Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1362 ｜ VP JD Vance on Israel, Catholics vs. Evangelicals & Fatherhood

00:00:00.580 Does Israel have too much influence in U.S. politics?

00:00:03.980 Is the future of the conservative movement Catholic rather than evangelical?

00:00:08.200 And is Vice President J.D. Vance a chicken farmer now?

00:00:10.780 We've got the Vice President here today to talk about all of this and much more on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:25.740 Mr. Vice President, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:00:28.580 Yeah, thanks for being here.

00:00:29.280 okay i hear that you're a chicken uh chicken farmer yeah is that right where do you have a

00:00:34.600 chicken coop we do we do yeah no i feel like a chicken farmer and it's it's interesting so

00:00:38.700 i've wanted chickens for a very long time and it actually took you know just because we live in

00:00:43.100 this massive naval base it took a while to figure out exactly how to do it so we got like the taj

00:00:48.060 mahal of chicken coops okay and that was built as of a few weeks ago and then you normally get

00:00:52.980 chickens in the spring and so we get we had our chicken delivery about two weeks ago oh wow how

00:00:57.720 we have like 15 which somehow i got nine or 10 and we ended up with 15 so i'm not sure exactly

00:01:04.060 how that worked out but it's it's kind of crazy because the the big question is always whenever

00:01:08.920 you get an animal whether it's a dog a cat or chickens in this case it's like how much are

00:01:12.740 the kids actually going to do so we have a nine-year-old six-year-old a four-year-old and

00:01:16.580 it turns out they love chickens like almost weirdly like i'm i'm worried they're going to

00:01:20.640 be like weird chicken people now because they obsessively want to go and just hang out with

00:01:24.320 chickens and sit in a chicken coop and it stinks and there's poop everywhere so they're really into

00:01:29.600 them which i guess is better than the alternative but they it is like i'm a big believer that having

00:01:35.740 kids connected in nature in some way is very profound and important and this is a good way

00:01:40.760 even though they live in the middle of washington dc it's like a good way for them to have like some

00:01:44.780 connection to nature and of course the chicks get big and they start laying eggs and that's cool

00:01:49.680 too which is exciting we have a chicken coop but we don't have any chickens yet oh really we're not

00:01:53.380 there we started with a cat okay and our seven-year-old is really good at taking care of

00:01:58.060 the cat that's good that's good um and then we also have a guinea pig named travis okay and travis

00:02:03.380 is kind of neglected because of the cat of course but i i agree with you maybe one day we'll get on

00:02:08.220 y'all's level though i highly recommend it it's way less work and maintenance than i expected it

00:02:12.920 to be yeah now part of that's because we have this very nice chicken coop but uh it's it's very cool

00:02:17.620 so we're very into it yeah okay y'all are expecting number four we are my husband and i are on the

00:02:22.920 same tracks. Congratulations. Congratulations to you. You write about in your book that y'all

00:02:27.780 decided to add another little one to your family after Charlie was assassinated. That's right.

00:02:32.280 Can you talk more about that? Yeah. So this has been a sort of an ongoing conversation as it

00:02:37.720 probably is with all families, with a lot of kids. And I remember when we had our first kid

00:02:44.620 and you go from zero to one, I was like, I'm never doing this again. It was such a shock to

00:02:49.400 the system it was crazy and i think we also our oldest was just a little bit tougher of a baby

00:02:54.320 and then we had number two and number three and now i'm just all like i would have nine kids

00:02:58.340 but you know as you know it takes takes two to tango and you know usha's now she just turned 40

00:03:04.920 and so like it gets a little bit harder right the older that you get the harder it is on the body

00:03:09.760 and so she was kind of like you know i don't really know that i want to be pregnant again

00:03:13.280 like i'd love to have a fourth baby i'd love to be pregnant again with all the spotlight so

00:03:17.440 So this has been an ongoing conversation for a couple of years. And, you know, when Charlie died, and so this is, you know, I'll never forget the dates because I was supposed to go to New York for the 9-11 memorial. And so he dies on September the 10th, is killed on September the 10th. We fly out the morning of the 11th, pick up his body in Utah, and then fly him and Erica and some of the family back to, back to Arizona.

00:03:41.580 and you know there's so many things i remember from that moment and you know you see erica and

00:03:47.240 you want to say something profound but what can you possibly say there's just there's nothing to

00:03:51.260 say and you know i've found this a number of times with with grieving people is you know you sort of

00:03:58.320 oscillate between so sad you can't even speak to wanting to tell stories and wanting to remember

00:04:05.940 and almost, you know, having like these extremely fond

00:04:09.740 and intense memories of a person you just lost.

00:04:13.400 And so we talked to Erica for a while, of course, about Charlie,

00:04:16.340 but then she sort of just makes this observation through her tears

00:04:19.940 that she really wishes they had had more kids.

00:04:22.520 They have two little kids who have actually stayed here a number of times

00:04:25.640 since Charlie passed away.

00:04:28.380 And for me, at least, that like really drove it home.

00:04:32.180 I don't know that it had the same effect on Usha.

00:04:33.960 I think Usha's just much more analytical about this stuff and had kind of been getting there

00:04:38.380 in her own way. But for me, it was like, we have to have a fourth baby. And she got pregnant like

00:04:43.960 six weeks later. Yeah. Do you remember the moment that you found out she was pregnant?

00:04:49.660 I do actually, because I came home, I want to say it was actually a pretty late night. And I came

00:04:57.220 home and, you know, I go to the bathroom to take off my suit. And there's like one of the instant

00:05:03.400 tests there with a positive. And that was how Usha told me. And so, yeah, I remember I was so

00:05:08.000 excited. Yeah. It always comes as the biggest surprise, even though, you know, it's a possibility

00:05:12.860 and it just like, it never gets home. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's so exciting.

00:05:17.340 Yeah. And you know, it's, it's the thing about this job is there are certainly sacrifices for

00:05:22.400 the family, but it's also just in some ways the easiest possible situation in which to have a

00:05:28.460 baby because there's so much support. Like we have amazing staff. We have people who help us with

00:05:33.360 everything, you know, this house, which is, I liken it to the nicest public housing anywhere

00:05:38.620 in the world, but like, you know, is largely taken care of by the Navy and the people who

00:05:43.140 work here. And so while having a baby is always a bit of a challenge, especially in a job like this,

00:05:48.660 I actually think that, you know, knock on wood, this is going to be the best way or like the

00:05:55.280 easiest way, at least on the family to bring a new life into the world.

00:05:57.960 Yeah. And interestingly, it feels like the more kids you have, the easier it is in some ways.

00:06:04.080 Absolutely.

00:06:04.880 I mean, harder in some ways logistically and things like that, but your kids are older,

00:06:08.460 you know what you're doing, your confidence as a mom and dad, it just kind of rises. That's been

00:06:13.140 our experience.

00:06:13.720 That's absolutely right. And they also just, because it's not like the kids, unfortunately,

00:06:18.380 in some ways, because my favorite ages are like three to six. I love those ages, but they get

00:06:24.180 older and so the nine-year-old is now pretty helpful and the six-year-old is very helpful

00:06:28.820 and they become more self-sufficient they also play with each other right they're like their own

00:06:33.180 little kid crew yeah and so it's actually becomes certainly you know less work i think over time

00:06:41.300 and you know there's like some weird stuff like you know we'll be back in the diaper stage we

00:06:45.580 are firmly out of the diaper stage that's going to be you know a little unusual but i just i i

00:06:50.640 think it's such a good thing. And absolutely, it's the easier the way... It's easier the further

00:06:56.680 out you get. You write about your own dad in both of your books, Hillbillyology, and then your new

00:07:00.920 book, Communion. And obviously, he wasn't as present as a boy needed, but you do talk about

00:07:06.660 how he brought you to church pretty consistently for a period of your life. Can you talk about

00:07:11.560 that? What was your experience, not only with your dad, but really with Christianity when you

00:07:16.320 growing up? Yeah. So my dad, there was a period where my biological father was not in my life at

00:07:22.600 all, six or seven years. And so when he and I reconnected when I was a teenager, there's just

00:07:27.940 like a little awkwardness there, but I loved him. I think he's fundamentally was always a good guy,

00:07:33.020 but I think his faith really inspired him to be a better person. And so by the time that he and I

00:07:38.180 reconnected, he was very deeply involved in his church community, which was a Pentecostal church

00:07:43.180 in Southwestern Ohio. And so the thing that I remember, because when we went to church,

00:07:48.000 it was normally like a Southern Baptist church. And this Pentecostal church, the music was amazing.

00:07:53.620 The people were super welcoming. I'd never seen somebody speak in tongues before until I started

00:07:57.540 going to church with dad. So there are all these new and interesting things. But what it did do

00:08:01.800 for me is it actually gave me a church community, which I hadn't had at any point in my life.

00:08:07.060 So the woman who was certainly most important in my own faith was my grandmother, the woman I

00:08:12.220 called Mamaw, and very devoutly Christian, read the Bible multiple times per day, was very intense

00:08:20.500 about our faith, would talk about it with anybody, but also was very unchurched, right? So we would

00:08:26.280 watch Billy Graham revivals on TV, we'd watch TBN or CBN, but we didn't really have a church

00:08:31.960 community. Occasionally, we'd go to church, but not that often. And so one of the things I realized

00:08:37.340 in hindsight, is that Mamaw was my link to Christianity. And so even though I was still

00:08:45.040 close to my dad and I would occasionally go to church with him, when Mamaw died, and this happened

00:08:50.100 when I was 20 years old, I was in the Marine Corps, I was about to go to Iraq, I was an atheist two

00:08:55.720 years later. And you could always intellectualize this stuff or sort of come up with reasons,

00:09:00.980 But at some basic level, Christianity to me was mammal. And when that was gone, the person I talked to about my faith, the person who sort of encouraged me in my faith, when that was gone, I just didn't really have any anchor to Christianity anymore. And I think there is an important lesson in this.

00:09:17.640 I mean, one of the reasons I wrote this book is, you know, I wanted to obviously talk about my own faith journey, but I'm very interested, maybe even obsessed with this question of why do people who are raised in Christian households, why does it not take?

00:09:34.400 Like, I get it if you're raised in an atheist household or a secular household, but why is it that so many of our young people, like I take my kids to church every week, sometimes more often than that.

00:09:44.440 We talk about it all the time. We, you know, do readings together and we pray every day before

00:09:49.080 dinner. And I am worried that like a lot of Christian parents, this thing that is very 1.00

00:09:54.500 meaningful to me will not take. And so a part of the reason why I wrote the book is to try to

00:09:59.820 explain at least for one kid why it didn't take and then why, of course, eventually it came back.

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00:11:20.860 You know, Mamaw had a really good discernment from what I read in your book. One of the things

00:11:25.600 that you noted is that she didn't like Benny Hinn. You know what? And a lot of people in her

00:11:31.060 socioeconomic station loved those health and wealth name it and claim it televangelist and i

00:11:37.000 just love when i read that line that you were like ma'am i would just know from a mile away that he 1.00

00:11:41.300 was a crook and she was right no and and she you know there were people she loved right she she

00:11:46.200 loved billy graham we would watch pat robertson on uh 700 club all the time but she really didn't

00:11:52.860 like benny hand it was like this intense revulsion almost yeah and it's it's it's funny because

00:11:59.500 looking back I kind of liked it right I thought it was interesting he was very charismatic guy

00:12:03.560 very dynamic yeah very dynamic and yeah you're right you're exactly right she had great discernment

00:12:07.900 which is I mean one of the reasons why my life turned out okay is she had great discernment

00:12:12.360 in matters of faith right but she was also like the person who would say and I write about this

00:12:17.180 you know if she found out I was hanging out with a kid who was doing drugs in the neighborhood

00:12:21.460 she'd say if you don't stop hanging out with a kid I'm gonna run over over with my car and she

00:12:26.580 was so out there that i was like worried she would actually do it so so she definitely had

00:12:32.340 this ability to keep me on the straight and narrow yeah but uh yeah she was a very devout

00:12:36.940 but a very unconventional christian one of the things you write about and this did kind of

00:12:40.940 surprise me you were talking about what the evangelical world was like for you growing up

00:12:47.100 and you talk about a preoccupation that a lot of christians had in your area with culture war

00:12:52.320 issues that seem kind of distant. Terry Schiavo, Bill Clinton, the moral majority. Now, I hear this

00:12:59.060 critique from a lot of people who leave evangelicalism, typically from the progressive

00:13:03.600 side, saying, you know, evangelicals just care about power and the culture wars and things like

00:13:09.040 that. They don't care about caring for the poor and all of that. I don't know if that's an accurate

00:13:12.860 representation of what you're trying to say, but would you say that this kind of what you describe

00:13:18.880 as an obsession with politics and stuff by evangelicals. Did that repel you?

00:13:23.720 So it did. And I think in some ways I was being uncharitable. But again, part of the reason why

00:13:29.640 I'm writing it so honestly is I'm trying to take people into the mind of a kid. And sometimes

00:13:34.320 teenagers are uncharitable, right? And so if we're asking ourselves, why do people fall away from the

00:13:38.780 faith? Part of that is, you know, I certainly picked up on the, you know, evangelicals are

00:13:44.440 too interested in the culture wars thing. And there was part of that, but to be a little bit

00:13:48.900 more charitable to sort of what I was dealing with at the time, you know, I was, I was about

00:13:53.260 to leave for Iraq. The most important person in my life had just died. My family was financially

00:13:59.380 in a very tough spot, but also just, you know, mom was struggling with the worst part of her

00:14:03.520 addiction. And I didn't even disagree with the Catholics and the evangelicals who are so worried

00:14:08.880 about the Terry Schiavo case, but it seemed like a very weird point of emphasis to me at the time.

00:14:13.480 Like, why are we talking so much about this thing when I saw so much that was going wrong

00:14:19.640 in my own community that it felt like the church wasn't speaking to?

00:14:23.460 And so I do think that one of the lessons here is not that Christians shouldn't care

00:14:26.960 about politics, because obviously I think that they should, but I think that they have

00:14:30.460 to appreciate that part of what a 21 or a 22-year-old kid is going through is going

00:14:35.580 to be so divorced from the day-to-day of public policy that if you don't speak to what kids

00:14:41.760 they're dealing with, then you're going to lose a lot of them. And I think that that's one thing

00:14:45.960 that when I, again, think about my own falling away from the faith, there was this sense of

00:14:52.440 almost betrayal, that there was a total chaotic situation in my own life, and the faith didn't

00:15:00.280 speak to it in the same way. And again, was that totally fair? No. But it's certainly part of the

00:15:06.380 story of why I lost my faith. Yeah, I was raised evangelical, still Southern Baptist to this day.

00:15:11.760 And there was certainly an aspect of that.

00:15:13.700 Maybe I didn't notice it quite as much because I had been going, you know, since the time

00:15:17.540 that I was born.

00:15:18.860 But something I really appreciate about evangelicals is not only, you know, doctrinal fidelity

00:15:24.720 and being consistent on that, but the willingness to take that and take those doctrines into

00:15:30.060 the culture and to say, look, if God is the creator and the authority of all things, then

00:15:35.140 that has to dictate what we think about life, that has to dictate what we think about all

00:15:39.300 of these other issues as well.

00:15:41.500 And when Christians don't do that, especially if evangelicals didn't do that, we'd be in

00:15:45.540 a really bad spot. 0.96

00:15:46.600 No, I think that's exactly right.

00:15:47.940 And I also think that one of the subtexts of this argument that I'm making is I actually

00:15:55.360 want us to have a more fulsome view of politics, not to withdraw from politics, but to actually

00:16:00.820 engage on all of the issues.

00:16:03.060 Because I remember my stepmom, who I'm still very close to, she's actually coming here

00:16:07.120 in a week or two to to help take care of our kids over july 4th um because we've got obviously a lot

00:16:12.160 going on as vice president yeah and you know one of the things she said to me i'll never forget

00:16:16.640 this she was raised by a union man and like a lot of people in my neck of the woods growing up

00:16:22.320 union democrats socially conservative very christian but felt deeply alienated from

00:16:29.520 the cultural direction of the democratic party and i remember talking to her about politics

00:16:33.680 like, why are you a Republican? This is the Bill Clinton era. I was a teenager. And she's like,

00:16:38.100 well, you know, Republicans are for the rich, but at least they care about the unborn.

00:16:43.660 And, you know, there was this idea that somehow Republicans like tricked evangelicals to voting

00:16:50.660 against their economic interests because they cared about the culture war issues. The actual

00:16:56.260 truth was much more interesting, which is that a lot of middle class, working class evangelicals,

00:17:02.260 they didn't love the business elites of the Republican Party. They recognized they were

00:17:06.640 making a choice between two imperfect options here. So it was much more self-aware. And again,

00:17:13.300 people are much smarter than I think the progressive movement was willing to give

00:17:16.980 them credit for. But I do think that one of the takeaways, and frankly, to be a little biased here

00:17:22.640 and a little partisan, one of the things that happened with the Trump movement, even though

00:17:27.400 obviously the president is not a traditional evangelical Christian, is that he was actually

00:17:36.740 willing to give voice not just to the cultural concerns of the Christian base, but some of the

00:17:41.600 economic concerns. Like, why did you ship my job overseas? I want a pro-life politician. I want

00:17:46.700 somebody who's protecting the family. I also want somebody who's going to protect my job.

00:17:50.780 And that was, I think, always part of the power of the Trump movement, is that a woman like my

00:17:55.920 stepmother, who was one of the first people who was ever really MAGA in my life, she was like,

00:18:01.880 no, no, no, I actually want both of these things. And I kind of, you know, one of the arguments I

00:18:07.360 make here, and I really believe in is, I think Christians should be more assertive about their

00:18:13.680 politics. But I think we should be assertive about our political views, both when it comes to

00:18:18.080 matters of economics and the dignity of work. We also have to be assertive, of course, about our

00:18:23.040 views when it comes to matters of life or matters of the family. Do you think your views on economics

00:18:27.780 have changed from the time you wrote Hillbilly Elegy to today? From the time I wrote Hillbilly

00:18:32.900 Elegy, not much. I mean, there's definitely, you know, one of the things I struggle with

00:18:38.240 as just a person who has come from struggle and a pretty chaotic background, a lower income

00:18:45.300 background is you have to be able to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time.

00:18:49.320 One of those thoughts is that objectively, my life was not as economically prosperous as I think, frankly, it could have been if leaders hadn't made bad decisions back in the 80s, 90s, sometimes even before that.

00:19:03.300 And you're not talking about kind of the false choice that people present that either you vote for Republicans who hate poor people or you vote for Democrats with unconditional welfare.

00:19:11.740 Because I think that's what a lot of people think when they're thinking about economics.

00:19:15.300 But you're not necessarily saying progressive policy is badder economically.

00:19:18.860 No, not at all. In fact, I'd say that the basic bipartisan consensus, if you go back

00:19:24.680 to the 1990s, the world that I grew up in, they were fundamentally asking, how much money

00:19:29.480 do we give to the people who haven't done as well? That was the debate. And the Republicans

00:19:34.060 would say a little bit less in the 90s, and Democrats would say a little bit more. But

00:19:37.760 what always bothered me, even going back then, was why isn't there less of a question, or

00:19:45.140 why isn't there more of a question? Why don't we have fewer people who have lost in this hyper

00:19:50.300 globalized economy in the first place? Like people don't want welfare, they want jobs.

00:19:55.520 And there were a lot of very hardworking people who lost a lot of very good jobs because

00:19:59.100 we decided that we didn't care whether our factories went to Mexico or China,

00:20:03.500 so long as it made a couple of additional points on the share price of this or that company or this

00:20:09.100 or that investment bank. And so to go back to the core point, I actually think that there is an

00:20:16.100 entire Christian concept of economics that was totally ignored in the 1990s. It's not redistribute

00:20:24.200 a bunch of money to the people who have lost in the global financial system. It's protect the

00:20:29.760 dignity of work, protect the kind of wage that supports a family, protect the kind of communities

00:20:34.880 that sustain good and virtuous people, that almost became a casualty of the fact that the

00:20:42.500 debate was always about redistribution. How much do we redistribute to the losers? That was the

00:20:46.480 way that these people formulated the debate. I hated that way of putting it.

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00:21:51.500 alia check out the seven weeks coffee.com code ali the front of your new book communion it's got

00:22:01.540 what looks like a baptist church on it um it's not a catholic church i know that it's it's it's

00:22:07.100 from i believe western north carolina yeah which i thought was interesting which is appropriate

00:22:11.120 you did ultimately become catholic yep and so i'm curious my question is twofold tell me about that

00:22:17.340 decision of kind of not only leaving evangelicalism, becoming atheist and becoming Catholic and why

00:22:22.160 Catholicism, but then maybe also how Catholicism has shaped your view of what you just said,

00:22:28.100 because the Catholic church has been very outspoken for a very long time about things

00:22:31.520 like economic policy, maybe in a more uniform way than say Protestants have. So two-part question,

00:22:37.700 we'll start with why you decided Catholicism. Well, I think it's hard to say why Catholicism

00:22:43.100 without why back to Christianity. Okay. And so in my call it early twenties, I leave the Marine 0.93

00:22:52.140 Corps. I go to Ohio state, I go to Yale law school and without even realizing it, maybe there was

00:22:56.560 always this sort of flaw in my character, but I had become a striver. Like I had become a person

00:23:03.080 who was obsessed with getting ahead just for its own sake. I was obsessed with how much money I

00:23:08.060 made. I was obsessed with what kind of credentials I had, where I went to school, the prestige of

00:23:13.080 my job, where I live. I just had completely discarded all of the focus of my grandmother's

00:23:21.140 faith and her worldview. And I was way too worried about very, very worldly pursuits.

00:23:27.500 Now, in my defense, there was a legitimate thing there, which is being a provider,

00:23:33.080 wanting to provide your kids the things that you didn't have, that's fine. But I had taken it 10

00:23:37.160 levels too far and to an obsession with getting ahead. Okay. So I get to Yale Law School and I'm

00:23:43.260 successful by every metric. I've won all of these competitions of life. And I think to myself,

00:23:48.540 am I actually a happy person? Am I actually a good person? And I start having these very deep

00:23:53.300 questions about- Why did you start having those questions?

00:23:55.500 Well, a couple of reasons. Number one, because I realized that I was, again, preoccupied with

00:24:00.860 things that actually didn't really matter that much. We all end up in the same place. We all

00:24:05.140 start the same place and fundamentally like was i the sort of person was i becoming the sort of

00:24:10.620 person where the people who knew me best would say things that i cared about you know david brooks

00:24:17.220 has this this famous formulation of resume virtues virtue versus i think he says eulogy

00:24:23.660 virtues or obituary virtues it's idea that like what really matters here is not whether you went

00:24:28.920 to law school or not but it matters what kind of a person you were and so that was one thing but

00:24:34.000 but at a deeper level, I mean, I, I'd fallen in love and the woman who is now the second lady,

00:24:39.940 she and I were dating. I was not a very good boyfriend. I had a terrible temper. I had in,

00:24:44.580 in hindsight, what people would have called attachment problems. And so we'd have an

00:24:48.300 argument and I'd be like, all right, see you later. You know, call me in a few days. And I

00:24:52.980 sort of think to myself, well, wait a second, all of this success that I've geared my life towards

00:24:58.560 is not making me good at the thing that I care the most about, which is marrying this girl,

00:25:03.580 being a good husband, being a good father. And so you start asking those like bigger and deeper

00:25:07.900 questions. And then I start saying to myself, oh, interesting. These like people that I dismissed

00:25:13.500 as bumpkins, as irrational, as superstitious, these Christians in my life, they're actually 1.00

00:25:19.560 the ones who seem to have it figured out. Like they're much happier, they're much healthier, 0.93

00:25:24.740 they're much more well-adjusted. Now, I don't want to be like too critical of my Yale Law

00:25:30.200 school classmates, most of whom were fundamentally decent people, but they were like me. They cared

00:25:34.980 way too much about whether they were achieving by society's standards and they weren't that

00:25:40.680 interesting. I remember having this sort of conversation with Usha when we were dating

00:25:46.660 where I said, you know what? As much as this is like the most prestigious and the hardest to get

00:25:52.400 into school, I had way more interesting conversations with my classmates at Ohio State

00:25:57.380 or in high school than I do with my classmates at Yale.

00:26:00.640 And she actually said, I agree with you.

00:26:02.700 She said, she went to Yale undergrad

00:26:04.160 and she said, Yale undergrad was way more interesting

00:26:06.880 than Yale law school.

00:26:09.560 And there was this sense that even on the thing

00:26:11.740 that it was supposed to be really good at,

00:26:13.200 which is making people think interesting thoughts,

00:26:15.600 we had this super narrow Overton window

00:26:18.720 where everybody fundamentally thought the same things,

00:26:21.800 said the same things

00:26:22.880 and geared their life towards the same things. 1.00

00:26:25.060 And it was the Christians that I had dismissed 0.99

00:26:26.800 as bumpkins who had things figured out so that got me on the pathway of like well if they're 0.98

00:26:32.240 right about virtue and they're right about character and they're right about the things

00:26:36.880 that actually matter maybe they're right about jesus maybe this actually comes from some inner

00:26:40.800 truth that radiates outward and i i talked to a priest friend of mine the guy who actually

00:26:46.480 eventually baptized me and he said you know the christian faith doesn't require you to accept

00:26:52.800 everything without doubt in fact it almost encourages doubt or at least acknowledges doubt

00:26:57.440 you know there's the famous idea of faith the size of a mustard seed but what it does ask you

00:27:02.720 to do is sort of accept that the good and true parts of christianity come from a real witness

00:27:09.840 that if you believe the sort of the you know the consequences of the christian faith then maybe you

00:27:16.480 have to accept that the other things that christians say are true like jesus christ is the son of god

00:27:21.520 that all sinners need grace that that grace can be transformative at least over time

00:27:26.240 and that kind of got me down the path okay well maybe i'm a christian now but how to be a christian

00:27:32.000 and that that's all ultimately what led me to uh to catholicism and and like i can again

00:27:39.040 because we're talking about a book and you write down a book on paper there's always this

00:27:42.880 instinct to overthink things or to you know describe things as more rational than they

00:27:48.400 actually are there are two things that that really appealed to me about catholicism the first is that

00:27:54.800 a lot of the christians that i was engaged with at the time that i was going to church with they

00:27:58.960 were catholics and they were really good people and they were the people that i was talking to

00:28:03.840 about my own doubts and skepticism and so that was a big part of you know what just got me back into

00:28:08.960 church was this the catholics in my life my uncle right my mom's younger sister the best husband

00:28:14.320 the best father a guy i really modeled myself after he was a devout catholic wasn't particularly

00:28:20.080 curious about that for most of my life but as i started becoming a husband and father i was much

00:28:24.480 more curious about that fact but the the second thing i'll say about catholicism and i think to

00:28:29.440 be fair it's also true of a lot of evangelical denominations is there was this sense that the

00:28:35.600 entire world was changing too fast that things were shifting that you know the the christian church

00:28:43.360 was sometimes too willing to try to fit itself with the times as opposed to try to influence

00:28:49.060 the times itself. And what I really liked about Catholicism is that it felt very, very stable.

00:28:56.880 You know, if you're critical, almost boring, but the doctrine just doesn't change. There's this

00:29:01.300 very almost bureaucratic process for changing even like a word in the catechism. And I liked

00:29:07.740 that stability a lot. I liked the hierarchy of it. I liked the sense that there was a consistency

00:29:13.140 see across generations and places. Like if we were on vacation somewhere and I walked into a

00:29:18.540 Catholic church, it'd be the same readings, the same gospel, and the homily might change a little

00:29:24.300 bit, but fundamentally it felt stable to me when I was very, very much craving stability.

00:29:28.260 Yeah, I understand that. And that's something that a lot of my Catholic friends will tell me

00:29:32.960 is that they love the uniformity of it and the unity of it. And I totally understand why that's

00:29:37.460 appealing. I'm going to ask you a question that I asked my Catholic friends, and it's a true 0.84

00:29:41.560 curiosity, when you look at the statistics of what people who profess to be Catholics believe

00:29:46.900 about things like abortion, things like sexuality and gender, they're much more likely to be

00:29:52.840 progressive than, say, the average evangelical. Evangelicals are kind of, in some ways, the lone

00:29:57.140 bull work on these things, much less likely to support those progressive causes. And so I do 1.00

00:30:02.680 wonder if the Catholic Church has been so consistent on all of these issues, and I hear a

00:30:07.840 lot that Protestants have been inconsistent, I do wonder why evangelicals are so much more united

00:30:13.120 on what the Bible says about these issues than Catholics generally are.

00:30:17.000 Yeah, I've thought about this question, and I don't know if this is going to be a satisfactory

00:30:20.520 answer, but I think part of it is that cultural Catholicism is much more powerful than cultural

00:30:26.880 Protestantism. What I mean is that if you are a Protestant and you fall away from your faith,

00:30:32.220 you're much more likely to just say you're not a Protestant anymore or you're not a Christian

00:30:35.600 anymore. Whereas if you're a Catholic and you largely fall away from your faith,

00:30:39.480 there still is this sense of sort of identification with the Catholic faith,

00:30:43.660 even if you yourself are not going to church regularly. But I think if you look at evangelicals

00:30:47.920 who go to church regularly and Catholics who go to church regularly, you see a remarkable amount

00:30:52.940 of harmony and synthesis about the core issues that matter. Yeah. There is a growing divide,

00:30:59.380 it seems to me, on the right between evangelicals and Catholics, and maybe it just lives online,

00:31:04.940 Maybe it's not so much in real life, but there's certainly this feeling, it seems to me, as an

00:31:10.860 evangelical, that evangelicals are the reason that we're in a bunch of problems, or we haven't won

00:31:16.820 as many wars or culture wars as we need to. The future of America and the future of conservatism 0.97

00:31:22.680 is Catholic. It's trad-cath, as the people say online. What is your take on that?

00:31:28.080 so my take on it is fundamentally like america was founded as a protestant nation yeah and you

00:31:37.600 know that said there are definitely like seeds of catholicism in the original american founding as

00:31:44.580 well of course maryland was named maryland and had deep connections to the catholic church

00:31:50.940 a lot of what was going on in the original west western conquest the original european founding

00:31:56.360 in the West was very rooted in Catholicism. And so I guess I see these debates as a sort of

00:32:03.280 very good continuation of something that's kind of always been true and always been in the

00:32:08.280 background of American Christianity. And I'm a big believer, and maybe this is too optimistic,

00:32:14.480 but I believe that, you know, I'm a Catholic, I believe in the core teachings of my faith,

00:32:19.800 but I also think that there is a reason why there was a Reformation, there was a reason why the

00:32:25.700 church kind of scattered. And ultimately, I just have a certain optimism, faith, a hope that God's

00:32:34.360 going to figure all this out in the end. That the reason why we're having these arguments is because

00:32:38.460 one of the ways that we come to know God is by trying to understand Him. And one of the ways

00:32:43.360 that we understand Him is by debating between evangelicals and Catholics and tradcasts and

00:32:48.620 Southern Baptists about all these issues. And so I do think that there are things to learn.

00:32:53.340 Like, I think that one of the things that Catholics sort of have to learn from evangelicals is, why is it that if, you know, one of the experiences, I've had a number of friends who will walk into a Catholic church, they're extremely interested in it, they'll hear a beautiful homily, they'll be amazed by the sort of, you know, magnificence of the mass and the music, but then nobody will talk to them afterwards.

00:33:17.480 Everybody leaves and disappears and goes back to their own homes.

00:33:20.420 Now, if you're part of the parish community, you very much are like part of the church community.

00:33:26.220 But if you show up to like an evangelical church in southwestern Ohio and nobody knows who you are, like nine of them will ask you for donuts or coffee or to hang out afterwards.

00:33:37.140 There is a spirit of welcoming there in the evangelical church that I think Catholics can learn a lot from.

00:33:42.260 I'm not saying Catholics don't ever do that, but it's so much more part of the evangelical church tradition in the United States of America.

00:33:50.420 At the same time, what can evangelicals learn from Catholics? I do think that there is something to be said about the stability of doctrine. Even if it doesn't necessarily take with every single member, there's something to be said about the stability of doctrine and the stability of the institution.

00:34:06.020 And my sense is that, again, God's going to figure all this out in the end, and we'll all get to

00:34:11.080 heaven. He'll tell us who was right and who was wrong about specific issues. But I think there's

00:34:15.440 a purpose to this. There has to be, because we've been arguing about this stuff for 500 years,

00:34:19.760 maybe even longer. And I think those arguments are fundamentally good, even if sometimes they're

00:34:24.700 absurd. Yeah, I love the debates. I think they're super fun. And when you get with someone who's

00:34:29.680 okay with that, and you can still be friends after, it's just the best.

00:34:32.520 exactly it's the best exactly it is your mammal once said to me about this all that matters is

00:34:37.200 jesus and i think that if that's the anchor and you recognize that when we have these theological

00:34:42.620 arguments the anchor is jesus christ it's all going to work out in the end

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00:36:19.460 do range leather.com slash alley you talk about you and charlie kind of discussing this and having

00:36:30.240 these debates and i'm curious not necessarily about y'all's private conversations but is there

00:36:36.620 anything that he or protestant ever said that you're like huh that's kind of a good point

00:36:43.240 because there are certainly things that i see as that from the evangelical perspective when i'm

00:36:47.700 reading, say, Aquinas or Chesterton? Yeah, well, I mean, yes, I mean, so many things. But the point

00:36:53.920 that you made is a point that Charlie has made to me in the past, which is, you know, one of my

00:36:58.020 favorite Bible verses. And indeed, one of the things that kind of got me back on the pathway

00:37:02.420 of faith is, by your fruits, you shall know them. And what are the fruits of a given person's faith?

00:37:08.200 The Bible makes a couple of, like, simultaneously absurd, but very compelling arguments to me about

00:37:16.280 human nature, which is that God chooses to reveal himself through people described in the Bible as

00:37:23.980 rapists, murderers, sinners of the very worst kind, but who find redemption through grace.

00:37:30.380 Now, again, if you're a skeptic, you might say, well, if this faith is true, why doesn't it just

00:37:37.840 automatically transform people? But if you're, I think, a student of human nature who is also

00:37:43.100 Christian, you would say, well, this is actually kind of like weirdly how it works, is that 0.90

00:37:47.780 transformation is bumpy. You take two steps forward and one step back. And I think that

00:37:52.360 one of the things that Protestants, particularly evangelicals, have said to me that I find quite

00:37:57.420 compelling is that for all of my, I think, true arguments about this institutional stability,

00:38:03.580 it's exactly what you said, that there is this way in which the American Catholic Church

00:38:08.960 has become quite assimilated into secular culture? And is that the best fruit? And my argument would

00:38:16.620 be, my counter argument to that would be no, but that what we're really seeing is in some ways a

00:38:22.780 purification of both the Protestant and the Catholic churches, which is that the people

00:38:26.800 who are participating in the rich community life of each church are getting closer and closer to

00:38:32.860 God. And unfortunately, we just have a culture that has moved in a very secular direction.

00:38:37.920 Catholicism is not immune to that, but I do think that it is very much,

00:38:41.660 it is a ship in a very troubled water.

00:38:45.140 Yeah.

00:38:45.900 You know, I have no problem with disagreeing with the Pope publicly.

00:38:49.460 We have been doing that for 500 years.

00:38:51.480 Most of my Catholic friends, they might privately disagree, but they won't publicly.

00:38:55.300 But you did on Acts.

00:38:56.820 You kind of called out the Pope and you just said, hey, stay in your lane

00:39:00.100 when he's talking about things like immigration.

00:39:02.580 So what went into that decision to say something?

00:39:05.500 Well, I don't know.

00:39:06.200 So I would actually, I got to push back a little bit,

00:39:08.980 because I would never say to the Pope, stay in your lane.

00:39:11.280 I definitely don't.

00:39:12.600 Is that a wrong paraphrasing?

00:39:14.280 What I have said is that we each have different roles.

00:39:16.620 The Vice President, the President, and the Holy Father.

00:39:19.480 We each have three very distinctive roles.

00:39:22.780 But what I was pushing back against is,

00:39:25.300 some people will say the Pope should stay out of politics.

00:39:27.420 I don't believe that, actually.

00:39:28.600 I think it's very important for Christian leaders,

00:39:30.500 whether they're Southern Baptist ministers or the Pope in Rome,

00:39:33.480 have an obligation to speak about the moral issues of the day.

00:39:37.480 I understand the temptation, but you can't be totally disengaged from politics if you're

00:39:42.600 actually honestly preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

00:39:45.600 What I would say is that the question of how to apply pragmatic—the question of how to

00:39:53.700 apply moral judgments, Christian principles in the messy real-world context of American

00:39:59.860 politics is fundamentally something that god gives to the president and not to the pope and so i

00:40:06.820 wouldn't say the pope should never talk about politics but i do think they have different roles

00:40:10.640 bishop robert barrett actually had a very good ex post about this where he said while the pope

00:40:16.360 absolutely should and must speak about how you apply moral issues to politics the catechism of

00:40:23.260 the church also very says that the president is ultimately the one who has to make these decisions

00:40:27.360 And again, I think so long as the debate isn't in bad faith, the administration can learn a lot from the Pope, and that debate and that conversation is quite valuable.

00:40:40.300 Like conservative Catholics really, let me give you another example, really disliked Pope Francis, or I'm overstating it.

00:40:46.420 Some segments of conservative Catholics had very strong disagreements with Pope Francis.

00:40:50.840 I found that even when I was frustrated by something that Pope Francis would say, I would

00:40:55.920 learn something from it. And the debate that it kicked off would actually lead to greater

00:41:01.060 understanding. And I think that was actually part of what he was doing. This is my charitable spin

00:41:06.420 on this, is that Pope Francis really liked to create these debates in the church because he

00:41:12.760 thought they were valuable. And so sometimes people would say, I can't believe he said that

00:41:16.500 some italian newspaper and i would always say well the fact that we're talking about what the gospel

00:41:21.260 means in this very present day context isn't that a good thing yeah well protestants certainly agree

00:41:28.340 with that that debates and divisions can actually be clarifying and are sometimes worth it if it

00:41:32.580 leads us to the truth and i'm glad you did distinguish that because certainly i'm sure

00:41:36.980 that you would say the pope should be speaking up about the sanctity of life and things like that

00:41:40.860 And so it's just the civic versus church authority that God has ordained that you were kind of delineating there.

00:41:49.300 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:41:50.320 And also that, you know, the Pope is going to have an opinion on how do you balance a nation's duty to secure its own borders with the Christian duty of charity to all people?

00:42:03.040 Yeah.

00:42:03.280 Okay?

00:42:03.940 Like, that's not an easy question.

00:42:05.200 I don't want the Pope to be silent on that matter, but fundamentally the person who's

00:42:09.160 charged with enforcing the laws is allowed to have a different opinion from the ecclesiastical

00:42:15.700 authorities.

00:42:16.280 If you go to the 2000 years of America's church, whether it's Protestant or Catholic, there

00:42:20.840 is a rich tradition of political leaders disagreeing with religious leaders on these matters.

00:42:28.380 I think the wrong way to do it is to say, I'm going to ignore him because he's a preacher

00:42:34.140 or he's the Pope and I'm a politician.

00:42:37.380 I don't think that's the right way.

00:42:38.920 But I think so long if it's done

00:42:40.300 in a spirit of dialogue and understanding,

00:42:41.900 it actually can illuminate things

00:42:43.840 even when there is disagreement.

00:42:45.680 Yeah.

00:42:46.060 Another disagreement that we have on the right

00:42:48.200 that's especially erupted after Charlie was assassinated

00:42:52.060 is about Israel's role in American politics

00:42:55.020 and the argument over whether or not

00:42:56.900 they have an outsized influence here in the US.

00:43:00.800 And so what is your take on that?

00:43:02.020 Do you believe that Israel has an outsized influence

00:43:03.980 in the US? Well, I certainly think that Israel, like a lot of other countries, tries to influence

00:43:07.920 American politics. I sort of take that as a given. And what I think is that American leaders have to

00:43:14.460 be very careful that when we pursue something, we're doing it for America's best interest and

00:43:19.840 not for any other country's best interest. And if you go back, let's say to World War II,

00:43:24.540 there were these extraordinarily strong disagreements between General Eisenhower

00:43:29.280 and General Montgomery about military strategy, those disagreements are a natural part of having

00:43:35.660 a partner. And I do think that sometimes, like, the opinion that I disagree with is, on the one

00:43:42.640 hand, people will say that America's interests are always aligned with Israel's interests. It's just 0.56

00:43:47.300 not true. And I see this every day and the conversations that we have and the back and

00:43:51.760 forth. And obviously, the president has been very clear. He's got some disagreements with

00:43:55.500 Bibi Netanyahu about how precisely to bring the Iran war to a close. And then I think there are

00:44:00.500 some people who will say that Israel's interests are never aligned with America's, and I think

00:44:04.060 that's also not true. I think the reality is they're a good partner in the same way that the

00:44:08.140 United Kingdom or France are good partners. That doesn't mean that we're always going to have

00:44:13.160 aligned interests. And another thing I think is that there is, look, sometimes criticism of Israel

00:44:21.080 bleeds into Jew hate. It just does. Charlie was very aware of this. By the way, Charlie was very 0.76

00:44:26.660 worried about Israeli influence in American politics. He also really disliked anti-Semitism.

00:44:32.800 But in the same way that sometimes criticism of the Israeli government can be expressed in a way

00:44:38.960 that's anti-Semitic, it's just not the case that every criticism of Bibi Netanyahu's policy

00:44:44.900 decisions leads to anti-Semitism or is anti-Semitic. And so I do think that sometimes advocates of

00:44:53.080 Israel make, or pro-Israel people in the United States, make two critical mistakes. On the one

00:44:59.780 hand is not delineating between America's interests and Israeli interests, because they're not always

00:45:04.580 the same. But the second is always conflating criticism of a particular government with Jew

00:45:12.600 hatred. Because if everything is Jew hatred, then nothing is Jew hatred. I actually think 0.65

00:45:16.980 Jew hatred is very bad, which is why I think we have to be very careful about not calling every

00:45:21.480 it's kind of like how progressives for 20 years called everything racist. And if everything's

00:45:26.700 racism, nothing is racism. And we have to be very careful not to, you know, in order to serve a

00:45:33.780 certain foreign policy objective, try to criticize somebody as anti-Semitic when they're just not. 0.96

00:45:38.460 Yeah, I completely agree with all that. And I think that distinction is important. However, 0.96

00:45:42.420 from my vantage point it seems to me like the bigger problem is I won't even I don't know

00:45:49.420 exactly how I would describe it in a way that would be charitable but almost like Israel

00:45:53.880 derangement syndrome going beyond okay yeah we don't like Israeli policies we don't think that 0.73

00:45:59.540 we should put the priorities of any country first completely agree with that that's fine

00:46:03.880 but the obsession that some people have I would say on the right with blaming all of their problems

00:46:11.580 on Israel, all of their disagreements with Trump on some secret Israeli influence. And I'm not

00:46:17.480 saying all of those people hate every Jewish person, but it seems to get there really fast.

00:46:22.520 I see that more prominently on the right than I see true Israel first kind of obsession that you

00:46:29.660 seem to be describing. So I see both and I think both are bad. And, you know, I'm probably 0.93

00:46:35.500 particularly sensitive to the first thing because of the last two days I've been defending the

00:46:39.220 president's decision to end the iran deal and i find often the arguments are well israel doesn't

00:46:45.600 think this is good therefore it's bad and my reaction is israel's opinions matter but

00:46:51.740 fundamentally they are separate but you're right i mean there there are certainly people who take

00:46:55.940 every frustration with the trump administration every policy disagreement becomes because of

00:47:01.200 israel and and that is absolutely wrong and again i think that that is one of those things that can

00:47:05.880 bleed into some very dark places. So I think that it's upon us as leaders, as public commentators,

00:47:11.920 just try to be very rational about this, to try to distinguish what is legitimate disagreement

00:47:17.720 from ethnic hatred. And you just got to be careful about it. But I actually think both

00:47:23.900 the Trump administration, but the right generally is in a place of figuring this stuff out. Any

00:47:30.000 debate, every debate has excesses on either side, but that's part of the process of figuring this

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00:48:35.640 geopolitics is not my main beat so i think i have a very normal mom perspective of what's going on

00:48:46.920 in iran and that is i don't like war i don't like casualties i don't want conflict if it is

00:48:53.500 not absolutely necessary. I also know that sometimes it is necessary. There is good versus

00:48:58.880 evil in the world and America has a role in that battle. And then at the same time, I don't want

00:49:04.300 my kids to have to worry about a terroristic regime in Iran. And so I've seen a lot of anger

00:49:09.620 about the deal that's going on and you're kind of right in the center of that. And so tell us what

00:49:15.580 you think is maybe the biggest misconception of this deal that you're seeing online and what would

00:49:20.720 you want the average mom to know? I think the biggest misconception by far is this idea that

00:49:26.720 the deal has all these benefits to Iran. And the underlying way that it's structured is that they

00:49:32.380 don't get any of the benefits, not a single thing, unless they perform a change in behavior, right?

00:49:38.880 If you step back before the deal, Iran's military is destroyed. Their ability to threaten their 0.96

00:49:46.280 neighbors has largely been decimated, their nuclear program is gone. Like their ability to 0.92

00:49:51.000 enrich uranium, their ability to rebuild that nuclear program is gone. And we would see it if

00:49:55.500 they tried to rebuild and their economy is in shambles. That is true, regardless of whether

00:50:01.260 this deal is signed or not. Okay. So now you get to the deal and you say, given that the Iranians

00:50:08.100 are in a tough spot and given that many people within the regime are saying, well, maybe we'd

00:50:14.180 like to change our relationship with the United States compared to what it's been for 47 years.

00:50:17.900 And you do still have terrorist elements within the regime, but you also have pragmatic elements

00:50:22.480 within the regime who are actually affirmatively trying to have a better relationship with the

00:50:26.620 United States. What the deal does is, on the one hand, open the Strait of Hormuz and lock in some

00:50:32.920 of our wins on the nuclear program. But on the other hand, create this option for the Iranians. 0.97

00:50:39.260 Option A is you continue to behave like a terrorist regime, in which case you get quite 0.96

00:50:43.800 Literally nothing. Option B is you behave like a normal regime and the United States would 0.60

00:50:49.340 actually, for example, let the Qataris or the Emiratis invest in your country if that's what

00:50:55.340 they wanted to do. So the biggest misconception is that the investment is going to happen without

00:51:02.220 any of the changes in behavior. By the way, it's not our money. So like the idea that the Emiratis

00:51:08.000 are going to invest a billion dollars to build a power plant in Iran if the Iranians haven't 0.93

00:51:13.040 change their behavior, it's just absurd. They're not going to do it. We're not going to allow it. 1.00

00:51:18.480 But that's what I think that that is the misconception that all these benefits flow

00:51:23.100 to Iran, when quite literally nothing flows to Iran, unless they change what they're doing.

00:51:28.260 And for those who don't know, opening the Strait of Hormuz is important to us because?

00:51:32.560 So opening the Strait of Hormuz is why oil prices went from a high of $126 down to about $75 today.

00:51:41.180 And they're also why the price of gas, as we speak, for the first time is under $4 since March, despite going up to an average of about $4.60. 0.97

00:51:50.660 Because the one leverage point the Iranians tried to play was to close down. 0.94

00:51:56.860 It's like a choke point for oil. 0.97

00:51:58.880 And so oil couldn't get out of the Gulf.

00:52:01.120 That raised the price of oil, which raised the price of a lot of energy.

00:52:04.100 And what the United States has been able to do successfully, which is why those prices have started to come down, is get a lot of oil out of the Gulf by protecting the ships that we're moving.

00:52:15.120 But long term, we don't want to have a military presence that protects all of these ships that are moving. 0.99

00:52:20.480 We just want the Iranians to behave like a normal country and stop shooting at those ships. 0.98

00:52:24.480 By the way, there were critics of the deal who said the Iranians would never allow the straits to be open toll free. 0.97

00:52:31.880 For the past two days, the Iranians have shot at zero ships.

00:52:35.960 Yesterday, we got more oil out of the Strait of Hormuz than we have at any point since

00:52:39.840 the beginning of the conflict, and not a single one of those ships paid a toll.

00:52:43.180 So already the critics of the deal are being proven wrong in some of what they're saying

00:52:48.120 that the Iranians have gotten, but also what the United States has gotten.

00:52:51.820 Yeah.

00:52:52.320 One thing I love about the Trump administration and the reason that I voted for him three

00:52:57.100 times is that even if he is not as strong as I am personally when it comes to the issue,

00:53:01.880 of abortion. Policy-wise, he has been very good. There have been some really big wins. Even

00:53:06.740 recently, I saw the administration, I think it was designated embryos as people, which they are,

00:53:12.820 made in the image of God, and therefore their rights matter. And I thought that was a really,

00:53:16.520 really cool and important step. A lot of pro-lifers, myself included, are concerned about

00:53:21.640 mifepristone continuing to circulate. Most abortions now are done via abortion pill.

00:53:27.620 the FDA under Trump hasn't reversed the Biden policy about mail order abortions and mifepristone

00:53:33.400 circulating. So can you tell us the latest on that front and if that's going to change?

00:53:38.140 So the FDA has put this under review and we're well under review. I think the Wall Street Journal

00:53:43.860 reported that it had just started. It's actually been under review for a little while. And of

00:53:47.920 course, I'm not going to prejudge the investigation and I'm not going to tell anybody exactly what it

00:53:52.800 will find because I don't know what it will find. We're trying to be led by the science and that's

00:53:56.980 also how you make sure this stuff is defensible once it will inevitably be challenged in court.

00:54:02.180 And number two, that, you know, there are so many wins, not just in designating embryos as worthy

00:54:07.120 of protection, but all of the foreign funding of abortion that grew up in the wake of the Biden

00:54:12.980 administration, that was completely stopped. We expanded the Mexico City policy, which cut down

00:54:19.060 on the amount of foreign funding going to abortion services overseas. Why are American tax dollars

00:54:24.480 funding abortions in other countries. It's crazy. But also the one big beautiful bill mostly was a

00:54:31.280 tax cut legislation for working families. We're obviously very proud of it, but it also meant that

00:54:35.920 abortion providers would not get tax money in the United States of America either. So I think that

00:54:41.460 there are a lot of wins to hang our hat on. What I would say generally to the pro-life community,

00:54:45.660 because I am very pro-life, I care a lot about this issue, is I learned a lot about the politics

00:54:50.920 of it. And I believe it was the 2023 Ohio referendum on the abortion issue, which became,

00:54:57.980 I think, one of the biggest defeats for the pro-life community in the last few years. And so

00:55:02.160 the basic setup was you had a very, what I would call a radical pro-abortion amendment set against

00:55:10.060 the state of Ohio's heartbeat law. And in Ohio, which is right of center, it's not Alabama,

00:55:15.580 but it's certainly right of center. We lost that debate 60-40. And I learned a lot in that process.

00:55:22.720 I think the number one thing that I learned is that we in the pro-life community, we just have

00:55:26.440 to get better at politics and better at persuading people. I was talking to a priest friend of mine

00:55:30.540 who put it to me in a very interesting way, and this is kind of how I think about it.

00:55:35.120 And he said, so if you had an opportunity to pass a really pro-life piece of legislation,

00:55:41.040 This is when I was in the Senate, but it would mean the end of your political career.

00:55:44.820 What would you do?

00:55:46.220 And I said, well, I think the answer is you got to do that, right?

00:55:49.640 That's the sort of thing you have to do.

00:55:51.560 And he said, okay, that's the right answer.

00:55:53.800 He said, what if you got an opportunity to pass a really pro-life piece of legislation

00:55:57.300 and it was the end of your political career and one week later it was overturned and a

00:56:02.220 more radical piece of legislation in the wrong direction became the law of the land.

00:56:06.260 And I was like, well, that would be a bad idea, right?

00:56:08.600 and that was sort of his counsel to me was we cannot be immune you know i i i i hear from sort

00:56:15.860 of the abortion abolition movement all the time and my response to them is you we can't be immune

00:56:22.020 to the realities of modern politics and i worry sometimes that we have lost the persuasion battle

00:56:31.240 and that's what really has to change for the pro-life community to win big in the future

00:56:35.260 Yeah. A couple things about abolitionism, just to steel man their argument, it's that, look, if people are people, no matter how small, if embryos are made in the image of God, then their rights matter and they should have equal rights to people outside of the womb. That should be manifested in the law.

00:56:52.160 I imagine you agree with that in principle, but maybe the how to get there is what you

00:56:56.920 maybe differ on.

00:56:59.360 And then when it comes to, yes, the politics of abortion and legislation and all of that,

00:57:03.920 but specifically when it comes to the circulation of the abortion pill, and I know you say that

00:57:08.360 it's under review, but this is a big concern.

00:57:11.260 Of course. 0.87

00:57:11.820 You know, women are dying, and of course, thousands and thousands of babies are dying.

00:57:15.780 And I think a lot of pro-lifers are like, okay, come on, we voted for y'all.

00:57:20.800 What's the holdup?

00:57:21.760 this was a Biden-era terrible decision to allow these mail-order abortions. Why is this not

00:57:28.180 happening more quickly? Yeah, and I guess my response, again, is twofold. Well, first of all,

00:57:32.920 threefold, because I want to respond to the steel man on the abortion abolition argument.

00:57:37.800 You know, who ultimately freed the slaves? Was it William Lloyd Garrison or was it Abraham Lincoln?

00:57:42.760 It was the pragmatic guy who was working within the confines of the system. And I think that's

00:57:48.680 fundamentally how we have to think about this, is that we have to be pragmatic, we have to win

00:57:52.520 the argument, and then we can save the lives of many unborn kids. But we've already saved the

00:57:57.560 lives, in my view, of many unborn kids, both here at home and also internationally, by a number of

00:58:02.360 policies that we've made. And that's the second point, is that, you know, even if you're frustrated,

00:58:06.900 I'm not saying we're going to get everything right, or that I'm going to persuade everybody

00:58:09.640 on every point, but I think it's important to sort of bank the wins and to ask ourselves as

00:58:15.200 pro-lifers, are these wins valuable and meaningful? I think the answer is yes. That doesn't mean you're

00:58:21.660 not going to push for more. And that leads me to the third point, which is, you know, we have to

00:58:27.080 be driven by the legal and regulatory process here. And so what we've done is we have started

00:58:33.100 the review, that review is underway, and it'll actually be very bad for that process for me to

00:58:38.980 prejudge it based on scientific or moral or any other grounds. We got to let that review take

00:58:44.100 shape for in order for it to lead to the right outcome. And I will say just to kind of pat pro

00:58:50.180 lifers on the back is that it took half a century, but it was a lot of effective persuasion, a lot of

00:58:55.440 it unseen and unsung, a lot of it happening in the private realm, but that ultimately overturned

00:59:00.400 Roe v. Wade and allowed for the laws that can protect those unborn children. That's right. And

00:59:04.580 so but we do live in a different era that may require different kinds of politics and different

00:59:09.100 kinds of persuasion. That's right.

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01:00:21.100 joincrowdhealth.com, code Allie. You know, I go back to this because I was a big fan of Justice

01:00:29.880 Antonin Scalia, and he obviously thought that, you know, the Roe versus Wade, the original decision

01:00:34.320 was awful. And if you read the arguments that we were making, and arguments that ultimately were

01:00:40.200 very effective, they were very legal arguments. They were very rational arguments. They were,

01:00:45.580 even if you are personally pro-choice, or even if you are personally pro-abortion,

01:00:50.240 here are all of the legal things that are wrong with this particular opinion.

01:00:54.220 And again, that was the argument that had to be made. But there's a totally different argument

01:00:58.760 that is much more intuitive. And I'm sure you know women, I certainly know, especially when I was

01:01:06.340 younger, a lot of women who had abortions. And I think one of the things that I really disagree

01:01:12.260 with the pro-abortion community on, obviously I disagree with them a lot on, but is this idea

01:01:16.820 that abortion is this decision that is like liberating or is made in the context of maximal

01:01:23.860 freedom. And in reality, most of the women that I know who had abortions, they chose it because

01:01:28.920 they feel like there was no other option, right? There was this sense of like, oh, if I have a

01:01:33.380 baby, I'm going to be destitute. My family's going to disown me and my boyfriend or my husband's

01:01:39.000 going to leave me. And I think there's like a totally different type of persuasion we have to

01:01:45.700 make for the democratic political argument than for the legal argument, which was ultimately very

01:01:52.300 effective yeah and it will just again to shout out gosh christian pro-lifers do such a good job

01:01:57.680 through pregnancy centers yes they do and offering that support and the alternatives

01:02:01.820 to those women the trump administration has supported those pregnancy centers democrats

01:02:06.280 have not that's another thing we're very proud of yes and i and as you i mean i'm sure i've been

01:02:10.880 to a lot of these christian pregnancy centers in ohio they are amazing people and i really do think

01:02:17.000 that that heart, while it's there in the communities and it's something that young

01:02:23.000 women see and they're providing diapers and food and counseling and all these support services,

01:02:27.820 it's unbelievable. I don't know that that message, and partially this is on people like me,

01:02:32.780 I don't know that that message about the heart of the pro-life community reaches the national

01:02:37.480 political discourse as much as it should, because that is how we ultimately win the

01:02:41.320 persuasion argument. People have to see the heart and women have to think that choosing life is not

01:02:47.560 the end, but it's the beginning of something very profound. Yeah. And it's an uphill climb,

01:02:52.960 as you know, to get any kind of pro-life or non-progressive argument out there.

01:02:58.320 And that's why it actually is really incredible that we have people in the White House

01:03:02.580 to represent that. And it's incredible that you guys won, considering how strong the pro-abortion

01:03:07.220 lobby is. It does go to show that this is a very important issue and a big coalition

01:03:12.580 on the rights, that we're like, we're going to get people in there who are

01:03:16.680 not as rabidly pro-abortion as Kamala Harris. Of course.

01:03:21.500 There's a lot of chaos going on in the world. You're in the center of some of that. And some

01:03:26.300 people are scared to have children. They're worried about the future. But you just wrote a

01:03:31.560 about your faith and hope. So why should people have hope? Well, because Jesus Christ is the Son

01:03:41.180 of God. He came down from heaven and is ultimately the author of history. And one of the things that

01:03:48.920 I just think that if you actually believe that, if you actually believe that God himself became man

01:03:54.120 and died to give grace to human beings, you just have to have hope. You don't always have to be

01:04:00.580 happy, right? Sometimes you can be very depressed and still be hopeful. But I do think that I just

01:04:07.200 fundamentally, because I believe that God is the author of history, things are going to work out.

01:04:12.500 By the way, they may work out long after I'm gone. And I think about this all the time. I mean,

01:04:19.080 Charlie, I probably watched this video a dozen times, and it's heartbreaking, but it's the night

01:04:24.220 of the election. He's live on air, and you see this sort of reaction in his face when we won,

01:04:29.620 right and then eight months later nine months later he's dead and i i try to remind myself

01:04:37.120 that for every pro-life activist who phone banked for republicans and called and worked largely her

01:04:45.720 butt off because it was the moms more than the dads a lot of them never lived to see some of 0.88

01:04:51.560 the big pro-life victories of the last 10 years and a lot of people who worked for anything never

01:04:58.120 saw the outcome. And I write about this in the book that I try to put myself in the perspective

01:05:04.000 of, you know, obviously Catholics think that St. Peter is the founder of the church, but everybody

01:05:09.100 agrees he's one of the most important apostles in the early church. Everything that we believe

01:05:14.960 historically is that he was crucified upside down. So he's the leader of a fledgling church

01:05:21.420 in a city with a hostile emperor. He is literally tortured to death. And with his dying breath,

01:05:29.700 I think that he had to have known that God will triumph in the end. And ultimately,

01:05:35.820 if you go to anywhere in Europe right now, you see the signs of that triumph. Anywhere in the

01:05:41.520 United States, anywhere in South America, you see the signs of that triumph, that the church

01:05:46.140 that God created is still preaching the gospel, despite the fact that many of its early members

01:05:53.440 were quite literally tortured to death. So how can you not have hope if that's the story?

01:05:58.740 It's not the hope that you're going to see temporal victory in this life. It's the hope

01:06:03.100 that God is in control. You have a role to play, work as hard as you can in that role,

01:06:07.580 and trust in God. And that's the way that I try to do it.

01:06:10.420 Amen. Mr. Vice President, thank you so much.

01:06:12.620 Good to see you, Allie.

01:06:16.140 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - June 19, 2026

Ep 1362 ｜ VP JD Vance on Israel, Catholics vs. Evangelicals & Fatherhood

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