Democratic Party Future and Final Thoughts

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Visit Wfair. com or the Wayfair app. Wayfair everyvery style every home. I love a good conversion story. I don't usually do interviews on my daily show. 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 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 joining me to weigh in on all these matters and more is Vice presresident JD Vance. I'm Micha Knowles, is the Michael Kowles S show mister Vice President, thank you for being here. It'sood to see you. Thanks for having me. I'm really sorry that we're not in my usual studio. We're in your town. If we were in my studio, we would be in nice, big comfortable chairs mayaybe 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 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 I really enjoy it. It's not flattery at all. Everyone needs to go out and get communion by JD Vans. Thank you. because this touches on something that I care about more than Iran and AI and twenty twenty eight, We'll get to all of it, which I have to ask about. But this touches on 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 self interested reasons. Yes. Yeah. So I have to ask One, why did you do it? Tw You're not the only one. You are in many ways the kind of voice of the millennials and the Zoomer older Zomer generation here.'s been a big surge in religious reversion and especially to Catholicism We will get to much more with our vice Pident friend, but first, you need to go to pureTalk dot com slash Kles, KoW L ES Our spending habits say something about our values. I want a company that is not just the smart financial choice, but also aligns with what I believe. Now I know you're like me, and that is why You should switch veteran led at PureT talk This is a wireless company that champions American work ethic and favors community over corporations. Pure talkal has great values and is a notch above the big. wireless corporations. from customer support, reception, data, value Pure Tuckk has five stars in every category. You're going to get the best service available to you, top notch five G network on the very best hwerss, not just similar best the very best hws For the best price thirty four dollars ninety nineents per month from a wonderful company that supports our veterans, supports our country. even get Great customer service because the people on the other lines speak English The average family of four saving a thousand dollars a year. that could be a lot of extra money for your fourth of July summer vacation. Head on over right now to pureTalk d. com slash Ks. No service contract, no cancellation fees. Purealk d. com slash Kols make the switch and start championing your values in every area of your life. Puretalk. com. slash Knols to make the switch to PureTalk, a wireless network that values what you value Okay, back to the Vice presresident. So, u Before first of all, thank you for doing this.'s good to see you. Thanks all the DC. I know we had planned to schedule this last week, I believe and I to go to Switzerland. so thank you for being. I will never forgive the Iranians for doing that toon, But we're here now. We're the Swiss Before you get into the Y Catholicism, I think you have to get into the Y Christianity then not Christianity then back to Christianity and then get there. So let me give like the ninety second summary of my faith journey from when I was a kid until I was twenty four, twenty five. So basically raise an evangelical household. raaised 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, and my stepmom sometimes, but mainly it was with my grandma. We would watch TBN. we'd watch Paul and Jane Crouch, We'd watch Billy Graham Revivals And I realized after my grandmother died, this is when I was twenty one years old, maybe twenty, but right before I left for Iraq in two thousand five Mammal died And I realized that was my connection to Christianity. So there was no institutional connection. That's sort of one of the subtext of the book is trying to raise my own kids in a more institutional faith and the hope that it takes in a way that I didn't Because two years after my grandmother was dead, I called myself an atheist. Okay, so I'm an atheist. I become and maybe I always was a striver I'm obsessed with achievement for achievement's sake And reallyally, mrter Vice President? Sry shhocked to hear it. Yeah. And I get to law school and I'm at Yale, and I realize that I've like won all these competitions, the meritocratic competitions that life had told me to won to win, but I found them deeply unfulfilling. And frankly, I found that I was becoming a shitty person, the processor a bad person, excuse me if you have to edit that out.t what are the rules on We never go blue on this show. We make exceptions for a top government official. Okay, I have terrible language as you I talk about in the book s one of my many non Christian or one of my many traits I have to work on as a Christian. So I am at law school. I'm doing very well in sort of all the worldly things. I'm doing not so well in the nonwly things. I fall in love That woman is now the second lady and soon to be mother of four Vanced children, currently the mother of three Van children And I sort of realize like everything I've geared my life towards over the last few years is hollow 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 of being a good human being and like the deepest sense of the word And I kept on returning this idea that the elites who They fashioned themselves hyperrational. They didn't believe in superstitious things like Jesus Christ as the Son of God. They were the ones who seemed to be the less focused on what 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. That leads me down the pathway back to Christianity. And I think that was almost ninety seconds, maybe a little bit longer Okay, then it's like, how do you become a Christian in this world and There were all of these things that attracted me to Catholicism. So number one, I really liked the sense that it was institutionally stable, okay? 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, whether it was my grandmother or a pastor, and sometimes the pastors would come and go I was really tracted at the idea that like in this church The mass was more or less the same, whether you were on vacation in some fara away country or whether you were in suburban Cincinnati. But I also like doctrinally that you know, like things didn't change based on who the person giving the homily was. And that sense of stability, the idea that Christian doctrine was fundamentally founded on Jesus Christ and the church beyond 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 circumstances when Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. We didn't have automobiles. we didn't have, you know modern narcotics, we didn't have a lot of the things that they were dealing with at the time, But the principle is fundamentally immovable. and then there's an open question about how you apply the principle to new things. And then the final thing I'd say is and then we can I'm sure go into the details I'm try tom sumarize this very quickly because I we only have an hour. There is something about 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, 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 some other person who would then carryed on after you. 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 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 the Willard hotel or no, weere in the Willard Hotel right cururrently. Where was the White House Correspondents Association dinner? anyway? Yeah. There was the assassination.. It was the Hilton, maybe. 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 running and you're kind of like, o, something kind of crazy is going on I just The idea of dying doesn't really scare me. It' never scared me, whether as an atheist or as a Christian. Can I talk about that a little bit in the book, Communion, you should buy it Um that I've always been somewhat troubled by that because know, if you think potentially hell's waiting you on the other end, shouldn't you be really afraid of it. But I've just never been afraid of dying What I have been afraid of and 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 continuity across generations is going 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. You see it decaying of decay. in ofstasis rather than dynamism and growth. and that like I felt like 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 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 despairing about If you look at the long history of the Christian faith It's very hard not to say that many, many other people in many, many generations past, had it far worse than we did. Yes. 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. Right It is the church is the only institution from antiquity that has survived in the Westes all the time I totally get it. and I feel that anxiety. It bothers me whether we're talking about a restaurant or we're talking about a monument in Washington, D.C. It bothers me to see it get dirtier and fall apart and be neglected even in the mininds Absolutely. Yeah. I feel that same anxiety. Your story of you them 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 come to the faith in a large way through intellectual figures It resonates. Sure. I get what you're talking about. Yeah. in the book, you talk about A few of those figures in particular, Augustine Whin us Renee Gerard,, twentieth century Catholic writer, of sure, about metic desire Yes, preach. I love it This then leads me to wonder After you were brought back to the faith, in no small part throughrough the intellect, thinking of the decline of civilization, thinking about these great writers, thinking about the doctrines and parsing differences between them. Did you have any religious experience? what CS Lewis would call the numinous experience? Hid you ever seen a ghost kind of thing? You neverever quite saw a ghost, but definitely and you know, one of the things I talk about in the book and this is something I'm still very much working on is when I return to 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 And I can remember distinctively you know, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, like talking to God and being able to talk to God in this very natural way. 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 J just that prayer muscle at kind of atrophy. It's come back and let it just come back all the way. But what one of the things again, I really liked about the sort of the ancient Christian canon was all of these prayers that were just You say the prayer off course, the most important is the Lord's prayer. There's the glory be glory be of the Father, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. And you sort of go through these prayers and I found that that inner 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 The quinas is fascinating. Gerard was particularly fascinating to me Like the faith 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 part of my own faith journey I write about in the book Um The interesting thing. So There's a 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 few people. And then but they they miss one guy and that guy's like hiding in the bathroom. So he pops out he shoots at point blank range, Samuel Jackson is totally fine, right? despite the fact that multiple bullets should have hit him He kind of looks around, 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 journey Now what's fascinating about it is he talks about miracles. and there's this debate between him and John Travolta about whether this counts as a miracle. And he says, lookook, what matters is not whether this is an according to Hoyle miracle What matters is that I felt the touch of God. Yeah, o 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 evenite about the book It just occur to 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 Stalphin.. We're having a conversation. this is in twenty teeen probably And you know he at the time was one of the foremost conservative critics of Pope Francis In my view of the papacy is, you, it' you don't treat it like you're a congressional representative. It's not a political office. Obviously, you can have pragmatic disagreements. You should have a little respect for it as a practicing Catholic. Yes. Okay. And so Ross and I were going back and forth about whether he was properly differenterential. even to this person who was you know clearly not aligned with American conservatives on a whole host of issues veryiplomatic way to put it Yeahah 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 talking about the Pope I make this kind of really strident argument about the papacy. 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 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 have this sort of moment we're like, oh, that was really weird. Yeah. And again Isn itt an according to Hoyal Miracle? Maybe, maybe not, but I felt the touch of God. Maybe. if a guy can arise from the dead. Yeah had glass fall off a shelf. Absolutely, absolutely. So that that felt like a very powerful moment. I'll give you another just very stupid moment, but not stupid. It's disrespectful to Proidential Providential. Okay. I so there's a church in Cincinnati that does really early confessions on either Saturday or Sunday Okay it's's it's in the Oakleyigh neighborhood of Cinnati, Sain. Cecilia's Church, okay. And they would always do really early confessions, I think on Sunday. So like, you know, if I had gotone a confession in a couple of months, I always wake up really early, but you had to be there by like seven AM 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 I remember one time distinctively being like, you know, if you weren't in line by seven fifteen or sort of you kind of have missed your window, I remember distinctively like I woke up at seven hundred two 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 this little voice like goo and try to make it, Mbe the line will be extra long, mayaybe you'll get it at the very end And the ride from my house to St. Cecil' is probably a fifteen minute drive. there in like eight minutes because every single red light was green Yeah. And like again Maybe every red light was green, maybe just a coincidence of the universe, but I felt the touch of God. I got in line in time. and just little things like that. 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 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 this kind of weird. Like, what are the odds that the the twenty five traffic lights from my house to St. Cecilia, maybe it's only a dozen. There are a lot of them All of them would be green in such a way that made it possible for me to get there very quickly R. Right anyway We will get to much, much more with the Vice Pident. First though, you need to get to angel dot com slash Kolles The story of George Washington did not begin at Valley Forge New Yorktown. It began decades earlier, with a twenty year old facing failure, surviving near death and being shaped by Providence into the man who had found the greatest nation in human history Young Washington tells that story, directed by John Irwin, starring Andy Circus, Ben Kingsley and the Great The greatest Kelsey Grammmerar No revisionism, no rewriting. Just the truth of who Washington was. and what God had planned for him March into Theatater is july fourth, helpp make it the number one movie in America. Here is the smart move. Do not pay thirty bucks at the box office. A premium Angel guuild membership costs just fifteen bucks a month twenty five percent off, locked in for twelve months, two free tickets to Young Washington every future angel release. This is really, really good stuff. Join the Angel guuild today, go to angel dot com slash knows, takeake advantage of our special offer and become a premium member for the lowest price of the season. Two free tickets to see Young Washington in theaters this Independence Day, Be part of making this film the number one movie in America for our nation's two hundred fiftieth birthday I've noticed this, you mentioned conffession about the state of grace. 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, the Christian view of the world is deeply semiotic vood. Nhing is merely what it seems. You know, everything means something Staint Thomas Aquinas begins the somatologia with that observation. And In the state of 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 And sometimes then God, he doesn't just whisper at you, sometometimes he shakes you and says, Hey, idiot, you know, pay attention. Why are? And so I Yes, If you go into a room, even of these liberal elites that you assail in the book, that rightly ass saaille You go into a room and you say, Do you believe in God? No? Do youve in miracles? No? Do you believe in this that no? But if you ask them Something as silly as have you ever seen a ghost A lot of them will say yes.. We all kind of know that there's meaning the world So then so then on this point, of all you go to these very liberal institutions. Okay C I make an observation? justust please? Okay One of the really interesting things about Um just the secular hyper progressive, hyper liberal age that we live in is you realize how many of the rituals and institutions and practices of Catholicism show up in the modern world completely divorced from the God part and the greatace part of Okay, so We're thankfully, thanks to Donald Trump, I would say We're past the point where most people, at least that I see hang out those hideous signs in their yard that say in this house, we believe blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, love is love. W is whatever No person is illegal So That sign is like such a disgusting butchering. of the Niceing Crete And when you realize, you know, oh my Godd 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 Nicene Creed, And of course, they do it in this very politically motivated way. Confession. is another thing it's Like I find as a, you know, Protestant I find confession deeply uncomfortable. You still do. But ditto, and I'm afraid I'll, you know, it's just like the craziest ritual. You're gonna to go in this, you know, tiny booth and sit there with a total stranger and tell about every terrible thing you've done over the last couple of months. It's nuts But What If you think about it It is so similar to the ritual of modern therapy, of course.. But Minus the guilt and forgiveness. Like the thing that's that's, you know, I talk about the guilt.es. know because there's actually, you know, I've always heard this phrase Christian guilt or Catholic guilt is it's terrible to feel guilty when you do something bad. but you sometimes if I'm impatient with my kid, for example, it's kind of a good thing to feel guilty. Yes. to feel like there's an inner voice telling you to be a better human being, a better father husband. So then you go and talk to somebody about it, but not in this like, o, you know, maybe I yelled at my kid because you know, my was hate my dad. I was nine years old and then I never dealt with the unresolved trauma of it. no Maybe there's certainly an element. I do believe that everybody's the demons of everyone's past continue to follow them around. I write about this concept in the book.. But maybe the reason 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 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 a much healthier, but also much truer to human nature way to think about misconduct and right and wrong. Yeah, of course. There I have a buddy, actually, who put a sign in his yard with the same font And since in this house, we believe in God, the Father of Almighty That's a great. That's a brilliant. Yeah. you see all of it. I mean, the transgender transition which is know they refer to the past as a dead name. I mean, that is a kind of a 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 liturgical, traditional, especially Catholic religion? Well, because It has the real version of the things that they're seeking in the world. Okay, I get that. Yeah. In harder politics and policy. o. You're at all of these at liberal institutions, Yale Law School, especially, but elsewhere traping around Rich businesses and all the rest. Sure And The one thing that everyone agrees on is meritocracy Now you have two probably my two favorite chapters of the book. One is pulling from Poplio the thirteenth ccyclical, Ray Rm Nevarum, you call it of New Th things. Y. The other one is borrowing from Thomas Carlyisle's mockery of economics, is the Dismal science. Yes. And these are my two favorite chapters of the book I was arguing with a colleague of mine He has a friend and a colleague. I won't say his name. Okay. He speaks very quickly Do doesnn't eat shell fish. I'm not going to say you're very famous podcas. But we were arguing about this because I love this perspective of the Catholic social teaching, the critique of meritocracy., the mockery of economics, which Edmund Burke starts modern conservatism with mocking the economists, softicers and calculators who have destroyed Western civilization What you write is total heresy and blasphemy compared to the last thirty d sixty years of American conservatism. Sure. The one thing, no matter what we all disagree on, everyone agreed meritocracy is good and that's what the left gets wrong and we need to double down on meritocracy. You say it stinks. why? Wh like a couple things. I mean first of all, I think that Yeah, I think Aristotle once said that virtue lies in the mean and like any sort of there's like the vice and the 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 We couldn't have gotten the moon, were it not for that kind of ambition. Or if your ambition is to build a building that a lot of people live in that provides comfort and so forth, I think that's good But I think what we've allowed our modern society, 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 we've allowed 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 okay, you know, that God makes us you know, all creatures big and small. Some of us he makes to be ambitious. I'm certainly, know, an ambitious person. I'm the vice president of the United States I think it 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 good too I think that when it becomes warping and disorienting is when it becomes ambition for ambition's sake. And what the meritocracy, I think, the modern meritocracy in twenty first century America has done is taught people to want to be better than everyone else. 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 God's person. You're fundamentally following the crowd. This is like an insight from Renes Gerard. So at some level, meritocracy is fundamentally derivative of other people. Yes. That's a bad thing The second thing is that I actually think that it ot how to put this, but I think that meritocracy can steal from us a sense of what really, really matters And you saw this at Yale Law School, you see it in any elite 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 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 trite cliche 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 one thousand dollars higher. No one thinks that. and yet meritocracy trains people to think exactly that when 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 your telling of these conversations at Yale Law School is you know You don't just hear it at Yale Lw School. You hear it throughout our culture and they just tell you that all that matters is slaving away doing spreadsheets for Mr. McGuillacuttyy at the Widget Factory to drive up GDP. And so then so moving and there's a liberation in it. I mean, the craziest conversation that I had conversations that I had at Yawall schoolool. people who count of themselves as feminists, which you know, to take like the positive spin on feminism, it would be that women should have their 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 like totally internalized a set of ideas that is completely opposed to your well being as human being. Like if you think that it is liberating for you to sit in a cubicle at Goldman Sachs, you have been had. Yes. And we all gott to just admit that before we can make any progress as a civilization. No, I mean, this is really on the point about Catholic social teaching, this is the point of Raym Nivarum and Popelio thirteenth was he said, hold on Communism, totally awful, terrible. You can't be Catholic and communist. Every Pope sensus basically said that But also We're not ideological laisz fire capitalists who think we need to send our kids to the coal mines. we have to put these things in their proper order. So then my question for you is, There's been a massive restructuring of what conservatism means, President Trump like a lot of that So looking ahead You are the air apparent now. whether you like it or not, you are. So looking ahead to twenty twenty eight and beyond if there's this thing going on even beyond you restructuring of what it means to be a conservative. then If it's not creative destruction, tax cuts for wealthy people exclusively, and I don't know Just like GDP ticking up. What is first of all, I think that people need to appreciate how fully they lost the argument So to the point that they've really moved the goal posts. 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. Yeah. It is now the baseline 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. Immigration restriction. A againain, 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 is just boilerplate at this point in the GOP. And I mean, even things like The President said a few weeks ago that u, you know, yeah, he absolutely wanted to like seize seize the equity of the AI comp And you know you're not supposed to sayight. 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 have biased time' as vice president, but the president has already like completely reordered the conversation towards what you might call an American developmentalist approach. American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman. Yeah. I think that's obviously a good thing. You might disagree, but that's just a normative statement Notice th what you've just said, because for the people who say that betraying some nostalgic retonning of a caricature of the nineteen eighties that to change that in any way would be abandoning American history in the tradition. You, hold on. I just went from Milton Friedman Hamilton to some degree George Washingtonightw hundred years backwards in history, Aly. That's very much a foundation of American developmental economics and economic policy And I do think, you know I don't want to say you can go back to the future you know forward to the past. but I do think fundamentally that Hamiltonian tradition is going to be what we see in the American right and will dominate American conservative economic thinking for the future. Yeah, whichich is not lase fair. It's actually much more about Building 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 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 fundamentally about the dignity of the human person The economy is a tool to service the dignity of the 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 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 you end up sacrificing a lot of the things that matter most. And I do think that for our friends who are sort of on the more laisse faair side of the American right in hindsight, Part of why Milton Friedman's ideas made more sense in the nineteen eighties is because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity And so Being laase fair in a world where there are Christian guardrails on everything Yeah is a much different proposition than being lais faire in a world where globalized liberalism has become the sort of status quo of American elites. Of course, because so much of that liberalism classical variety or more modern variety, it is resting upon a foundation it did not create, you know, and a foundation that it in many ways weakens. Sory obviously we And I think that's exactly right. I think you could say this you could say that about you know, I have a British friend who has been in British conservative politics for longer than I have, maybe longer than I've been alive. He's you know on the older side of things. He was making this observation about Margaret Thatcher to another British conservative who's just scandalized by it 't push back against it in anything besides an emotional way said. you know Morgt Thatcher an amazing human being, like a true giant in the history of Western politics 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. 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 criticizing her. I think she was trying out something in a very new era in a situation where things were quite broken We have to be honest, like what worked and what didn't work. And I think unfortunately, I would say Fist politics and a lot of twentieth 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. Yeah, Ain Rand is not going to save your culture It's not to happen.. So then we're thrown around all these names, all of our good dead friends Five figures off the top of your head thinkers, intellectuals, or statesmen, perhaps. Okay On that cliffhanger, we will get back to the Vice president, but first You need to go to leaffilter dot com slash knowols KanadaW LES. One of the most expensive habits people have. is trying to save money. Not all the time, but when it comes to buying cheap versions of things that actually matter. everyveryone does it, you buy the knock offff phone charger. 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I talk about the three of them. and all of them in different ways very, very influential in my own thinking on these topics Um if I So 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, Hamilton was just applying this guy's ideas I will get you the name and you can tell your audience later Um and then if I had to pick a fifth name It's M See, this is what this is what's very hard about this question I might actually say Um again not Frank Meyer, but the the Catholic who was pushing back against Frank Meyer Well Meyer converted in the end. He did convertvert it. I'm talking about his his interlocutor. I can't remember his name, but he's such F Poseell Bre Bzil F Bose. Yeah. Great answer. But like whoost wrote consonscience of a Cervative? Exactly, which is why that book was so good. Yeah, that's exact. That is a great answer. That's ye, I too it. One of the unsung heroes of twentieth century conservatism. He's moderately sung, I should say, moderately sung hero. Yeah think was way ahead of his time. Yeah was very thoughtful about what was actually going on in the conservative movement at the time.. And if you were to look at somebody You know, one of my mentors in the investment business once told me like the most valuable thing you can do. as an investor as a thinker is to try to identify people who have made discrete predictions about the future And like lean on the people who have been more right than wrong. Predicting the future is inherently as you, a very, very difficult business. 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 nineteen fifties America who was more correct about the future of either the American right or the country than Bzel Observation It also reminds me, the only credit I can take on one of these recently is I called the pope's name But it was wishcast. I wasn't predicting it. I just really wanted it to be leal. I hope that turns out. Speaking of in the de I have left with you, speaking of international affairs. I understand there's some conflict going on is somewhere in the Middle East. The reason that we couldn't do this interview a couple of weeks ago You're obviously in this twenty seven hours a day By my understate, tell me if I have this wrong By my understanding The presresident said on Monday we might get peace talks Tuesday Iran immediately comes out says we have not scheduled peace talks Tuesday Then we're in a ceasefire, but we keep shooting at each other thenen the Iranians say we can't get a deal becausecause Israel keeps firing on Hezboll and Southern Leanon So then Israel and Lebanon get a deal, a peace deal. But Hezbollah, which works for Iran, says we're not going to abide by the deal.. And then the Strait of Hormz is open, but some people say it's closed. and it's not told, but then the Iranians say there are tolls, along with Oman, which we didn't even bring up Oman yet. And so I guess it seems to me in my Laymans understand The structural issues preventing peace. are all the same as they've been for about ten thousand years now as we're looking at Schroeger Straight 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? like a lasting piece And and crucially. Yeah, how significant will that be for. Not just the midterms, but twenty twenty eight Well, first of all, 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 scheduled talks really technical talks building on the negotiation that we've already had. Those are definitely happening tomorrow. One of the things I find just fascinating and frustrating about the Iranians, as they'll say, No, no, there aren't peace talks ongoing, but there are technical talks between the United States and Iran about the peace deals. It's like, okay. So it's a Persian negotiating tactic and a Persian rhetorical device that I don't understand, but that is the way that the Iranians have done this Um One of the things that is underappreciated about the President's approach to this whole region in the world is He likes to reshuffle the deck And then see where the leverage points are, where the pressure points are and see where we can make progress. And that's really where we are right now Things have changed a lot. The Iranian military is much weaker, The Iranian economy is much weaker Um Lebanon and Israel are talking to each other directly in a way that they weren't a few months ago oth 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 the MOU signed between the United States and Iran Both of those documents fundamentally sayays that Lebanon's territorial integrity will be respected So things have definitely changed I think the question is whether that change is durable. and I don't know when this will air probably tomorrow tomorrow. Okay. So so I think what the presresident 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 their entire country Okay, we're going to see how we get there. number two, We want to see what kind of an arrangement actually exists in the Middle East between not just Iran and the United States, but the GCC, Israel, Lebanon We're going to play that situation out And then on the Strait of Horm Muz, I mean, I think you actually said it well, which is that the strait is open in the sense that to oil traffic, we're seeing more oil come out of the Strait of Hormuz. and some days' actually more oil coming out of the strait than came out before the war even started So there's this element of the you know, where where the world oil economy is kind of getting back into gear, 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. But they're mostly talking about cargo ships and other vessels. att least so far, what we've seen is the oil traffic has reached it's free war, it's free war hype So I think what the presresident has told us to do is use this MOU. to sort of refill the world's oil economy.. to refill some stocks. and then to see where the hand is And You know as I've said this repeatedly, if the Iranians are willing to make the commitments that we would like them to 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 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 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. What's 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 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 energy markets. Yeah. So what the president of the United States has done, you're talking about the critics who want more bombs to drop theirir attitude is just drop bombs and drop bombs and drop bombs. and they can't really articulate to what end. what the president is saying 'm I'm willing to drop bombs and he's clearly shown that he's willing to drop bombs. only if it serves an objective And so what he's doing right now is taking a lot of pressure off of 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 think that's a very good place for us to be in There's uncertainty because No one could be certain what the Iranians are going to do. Right. So then the message, if you're an Iranian, the message you're getting from the US. is not, Okay, we've settled this, you get to keep the straight of hormz. We'll try to play nice now. The message is, okay, we're going to serve our self interest by replenishing the oil coffers. G back to us in sixty days, you might have some fire and brimstone coming back down. And if you actually behave, you won't Right And that's's that's what the presresident has fundamentally put out there. Now it is interesting to me because the Iranians have said We control the straightits And yeah, we're going to let traffic flow for the next sixty days, but then we're going to negotiate over what happens from there And what I find just bizarre about that assertion is that nobody from Gulfast the Gulf 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 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 mean is the side show is what 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 what's going to happenure st that we're working on right now. And so then if you look ahead, not just in the midterms, but even to twenty twenty eight If this drags on in this kind of stasis, the Iranians don't behave, and the Hezbollah keeps up to its antics, and we can't get a peieace deal between these three four, five, six countries How significant is that for the Republican chances in twenty eight. I don't mean to only come back to twenty twenty eight, but I think it helps clarify what it means for the party. Is this, as the President has said, justust a digression, sort of a side quest that we had to deal with because of the Iranian nuclear threat. Maybe it is that today Could this become a major moment in the history of the American Empire and the Republican Party Well, first of all, I just want to be very clear here This is not going to end in a place. where the Iranians are collecting tolls on ships going through the Strait of Hormuz. There's a lot of 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 unaccepted. That would be un intolerable. Unpredictability. Yes, because the Iranians are inherently unpredictable. Their government' 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 mo in the future You know, you want a question about like could this be something that affects the chances in twenty twenty eight? Could this be a very important historical moment? 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, I think we're going to look back at this and say, we turned over a new leaf. Now a lot of people are skeptical, including me that will ultimately happen. And then if the Iranians perform or behave poorly, then I think that we still have a lot of leverage points to ensure that this ends up in a place that is good for America's objective. So I think fundamentally, there's a desire here for everyone to say this is over Yeah mer you know, the Democrats and even 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 I would be highly skeptical of what everybody says right now I think Marcus said this the other day said is the be this is the end of the beginning, okay. There is a lot More Game to play. 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, 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 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 I was very skeptical of this intervention before before during after. And I favor restrain foreign policy. But I look at these polls And I saw Po over a year ago of Americans, especially the right How many of you think that we should stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon ninety percent, eighty, ninety percent How many of you want to go to war with Iran percent twenty percent. No. And you say, Well those are. Yes,. And then even look to bring it into another issue. It's interesting at this 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 of days ago said that After Anthropic came out with the Myths, AI, they said, this is so good. It's so dangerous. We're not going to release this to the public Wall Street Journal reports China just made its own myths. It's out.'s so much for that. that we're clearly in some kind of AI arms race. We appear to be in a Cold warar, maybe it it gets a little hot even sometimes with China And Americans are divided on this, even conservatives. On the one hand, we want 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 no I don't want to lose the IRms race, and I don't want the data center in my town Well in the Trump administration and then looking ahead perhaps to the Vance administration What does the American foreign policy look like? Be from what I can tell We want the privileges of empire But we don't want the obligations of Empire. First of all, I reject the premise of any future advced administration. I very focused on being vice president.ure. No, ye it was very slick, but I refuse to accept it. this aggression will not stand. But on the Trump administration's policy, I mean Like we' tried and I think we've done a good job. of balancing The economic benefits with the downsides of artificial intelligence And you're right, we don't want to lose the AI race to China. 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 Americ Stel. That is that is part of it I actually mean I amm not sure. I don't think many Americans have a good understanding of how the Chinese actually think about AI. I think there's a part of the Chinese policy set You know, she's in a circle that probably just wants to dominate the AI arms race. 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' I think they're a little freaked out by it is what I'm saying. Yeah We will get back to the vice president breaking news 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 two hundred and fifty years old This week, the semi quincententennial of a country built by tobacco, it deserves a cigar worthy of the occasion. I have been teasing this for some months now. 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Void whereare prohibited conditions and exclusions apply. Take your flexibility beyond the mat Pay Pal Pay nothing at checkout. Then enjoy a flexible monthly payment plan that works for you. W no sign up or late fees. findind yours then, and an easy way to pay. With PayPal. downownload the PayPal app to get started. Subject to approval. pay mononthly consonsumer loans made by Webank. Available through PayPaling NML nine one zero four fivety seven. Learn more at payPal d. com slash pay monthly So Where I think that lands for me is 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 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 becausecause of that, I think we we have to strike a balance. Like I'm not super lazse 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 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 I think that some AI leaders to build things that are genuinely transformative in a good way. And I don't think that we can be complete unbiased. There is you have to sort of pick a side. Yeah. 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 predators to interact with our kids. The data center thing is interesting likeike 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 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, it's about the energy And that ninety nine percent 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 literally means you're going to be paying more electricity so that you know somebody in Silicon Valley can make another billion dollars. Going back to the point about the dignity of human beings, that is not a good trade. That's not a trade that we accept. We should accept But I think 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 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 the AI people don't figure this out 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 like maybe you should support building more power. and maybe, you know, and 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 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 environalism. They've changed their tune. People like Bill Gates say he said, Basically that global warming was solved. This happens to coincide with this energy crisis for who knowsaybe it's aincidence, mayaybe it's Proidence, who knows? I know you have to go. Y. you have very important things to do, like help around the whole country. I have two brief questions. where you go and they're sort of like pick a name kind of questions The leading Democrat for twenty eight Mm I think it's got to be AOC. I know that's probably conventional wisdom, but no, I think the conventional wisdom right now is Newsom No, no, I don't I don't buy that. I think I think he hurt himself with his Comment to an audience full of bllack Americans that I'm low IQ just like you sort of bad in a couple of different ways. How do you do? Yeah At least two major political gas produced in a singleton. The major political gas I've had it's sort of much less efficient than that Um So yeah, I look I think all you see more than us off more than any of these other guys Yeah, I mean, it's funny. It's the AOC versus Osoft thing. I guess The question would be, who do you think really has the power in the Democratic Party And If you think the answer is like Wall Street and the Left of Center business community, then it would be OSF. And if you think it's the universities, it would be AOC. So David Brooks made an observation. I think David Brooks probably hates my guts, but he like 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. If that's right AOC will be the nominee. And by the way, I think that's one of the reasons why the Democratic Party of twenty twenty six is so deranged because You know, you walk into a union hall even where seventy percent of the guys are still voting demb. Fundamentally like a normal place with normal social values It's not the university like, you know it's not the university break room, faculty lounge. Faculty lounge. that's the that I'm looking for. So and this by the way is another reason why I'm just fundamentally pessimistic about the DMs because You know It's one thing to be a socially pragmatic left of center Democrat on economic issues just so dominated by the crazy people. Yeah. 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 be more worried about that Every time they get the economic populism, it's with somebody like AOC who's like, we you know need to tax the rich and give all the money to transgender baseball players who prey on your kids. And it's like, wait a minute. Yeah couldould you like a very potent political movement would be half of that whether you agree with it or not. 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 twelve year old miners to gender transition them. That's the part that makes most 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. Yes. Yeah. I mean, you saw it just the other day, this Scott Weener, this guy who's running for Pelosi's seat. L like a true deviant. I mean, there's like something wrong with that guy. His crowning political achievement was encouraging pederasty in the law. That's exaggeration. Yeah. And he was kicked out of the trans March for being too right wing. You know, so that's the basically the state of party. I think you Sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes the bar eats to you my friend. That' luck. Last question I have for you let you go Last name to name Wh's your confirmation site Augustine. Sant 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 you know the city of God and everything that he wrote, so That's an easy one. In August, we have an Augustinian pope, an Augustinian vice president, maybe soon an Augustinian president. I gave I gave Pope Leo fourteI when I visited him for his inaugural mass We found a very old copy of confessions that we gift to them that Well now what am I going to get him? I don't know I don't know when I'm gonna to me him. Mrter. Vice President, such a pleasure. Thankk you for being very, very generous with your time Ecellent book. Thank you really I hard 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. so go get it Communion by JD. Vance. Thank you, sir. 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