the degradation of
our soil and air quality. So we plant trees, we compost, right,
we do things in our lives that are like on
the ground and actually do something. And I think generally
it's much easier for people to look for issues out
there that they can vote on and be crusaders for
because it doesn't involve actually the hard sacrificial love that
it takes to do something tangible in your own life.
And so I think that's a big thing on the
immigration issue, is like there are all these people who
you know, God bless them. These poor people are so
isolated and let down by our current culture that they're
like they're brainwashed by their schools and by the media,
and they have they're not married, they don't have kids,
they probably don't have parents they have good relationships with,
they don't have siblings because we've like contracepted big families
out of existence, and so we like, you have these poor, lonely,
isolated people and they're looking for meaning. And the meaning
is I'm going to fight for some call that's not
like that it is so far removed from your real life,
like we're going to defend you know, illegal immigrants from
Ice that you.
Speaker 2: Don't know any illegal immigrants.
Speaker 3: This is so like far from your actual lived experience,
but people are searching for meeting there.
Speaker 1: Anyways, this has been making me crazy because all over
like Mommy Instagram, it's all the same people who posted
the black Square, you know, in the wake of the
George Floyd death and the BLM riots and all of that.
But it's the same people who are not only regurgitating
completely fake headlines from the corporate media about you know,
a five year old being used as bait by ICE
or you know, renee good being, you know, mercilessly hunted
down in her vehicle or whatever. But it's also just
a complete disordered way of loving as well, Like I've
seen I've seen multiple people now who talk in this
kind of way of like my my children want me
to play with them, but I can't stop seeing videos
of you know, this person being murdered in the street.
And it's like, if you can more about the person
that you've never met, never would have met, is not
actually your you know, literal neighbor in any sense of
the word. You've never met them, you don't know anything
about them if they are occupying your mind and your
love and your affections more than your own child, like
you have a problem, and that kind of stuff is
happening all over And the way that Jade Vance just
spoke to that so plainly with that interview about the
Order of Morris, It's like that was that was remarkable
clarity from a politician that we hadn't seen in quite
some time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it's I like that example because
I think it shows a couple of things that he's
he takes Catholic social doctrine seriously clearly, because he's trying
to take in and say, Okay, what are my duties
as a Catholic, how do I apply those to my
my job as vice president to try to help to
promote the common good?
Speaker 2: Which is great.
Speaker 3: It's a breath of fresh air after you know, decades
of a lot of especially Catholic politicians, who have tried
their best to like separate, Well, my personal faith says this,
but I have to do the opposite because of my
as governor or president or whatever. That's not the way
that anybody's supposed to function if you take your faith seriously.
Speaker 2: I think the other thing that's worth.
Speaker 3: Saying is that there are not easy answers to this,
because the way that you apply like Christian social doctrine
to concrete examples of a particular issue in a particular
country at a particular time, there's some prudence.
Speaker 2: You need to figure out how it applies.
Speaker 3: And so I think what we can say is that
Vance is trying to do this like he's going to
take the faith seriously and see, well, how do I
apply my faith to principles of political and governing philosophy.
Speaker 2: That will actually work?
Speaker 3: And he said he was at the Catholic prayer breakfast
last year, and he said something I thought was really
beautiful and humble. He's like, listen, I'm a baby Catholic.
I'm kind of relying on you guys, my Catholic brothers
and sisters. So like, tell me what.
Speaker 2: I'm doing wrong. Which is why I wrote the abortion chapter.
Speaker 3: I think that it needs to be reminded that we
can't say we support abortion in any form, right.
Speaker 2: But he says, they said, listen, I'm going to get
this stuff wrong.
Speaker 3: But I'm trying to grapple with with what my faith
requires of me as a public figure.
Speaker 2: And so I think we.
Speaker 3: Can count on that and maybe the way that we
have not been able to for any any Catholic politician
in a very long time. But they're going to take
their faith seriously and try to apply it to their
role in public life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things you bring up in the
book in reference in some places to Vance's Catholic faith,
but also just in you know, kind of his biography
is his relationship with Peter Teel and how Peter Teel
even influenced, you know, some of his thinking on matters
of Christianity and such. I know one thing that I've
heard some people criticize Vance for or be concerned about.
I guess as it relates to his political future, is
a potential influence of Peter Teal over Jdvants Because whether
you agree with Teal's you know, interpretation of the Christian
faith or not, he has a lot of transhumanist ideas.
So can you kind of speak to those concerns and
what you would foresee any influence or if any Peter
Teal would have over a Jdvance presidency.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think it's worth kind of qualifying what
that influence of Peter Teel over JD.
Speaker 2: Vance really is. So I'll point out two things.
Speaker 3: One, right, I do say in the book during Vance's conversion,
he says that the first person that he met, and
he was in Yelle Law School, who was ever publicly
claiming to be a Christian and spoke intelligently was Peter Teal,
And so that had an effect on him. It doesn't
mean he became, you know, a Christian in the image
of Peter Teel, and.
Speaker 2: He's certainly not.
Speaker 3: I mean, Vance's Catholicism is clearly not anything like Peter Teel's.
Kind of interesting, and I think heterodox Protestantism.
Speaker 1: So there's that because that was during Vance's sort of
experimentation with atheism.
Speaker 3: Correct, Yeah, he was a self proclaimed like agnostic atheist.
Speaker 2: He was still in law school. This was before Advance
was a Christian at all.
Speaker 3: It was just one of his first encounters with Christianity
as as an adult in like the elite world. Right,
So I don't think that that Teals Christianity really has
anything to do Advances. It was just kind of a
step along the way, Like Teal was the first person
who introduced him to like, hey, people can be both
intelligent and Christian, And I think that's about as far
as that goes. But then you also have the very
real thing that, like Peter Teal donated quite a lot
of money to the pack that helped Advance win the
primary in Ohio when he was running for Senate, which
was his entrance into public life.
Speaker 2: And so to say, well, no political life, sorry, he
was already a public figure.
Speaker 3: But there are people rightly concerned to ask that question,
like Teal's given Advance a lot of money, aren't you
worried that exactly what you said, Teal is a futurist,
transhumanist Orthodox Christians. We don't really like this guy. And
I understand that for sure. There was an interview and
I can't remember where it is or even if it's
in the book, but somebody asked Vance basically, what do
you feel you owe to the donors, to the people
who have given you the money that has supported your
runs for office? And Vance said, you know, I appreciate them.
I appreciate the people who believe in me. Peter Teal
clearly believed in me as somebody who would be good
for the political world in America. But what do I
owe them in terms of implementing their preferred policies or
vision for the country.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 3: I owe them nothing. And I think that's really important
that for one, and you said this off camera. It's
like it's one thing when Vance was in a competitive primary,
somebody in his circle needed to see that campaign to
help him stand out from a wide field. And Vance
was not the front runner in that Senate race. But
now he's the vice president. He's in no way beholden
to the money or the influence of Peter Teel. And
also I do kind of question how close he really
is to Teal. I mean, that was a long time
ago when Vance was in Silicon Valley. You look at
the staffers in Vance's vice presidential office who are on
his campaign, and I'm not seeing a bunch of like
transhumanist Silicon Valley tech libertarian types. I'm seeing a lot
of rather based Christians being like the people that Vance
is talking to and is being influenced by. So I
get it, like in my far right chair circles. That's
the biggest thing I get to when it comes up
that I wrote this book on Vance is a oh
connection to Peter Teal. I'm kind of worried about this guy,
but I just don't see it. I don't see much
influence there. I don't personally see it as a cause
for concern.
Speaker 1: Mm hm. You your book lays out the case. I'm
gonna end on this unless we have anything that this
leads to, But your book lays out the case pretty
convincingly for why JD. Vance is the right man to
lead the party after and most likely will be. As
you know, the New Right has kind of taken root
within within the GOP, but obviously there are plenty of
factions within Congress, within the establishment GOP who will do
anything to ensure that we do not have another Trump,
that we can go back to neo Conservatism, that we
can kind of pull back to a useless, feckless GOP
that you know, is more of the fusionist mindset that
you talked about earlier. What do you think right now
is the biggest threat to the New Right continuing a
pace after we lose Trump? Because right, like twenty twenty
eight is is is not far away, but it's far
enough away that a lot can happen in the next
three years before you know, JD. Vance actually does become
the heir to the Trump Maga movement. So yeah, so
I'm sure you know there's gonna be a lot that
happens in the next few years. What do you think
is the biggest threat?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so right now, you look at the numbers, right
and JD. Vance is immensely popular among the base that's
going to elect the next presidential candidate in twenty twenty eight.
The only other person who pulls close and who So
you have this thing right where you have like the
people who are the pre Trump Republicans who are still
part of the party right. They may have disagreements, but
they've come along. And then you have the MAGA base
and who can keep those together? Who can keep this
demographic together. I think it's Vance, Like I think he
can be. There's a lot of chatter right, people who
would like to displace him for a lot of reasons,
but I think he can hold it together. The one question,
the one alternative that even like a lot of good
people on our side have pointed to, is Marco Rubio.
Speaker 2: Right, He's very.
Speaker 3: Popular, He's showing himself very capable. There is kind of,
I think the question lurking in some of the Magabas's minds,
like Rubio was kind of one of the neo cons
ten years ago. Is he just going along? But he
seems to be on the whole very popular and very
effective and part.
Speaker 2: Of the movement.
Speaker 3: But so what could change that would actually change this
and make it to the Advance is not the contender.
I think it's you would need some slip right where
Vance does something in public opinion shifts among the voting
base of the Republicans that undermines trust in Vance enough
to make Marco Rubio consider a run for president. I
can't see anything else that would displace him. I think
if Vance doesn't commit any political acts, of suicide, which
is unlikely. He's very talented at handling the media, at
balancing what he has to do politically, So if you
don't make a great mistake, that opens the door for Rubyo.
Speaker 2: I mean, Rubio's pretty much endorsed Van.
Speaker 3: So I think if if Rubio endorses Vance and runs
as his VP, which I think is fairly likely, I
think that's the end. I think there's pretty much nothing
that can be done. You'll get a run, right, the
people who want to displace Vance and Maga from the
Republican Party, they'll I mean, Nikki Haley would get like
a half a percent of the primary vote, Like Ted
Cruz is angling for a run, but he'll get like
one percent of the vote. Like these are not Josh Howley,
I think wants to run. I'm just kind of throwing
out what I've heard from DC murmurings.
Speaker 2: But I don't see anyone other than Rubio that's really
viable to capture the base.
Speaker 3: Like there are a lot of people who could capture
the donor dollars of disaffected you know, pre Trump Republicans,
but that doesn't translate into votes. So I think if
Rubio stays behind Vance, I think it's pretty much wrapped up.
Speaker 1: If I had to goes, Yeah, do you think Vance
would ever pick Rubio as a running mate? I mean,
way too early to tell, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's I know Trump has said, like
Rocker Rubiot to just be Secretary of State forever, he's
so good at it. I don't think that was a knock.
I think that he's really good at managing these jobs.
And then he's you know, the national archivist and the
head of National Security and JD.
Speaker 2: Vance's new nanny. Depending on which memes you're.
Speaker 3: Following, but I do think it's possible. It would be
fascinating to see two men from very safely Republican states
who are both Catholics as the Republican Party ticket. That
would definitely be a historical first. But they're by far
the two most popular figures in the Republican Party. I
think that's I don't think that's out of the question.
I think it's perhaps likely. And if I could just
say one more thing about electability, because this is something
people ask is like, you know, the media is already
shifting and again, spare me, They've been doing this for decades, Like, oh, well,
now they're starting to moderate right. They've been calling Trump
hitler for a decade, but now it's like Trump's actually
been fairly moderate to work with on some of these issues. Vance,
that's the real extremist. He's basically Hitler. I'm sorry they
said that George W. Bush was like this far right monster,
and then when Trump started to run, they were like
longing for the days of w.
Speaker 2: Bush.
Speaker 3: Like the media has this really cynical thing where the
worst Republican that we've ever seen in all of history
is the one who's running right now. So I think
that's exaggerated. I think most of the base will get
behind Vance. I don't think there are just tons of
people who will say he's too extreme and undefecting. But
the other thing I'll say that I think gets overlooked
is remember it's not a popularity contest. It's an electoral
college vote for the next president. So when people talk
about the electability of Vance, where does the.
Speaker 2: Victory run through.
Speaker 3: It runs through my home state of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
and Michigan. It's Vance plays really well in the Rustbell
you said this at the beginning, He's.
Speaker 2: One of them.
Speaker 3: He grew up in Middle America, He's experienced what they do,
he knows their struggles, so you can try to make
him out as this out of touch, like elite far
right Republican.
Speaker 2: He is not that. I think he will do very
well among the base in the states that matter especially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. Well,
everyone should pick up a copy of Frank DeVito's new book, JD.
Vance and the Future of the Republican Party. I'm getting
the title of that right, aren't I?
Speaker 3: JD Vance in the Future of the Republican Party. Yes,
it's both the title and the thesis.
Speaker 1: Great. Great, I was second guessing myself, but yes, it's
definitely worth a read. It puts all of this information
into one place, very easy to read, a great resource.
You will not regret picking up a copy. Frank, thank
you so much for your time today. I had a
great time talking with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was awesome. Thanks so much, Kylie.
Speaker 1: Yeah you bet. Thank you so much for tuning into
this week's episode of the Kylie Cast. If you haven't
done so already, please like and subscribe wherever you get
your podcasts. Leave us a review. We would really really appreciate.
It's such a good way for you to help out
the show, and be sure to also pick up a
copy of Frank DeVito's new book, jd Vance and the
Future of the Republican Party. I will be right back
here next week with more, so until then, just remember
the truth hurts, but it won't kill you.