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The Opinions
‘A Deeply Anxious Personality’: Three Opinion Writers on JD Vance’s New Book
00:39:39
In JD Vance’s second memoir, “Communion,” the vice president reveals himself to be a deeply anxious person searching for certainty, the Opinion national politics correspondent Michelle Cottle argues. In this conversation with the contributor E.J. Dionne Jr. and the columnist Carlos Lozada, the three discuss the ways in which Vance is courting potential constituencies and positioning himself as the next Republican presidential nominee.
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host (Ad Reader)
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E.J. Dionne
he really has become Catholic. I happen to like the line, but I found liberation in guilt. And so I said, hey, he's the real deal.
- [00:43]
Carlos Lozada
Welcome, welcome, J.D.
- [00:44]
E.J. Dionne
yeah, right.
- [00:50]
Michelle Cottle
I'm Michelle Cottle. I cover national politics for New York Times Opinion. And this week I am here with two of my favorite favorite people, columnist Carlos Lozada and contributing writer E.J. deonne. Guys, it is so fantastic to see you.
- [01:04]
E.J. Dionne
Thank you.
- [01:05]
Carlos Lozada
Likewise. Good to be here.
- [01:06]
E.J. Dionne
I bet you say that to all your favorite people.
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Michelle Cottle
I cannot confirm nor deny it.
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Carlos Lozada
How many favorites can you really have?
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Michelle Cottle
I'm not taking your abuse. I'm not. I take it all back. I hate you both. But while I hate you both, I am extremely excited to talk to you guys this week because we're gonna dig in to Vice President J.D. vance's new memoir, Communion. It's all about Vance's faith journey, how he grew up evangelical, he lost his religion, eventually came around and embraced Catholicism. So we're gonna talk about the book. We're gonna talk about his relationship to faith and what all of it reveals about the man who may be the future of the MAGA movement. But first, I feel like we should do a little grounding. So I want us to go back 10 years to 2016, when Vance's hillbilly elegy was published. So at the time, he was a young graduate from Yale Law School, he was working for venture capitalist Peter Thiel. And the book, which told the story of his extremely rocky upbringing, was welcomed as something of like the Rosetta Stone for explaining to blue state Americans in particular, the class dynamics of the emerging Trump era. So I want from each of you to just kind of give me your thumbnail impression of Vance at that time based on that book.
- [02:29]
Carlos Lozada
So I'd never heard of J.D. vance before. Hillbilly elegy. I'm assuming that was the case for a lot of people. And so my entire sort of view of him was mediated through the book. He seemed like a thoughtful person. He's A good writer. This Hillbilly Elegy is a much better written book than Communion, and he was trying to give flesh to those debates over clash and culture and economics that were emerging around the 2016 election. It was a Trump book that never really mentioned Donald Trump. My friend Jennifer Sr. Who was at the time a book critic at the New York Times, called the book a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election. And I think Vance fulfilled that role Very well.
- [03:12]
Michelle Cottle
E.J.
- [03:13]
E.J. Dionne
i think that there are two things about this book that relate to that one. One, clearly, this is the second book in a contract or was originally envisioned as the follow up to a very successful book, because he gives it away in the book where he says, you know, this original manuscript was done a long time ago. And I think what that does is two things. One, I think he's trying to clean up some of the impressions left by the first book. He's kind of kinder to his family, kinder to everybody here, because he got some real criticism for how he treated Appalachia in that book. And secondly, he decided not to publish whatever he wrote in that first draft because he then suddenly became a senator and the vice presidential nominee and vice president. So this book has a feeling of several books at once. The sequel to Hillbilly Elegy, the story of his conversion to Catholicism, and then a lot of political stuff about how to understand him. So I think at times, you could see the seams of these three or four projects as you read the book.
- [04:27]
Michelle Cottle
Oh, definitely. It has a cobbled together feel. But, Carlos, how do you think this new book kind of fits into or builds on the story he's been telling about himself?
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Carlos Lozada
Yeah, I mean, everything with J.D. vance is about transformations, right? It's about journeys that he's taking from one version of himself to another, you know, in Hillbilly Elegy. Well, first it's a story of his ancestors moving from, you know, the mountains of Kentucky to, you know, southwest Ohio, where he had a chaotic, kind of abusive childhood. He makes it to the Marines, then to Ohio State, then Yale Law. Right. And kind of like adapts and becomes a different person at each step. Communion, which is published almost exactly ten years after. Hillbilly Elegy is about a different passage. It's about his move from his early Christianity to atheism to Catholicism. So much so that, you know, he is even now engaging in, you know, political and doctrinal battles with the Pope. You know, it's not bad for someone who was baptized less than seven years ago. It's almost like he's filling in another side of the story that is happening at the same time as the. The action in Hillbilly Elegy, you know, and in fact, as EJ Said, he started writing this book right after finishing that first one, by the way.
- [05:50]
E.J. Dionne
It's funny that he has gotten into that fight with the Pope. At one point, he has a sentence. My basic view is that too many American Catholics treat the Pope as a political figure and should instead keep a more respectful distance from Vatican politics. And I do think this book is going to be excavated quite a bit for sentences like that, that it would at least seem to me contradict some of his other behavior.
- [06:19]
Michelle Cottle
Yeah, I think if we're looking for consistency or hypocrisy or, you know, there's a lot to get into there. But as far as both of you have mentioned that he spent a lot of time in Hillbilly Elegy, disparaging his background, his family, the culture he was raised in. And this is a much more conciliatory, almost apologetic tone. So what is your read on that? Is this some epiphany he's had? Is. Is this more cynical kind of. Carlos, you first.
- [06:51]
Carlos Lozada
I mean, you know, I. I think people do evolve over time, especially, you know, if the first throughout. If you're. If you're sort of prominent or important or interesting enough to write multiple memoirs. Hillbilly Elegy was, you're right, very disparaging, I thought. I thought at the time, and rereading it now of, of the world that he grew up in. Right. He, you know, he talks about the hub of misery that he experienced in the 80s and the 90s and how it was almost always the fault of those who were suffering it. And he blamed the culture, Right. He didn't blame, you know, big amorphous political or economic forces. It's very much a personal responsibility kind of book. Whereas in Communion, he is far more understanding. His. His. His grandmother, his mama looms very large in both books. And the first book, she, you know, he quotes her as saying, you know, never be like those effing losers who think the deck is stacked against them. In the second book, she's kind of a softer presence, right. He says she's the woman whose life has taught me the most about Christian love and virtue. Right. She's still intense, but a little bit less so. Communion is less about the dysfunction of his early life and more about the faith that he drew out of that life. I'm not saying it's necessarily a contradiction. It's. It's a matter of, of emphasis, I think.
- [08:14]
E.J. Dionne
See, I think if he did a trilogy, the third volume would be How I Burned One Bridge After Another. Because I think one of the striking things about him is this constant reinvention, as Carlos suggested. So this book, he's trying to kind of put himself right with Appalachia after that insult. But then he goes and trashes his Yale Law School background. And again, some ironies in the book. He seems to trash the Ivy League's meritocratic structure, which is very odd for somebody who goes into law school, Silicon Valley, makes a lot of money, runs for Senate, gets elected vice president. That looks pretty meritocratic upward mobile to me. But he trashes Yale Law School and wants to make himself a kind of a paladin of the people. You're not sure where he is going to land. And that's why I suspect to the third volume of the trilogy, if it comes, we're gonna go to a different place again. I don't know if he's gonna become a Southern Baptist again, but it just does not seem stable to me.
- [09:20]
Michelle Cottle
Oh, I'd be there for that. You know, as a lapsed Southern Baptist. I mean, Communion does read to me like a book by a man who is a deeply anxious personality, carries serious real scars from his childhood, who doesn't really know who he is even now, and certainly doesn't know what he wants people to think about him. I mean, as you note, he denounces driverly elites, but he quotes them endlessly in this book and he surrounds himself with, with them in his life. He decries materialism, but he's a former venture capitalist. His mentor is Peter Thiel, and it's very hard to even get a handle on what he wants as a Catholic from the Church and specifically the Pope in terms of involvement with worldly issues. Sometimes he wants less, sometimes he wants more. His arguments about what he wants from society are also a little confused. I mean, he laments that work obsessed drivery dads don't get to spend time hanging out with their family anymore. Not to nitpick, but married dads today spend much more time taking care of their kids than they did in the good old days. And he laments that professional couples outsource chores that kind of keep you grounded in real life. Okay, great. But the chores he lists are pretty much all what used to be done by full time housewives, which is a model I'm betting wouldn't fly in his own house. So when you boil it all down, he basically strikes me as someone who grew up with tremendous instability and is constantly braced for disaster. And he thought that clawing his way out of poverty would solve not just his economic troubles, but like all of his existential angst. And then he wound up disappointed that the elite world he landed in had its own deep flaws, which, okay, duh. But the Catholic Church has given him structure and a sense of history and permanence. And now he seems upset that he can't find a way to map that onto the world outside of the church. And I think that's what I took away from this is just like somebody deeply still searching for something that's gonna make him feel better and just kind of desperate to take what has worked for him and map it onto everything.
- [11:50]
E.J. Dionne
Michelle, you know, I think there is a one sentence proof of this, or at least indicator of the truth of what you just said. The sentence that really hit me as the truest sentence in the book is when he writes, I am permanently terrified that things will unravel. And it's quite clear that in the sort of solidity, the long term existence of the Roman Catholic Church, the complexity of, but, you know, sort of clarity of its theology clearly appeals to him.
- [12:25]
Carlos Lozada
You know, ej, you mentioned the word unravel, right? That he's a man afraid of, of, you know, things coming apart, of things unraveling. And that's actually a point of consistency with, with Hillbilly Elegy. Right. I was, when you said it, I started looking through my copy and because it rang a bell, and he says that when he was about nine years old, things began to unravel at home. You know, that's, and that's, you know, those kind of things, Mark, you, you know, as a child, you know, from, from the very beginning, this is, this is a sort of a constant fear of his. I, I see what you mean, Michelle, you know, when you think that this is, you know, a book that's sort of scattered, that it's a guy who doesn't really know who he is, what he wants, I don't disagree with that. My interpretation would also be both a little kinder, but also just a bit more cynical at the same time. You know, I think this is a book by a guy who has deep political aspirations. By the way, I think the guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy also did. It's when I finished that book, at the time, I was like, this guy's gonna run for something, you know, But I think that what he's trying to do in Communion is to satisfy all sorts of different constituencies. And so what. What looks like, like, you know, sort of scattershot kind of all over the place is him thinking like, okay, this is for this group. This is for that group. And that's what politicians, especially sitting politicians do, you know, Hillbilly Elegy managed to have widespread bipartisan appeal. Right. Because it confirmed the elite liberal suspicions about the, you know, working class pathologies of, like, the Trump voters, but also affirmed the, you know, up by your bootstraps ethos of kind of conventional conservatism. Right. So there's something for everyone. Right. You know, here the something for everyone approach doesn't work as well because as EJ Said, it's multiple books at once. You know, like, here's some religion. Here's some stuff about why social media is bad. You know, here's why those people at Yale Law School were, were too ambitious. You know, people read Hillbilly Elegy in order to understand the, you know, the anger and the needs and the concerns of the white working class. Vance himself was just a vehicle for that understanding. He doesn't have that luxury anymore of that, of that distance. We read Communion to understand J.D. vance. Right. And so not only is the book not as good, but it's a. It's a harder sell.
- [14:57]
Michelle Cottle
So the part that I really found most intriguing was what he is kind of peddling it as, which is his journey, his faith journey. I, you know, I grew up, as noted, I grew up Southern Baptist. I, you know, kind of totally relate to his angsting about the Protestantism that he grew up in and all its emotion based, and the charisma, and so much of it being based on whether you're having a very intense personal experience with God. And I totally get how he wound up drawn to Catholicism. But I'm coming at this as someone obviously who grew up in the hellfire and brimstone side of this. I want the take of you guys. Cause you're cradle Catholics, right? Both of you.
- [15:44]
E.J. Dionne
Yep. I still am one. I want to say on that point, I said, I guess he really has become Catholic. I happen to like the line, but I found liberation in guilt. And so I said, hey, he's the real deal.
- [16:01]
Carlos Lozada
Welcome, welcome, J.D.
- [16:03]
Podcast Host (Ad Reader)
right.
- [16:03]
E.J. Dionne
Exactly. And, you know, and then he talks about guilt and forgiveness and the importance of forgiveness. That's all pretty conventional stuff. And, you know, there are moments when I'm reading this and I say, somebody with my views could have written some of this, which you know, surprises somebody like me with J.D. vance. His analysis of Rerum Novarum, the great social encyclical of Pope Leo xiii, which has inspired the current Pope Leo, written when industrialism was on the rise in defense of workers rights, in defense of a decent society where people earned a family wage. Those pages are pretty damn good as a description of all of that. The problem is he has a really tough time reconciling that with the policies of the Trump administration with some of the basic policies of the Republican Party. He picks a little bit here and a little bit there to say, see, we're consistent with this. But I think, again, it's this conflict between JD Vance, who really wants to be sometimes this sort of social justice Catholic, and at other times still needs to conform to his role in the Republican Party. Now, I suspect there is gonna be some knocks at some of what he says about business from our friends over at the Wall Street Journal. I'm very anxious to see how they deal with this part of J.D. vance. But he has a lot of trouble here. The other thing that strikes me, and Carlos and I talked a little bit about this before, it's not exactly Christian nationalism, but it may be Christian nationalism light, because he's obsessed with the collapse of Christian civilization, and he gets really angry at Europe for becoming more secular. There's a moment when he goes into an empty church in France. It turns out, I think there was somebody in there, as he notes, and he says this is what's happened to the faith of Europe. And he wants to say that Europe and the world have forgotten the virtue of Christian civilization. I guess, without wanting to say that actually coming to terms with modernity for Catholicism, for Christianity was actually a pretty good idea after the rise of Nazism and fascism. So it's, you know, on the one hand, there are moments where you say this looks authentic, but then you're still left with some real questions about how does he really reconcile his actual politics with what he's writing here.
- [18:48]
Michelle Cottle
Carl, do you want to get theological before we dig more into the politics of it all?
- [18:52]
Carlos Lozada
Sure, yeah. As a product of Catholic grade school, high school and college, Notre Dame guy, I'll go for it. Go Irish.
- [19:01]
Michelle Cottle
Bring it.
- [19:04]
Carlos Lozada
So, you know, the way in which he loses his initial faith early on is that he kind of gets bored by it. He says Christianity felt too wishy washy. You know, he became an atheist later in the, in. In the military and in college and, and, and certainly at, at, you know, aggressively secular Yale. But he really says that when he comes home From Iraq in 2006, he was no longer a, a, a Christian, right? And so what's interesting to me is that what draws him to Catholicism is not any kind of dark night of the soul, not, not some big transformation, though he does mention some, some moments. But it's really kind of the intellectual core of, of the faith. You know, he thinks and reasons his way to Catholicism. He's asking himself the big questions, you know, why does an all powerful and loving God, you know, create a world with so much, you know, suffering in it? He thinks of his own upbringing where he says he suffered the mortal sin of despair, right? And he finds some solace in Catholic thought and theology on this, right? He's drawn to the sacraments, right? To the ongoing practice of the faith, of grace as a process, as a ritual. But he really seems brought to this more by his mind than his heart. And he even says this, he says, I am most comfortable engaging with the intellectual elements of the faith. Right. He has to push himself to be more sacramental, not just intellectual, to pray, not just to reason. And, ej, I was wondering what you thought about this, because in my experience, it doesn't seem like an uncommon path for adult converts to Catholicism, right. Since they're not born in the faith, they're not sort of immediately steeped in the sacramental traditions. They often drawn to it by that very deep intellectual tradition of the church, which of course is very appealing. I'm not saying one is a better route than the, than the other, right. In my, in my father's house, there are many mansions, right? But do you, do you see this, you know, in sort of what appeals to converts to the faith?
- [21:15]
E.J. Dionne
I feel that very much. And I think that's a really good description of what he says here. And I think that sense of Catholicism as an intellectual faith really does appeal to a lot of people. And at this moment, I think the flow into the church is more from, if you will, conservative intellectuals, people who look at the long tradition of the church. It's really, I want the wisdom of the ancients and the early church. And so, yes, I think he's in that stream. And this is when I could sneak in my favorite theological innovation. That was in his book. This is early on. This is more of the hillbilly elegy part of the book. But you have the NRA theology of salvation here where he is arguing with his moma, his grandma, about, you know, if people die and are buried, how can they go to heaven? And then they go back and forth And JD finally comes up with this great metaphor. I quote from the book, he quoting himself. So the soul is like the bullet and the body is like the casing, and God shoots off the bullet to heaven, but the casing gets trapped here on earth. That was wonderful.
- [22:35]
Michelle Cottle
I think probably we had some sermons on that when I was growing up. I think what struck me, and obviously the intellectualism, seems to be more what he's comfortable with. He does mention that he grew up and learned to be very suspicious of emotion driven experiences, but also as the child of dysfunction and abuse and had alcoholism and substance abuse in his family. And he saw all this kind of complete chaos. It makes very clear that he likes the structure of Catholicism, which is just yards beyond what the Protestants can ever come up with. You know, like the ritual, that there is a program toward working toward having your soul be ready for heaven. It's not just that it happens in a flash. And I totally get this. I always found this a problem with the faith tradition that I grew up in. And it's just. But it clearly was an issue for him as well. And he talks about how it isn't just a one and done sort of thing. The Catholic Church kind of has a program and a ritual and some structure for everything. And for a kid who grew up with no structure and no sense of purpose, permanence, he clearly loves being able to track all of Catholic history going way, way, way, way, way, way back. But again, what disappoints me is that such a tiny fraction of what's in this book. And he has to, obviously, because he is a sitting vice president with very deep political ambitions, he has to make it political. So I want to talk about that and get a little bit granular for here. He delves into his political views, but it is kind of notable that beyond lightly touching on immigration and tariffs, he mostly avoids talking about his boss and kind of what he's been asked to do in his current position. What do you guys make of that? Carlos, you wanna start?
- [24:37]
E.J. Dionne
Sure.
- [24:38]
Carlos Lozada
I mean, he's in a tough spot with Trump. Right. Trump essentially put Vance in the pole position to assume leadership of MAGA down the road when he picked Vance for vp. So he's, you know, he's, he's bound to him in a way. But now that Trump's popularity has, you know, severely declined, Vance needs to find some ways to separate himself from the boss. Ironically, it sounds a lot like what happened to Kamala Harris. And that did not work out super, super well.
- [25:08]
Michelle Cottle
It's not a great job.
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Carlos Lozada
Except, of course, you know that Trump may not necessarily endorse Vance. Right. The way Biden endorsed Harris, he might let Rubio and Vance duke it out. We can get into that later. So Vance needs to be both a MAGA man in this book, but also a different man, his own man. And in this case, what he decides on is to be kind of a faith man. So almost it's like putting Trump and Pence in a blender, you know, which is not necessarily the most, like, appetizing concoction that you get at the end.
- [25:39]
E.J. Dionne
I was thinking Trump, Pence and Vance walk into a bar. How do we finish that? But the political part of the book I found actually most disturbing of all, and I agree with you utterly, Michelle. It's remarkable how little Trump is in the book. There's just enough Trump so he can get by to the next day and the next month and the next year and doesn't get attacked by Trump. But where he does go, actually Trumpy, is really disturbing. There's, you know, a moment of Putin apology in the book. He holds on to the idea, which is in a way already been discredited by the facts that Ukraine can't win this war. And he actually talks about an argument he has with someone where he's saying that Putin is actually popular in Russia. It's not just oppression. Every independent objective effort to measure Putin's popularity, he writes, had found high levels of support among rank and file Russians. Why does he want to still defend Putin in this book? I don't know. And then the last area where I think the politics is particularly disturbing and it's who he is, is in his defense of nativism, he sort of goes, he says, well, I'm not really nativist. We have a right to control immigration. But the sort of, the harshness, harsh moments in that party tries to say they're not harsh, but it's a very hard line. Look. So that is the clearest signaling to the old MAGA part of the party, which seems like his authentic view of the world. But I think political folks are gonna focus a lot on that and say, I guess this is who he is politically. Maybe that's the most authentic part of the book.
- [27:36]
Carlos Lozada
You know, one thing I found interesting is, you know, he semi quasi apologizes for the, for the childless cat lady's comment, but he doesn't apologize for the reading. The cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Right. You know, he.
- [27:54]
E.J. Dionne
Sorry, by the way.
- [27:55]
Carlos Lozada
Correct.
- [27:56]
E.J. Dionne
I mean, right, of course.
- [27:57]
Carlos Lozada
You know, the lie that Haitian immigrants are eating pets In. In Ohio. And why one and not the other? Right. Because childless Cat Ladies was all on him. Whereas just J.D. vance, the thing he said to Tucker Carlson in 2021, the lie about Haitian immigrants, Trump embraced that. Right. And so there's no way J.D. vance is going to set that aside in the same way that he tries to set aside the childless cat ladies.
- [28:26]
E.J. Dionne
And the lie about the Haitians fits in with his views on immigration. So he doesn't really wanna do that. But he can't afford to alienate women in large numbers, older women, women without children. So he's gotta kind of back away from that one for political reasons.
- [28:46]
Michelle Cottle
Yeah, I did find the approach to women in this book sort of fascinating. One area that I thought was particularly interesting was like his handling of his marriage. He's taken a lot of crit in office for not standing up for his wife. She's been criticized as overly ambitious. He goes out of his way in this book to say that Usha has actually never been the kind of ambitious he's criticizing and that he didn't love her at all for that. And he talks about his just complete dependence on her and how fantastic she is. And I'm sure, I have no doubt he loves his wife. I am not questioning whether they have a great marriage or not, but it is clear it is clearly also serving a political purpose in terms of trying to walk back some of his jerky bro reputation and his snottiness about women. Although he is a genuine natalist, he really, really wants everybody to go out there and have some babies. And no matter how hard he tries to soften the whole childless cat lady stuff or things like that, he can't help overstating his case. And it's just like, you see where he comes from politically and that he just, even when he's trying to soft pedal stuff and be gracious, he can't. So like at one point he's like, well, of course babies are downstream of romantic love. And a society without children is a society that, you know, loses that too or whatever. And I'm like, well, one, the idea that romantic love is the basis of marriage is a very modern one. So, you know, just like step back. And two, no, that's also not true. Now you can get into like the difference in how parents behave versus non parents and the family ties and stuff like that, but he's not content to do that.
- [30:45]
E.J. Dionne
Well, in fact, I think that is central to his argument. And I'm glad you brought up natalism. Cause that's a really another important theme of this book. And he links this so closely to Christianity and religion. In the book, he says, the more religious a country is, the better it fares in family formation. And then there's this really interesting sentence. Our abandonment of Christian culture has coincided with an apparent decline in our collective will to live. You know, because we're not having babies, we're not procreating, we're not creating the next generation. Now, I'm sure intellectuals and conservatives. Conservative intellectuals can argue about that, and they would probably agree with that. But that's a really remarkable statement for someone to make, and it shows. Again, I think this is central to who he is. He talks a lot about being a dad, and I think that feels authentic to me. I want to give him all that. He really seems to take joy in the idea that having children has kind of saved him from some of the instability of his earlier life. And, you know, maybe I found some of that a bit more convincing than the rest of the book. But again, it's very hard to read this book without thinking it's a construction of some kind. And which parts are mostly constructed and which parts are authentically him?
- [32:14]
Carlos Lozada
One of his. One of his great fears seems to be that he's somehow, you know, condemned or faded to pass along the instability that he experienced to his. To his children. That's. That's something that feels very, very genuine in the book. It's. It's. It's this really recurring concern he has. And, you know, one thing that feels a little. A little less genuine, sort of like in the category of kind of trying too hard, is, is when he, like, makes these, you know, big declarative statements about, like, what he thinks about, you know, the role of women in society, you know, and then he says, like, you know, speaking of being a dad and, you know, and a husband, he's like, well, as it happens, I do think husbands ought to share the burdens of household labor with their wives. You know, it's. It's the right thing to do, right? And it's like he wants a medal for that. You know, it's just a little. A little odd. The last thing I'll bring up on the. On the cat ladies thing, not to obsess over it, but, like, it's interesting to me. No, it's interesting to me that he brings it up here again, like, five years after saying it, right? Like, when he first did it, it was back in 2021, and, you know, he said, you know, we're effectively run in this country via The Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they've made. So they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. Right? Then later, when he's running for vice president, he goes on Meet the Press, talks to Kristen Welker, and he tries to say that it was a joke, right? That I was just being sarcastic, you know, but actually, if you continue with the original quote, you know, he's making a very specific, you know, substantive point. Right. He's not. It's not sarcasm. It's not funny. It's not just owning the libs to own the libs. He's saying that, you know, it's just a basic fact. Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg. Pete Buttigieg, who has children, by the way. AOC the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. How does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it? Right. That's how it connects to the natalism argument, that somehow, you know, if you have children, then you actually really care about America, and therefore, you. You have more of a stake in the future of the country, and we should pay attention to you more than if you don't. Now, in this book, you know, it's clear that he. He knows this thing continues to haunt him, right? Because he brings it up again, and he doesn't really say he's sorry, but he goes a little bit more in the direction of regret. When he spoke to Kristen Welker, he said, you know, I regret that people took it the wrong way, that Democrats lied about it, kind of apology.
- [34:50]
Michelle Cottle
I'm sorry that you got your feelings hurt by me being a jerk.
- [34:53]
E.J. Dionne
Yeah, the words.
- [34:54]
Carlos Lozada
But, but, but here he actually says, look, this was an error. It was a failure. It was boneheaded. Right. It just. Which to me, just suggests that he realizes he's going to continue having a problem with female voters, and that could really be a problem for him.
- [35:08]
E.J. Dionne
There's one other tension here that really came out at the end of the book. He was very close to Charlie Kirk, and that seems like a real relationship. And this is a book about Catholicism. Charlie Kirk is not a Catholic, although I am told that Charlie Kirk had a kind of Catholic side and understood J.D. vance's attraction to Catholicism. But. But he wants to tell Evangelicals, even though I am a Catholic, I am still connected to you, because guess what? Baptists and other evangelicals are an important part of the constituency he would need to put together. And so again, there is this kind of I say this and I believe this, but don't worry, I'm also this other thing too.
- [36:03]
Carlos Lozada
Maybe picking a fight with the Pope helps in that regard too.
- [36:06]
E.J. Dionne
Yeah, maybe.
- [36:07]
Michelle Cottle
Why he gotta be that? Don't pick up a fight with a Pope. I mean, I do think you're right. He's signaling. I think this whole book is signaling to religious conservatives that I know you may be questioning where I've wound up and some of the things I've done, but I really am one of you. Even when this administration, you know, as it has disappointed a lot of religious conservatives of late on the pro life issue, I think he is trying to create some space and reassert himself. As I think Carlos just said, he's the faith man. But looking ahead, Vance is gonna have a lot of competition for that MAGA mantle and the Republican nomination. He's gonna have a lot of his colleagues coming for him. And in a recent New Yorker cover, it featured a UFC cage match fight between him and Marco Rub with President Trump kind of dozing in the audience, which seems about right. So if Rubio is his biggest rival and Trump doesn't seem to care, how well positioned do we think Vance still is to inherit the mantle? I mean, not that Rubio will be the only one. Ted Cruz, I'm sure is coming for him. And you know, we have these parlor games so we've been playing of late as to how many people are trying to throw J.D. vance under the bus so that they're better positioned for 2028. But kind of, what do you guys think about his chances and where he stands right now?
- [37:38]
E.J. Dionne
I have no idea myself what the Republican race for president will look like in 2028, assuming Donald Trump agrees to leave the White House. And I think there.
- [37:48]
Michelle Cottle
Oh no, no, we're not going there.
- [37:50]
E.J. Dionne
I think I had to say it. But I think that there are really two possibilities. The way we think of now is who is the successor to Trump, who can get Trump supporters cuz they loom so large in the primaries. If this thing keeps going south, I think there'll be room for some other kind of Republican who will make a case. It'll be tricky because there'll still be a lot of Trumpists no matter what he does, but he'll say, you know, if we want to survive, we got to move on. And so maybe it's wishful thinking for the Republican Party, but I am looking to stick with the theme of this book, of the thing that is unseen, of the person that is currently unseen in that field.
- [38:39]
Michelle Cottle
Okay, Carlos.
- [38:42]
Carlos Lozada
I share EJ's reluctance to try to predict what will unfold here. If there's anything we've learned in the quote unquote, Trump era is that things happen that you don't necessarily expect. As Trump likes to say, we'll see what happens. Vance, I think, is well positioned to capture the sort of MAGA mantle. I don't know if that will be enough to win the nomination. Right. Or certainly to win the presidency. Rubio may have broader appeal among sort of more, you know, conventional Republicans, if those still exist, or certainly among sort of independent voters, especially in a country where people are tired of, you know, whether it's war or inflation or, you know, a sense of so much chaos. The irony in the context of Vance's books is that, you know, the more things unravel, which is always J.D. vance's fear, the harder it'll be for him to be the heir apparent.
- [39:41]
Michelle Cottle
Okay, and we'll let you have the last word with that. We're just gonna land this plane, guys. Thank you as always.
- [39:47]
E.J. Dionne
Thank you.
- [39:49]
Carlos Lozada
Learned a lot to see you guys.
- [39:51]
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