Vice President J.D. Vance returned to the program today for the first time since being sworn in as Vice President:

Audio:

05-09hhs-vance

Transcript:

HH: Very pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show, but first time as Vice President, Vice President J.D. Vance. Mr. Vice President, welcome back. It’s good to talk to you.

JDV: It’s good to talk with you, Hugh. How are you?

HH: I am great. I have been spending the morning listening to the American cardinals talk about Leo XIV and reading about Leo XIV, because like you, I am a Catholic. I’m wondering what your reaction is, sort of at length over the course of the day since that news came down?

JDV: Yeah, well, look, I watched with baited breath. I think they, you know, they let the white smoke go off, and then they just sort of, you know, hold us there without giving us the news. I was starting to sort of, you know, I was watching it with my staff, and I was like, my God, we’ve had white smoke for a long time. Why can’t they just, you know, show this guy, because I was on the edge of my seat like a lot of other people. I mean, look, I have a few thoughts in response, Hugh. First of all, a big moment, of course, for American Catholics, and I think the American people, writ large. So many people my entire lifetime has said you’re never going to have an American pope. Obviously, now we do, so I think that’s a great thing. The second thing I’d say is you know, we don’t know a whole lot about him, but I just wish him the best, right? I’m a Catholic. He’s now the head of the Catholic Church, and we’ll pray for his wisdom, for his good decisions, and his good health, and hope that he has a long and successful papacy. And then the third thing, Hugh, and this is, you know, these things always get discolored a little bit by American politics or by politics writ large. You know, people are asking is he a conservative or is he a liberal. Will he attack President Trump and J.D. Vance on certain things, and hasn’t attacked Democrats on other things. And I guess my response to this is it’s very hard to fit a 2,000-year-old institution into the politics of 2025 America. I try not to do that. I am a Catholic convert, and so I come at this maybe with a slightly different perspective. But I try not to play the politicization of the Pope game. I’m sure he’s going to say a lot of things that I love. I’m sure he’ll say some things that I disagree with, but I’ll continue to pray for him and the Church despite it all and through it all, and that’ll be the way that I handle it.

HH: You know, when you watch the press conference, it’s a wonderful press conference, but the American media never fails to fail to understand the Catholic Church. And three out of the first four questions are about President Trump. And you know, the cardinals are just kind of waving them off, but they’re digging in, Terry Moran and another reporter. And I just thought to myself, they really never fail to not understand the Catholic Church. You and I used to go to the same church in Virginia, I don’t know if you do anymore, but the local church doesn’t have anything to do with politics. It really, you have no idea who’s in the pews. I, do you find any journalist who actually understands that who are not actually Catholic journalists?

JDV: No, I don’t, Hugh, and I think it’s really disappointing, because you know, the Church is so much bigger than politics. Obviously, there are 1.3 billion Catholics. There are about, you know, I don’t know, probably 100 million or so American Catholics, maybe a little bit smaller than that. But it’s a big institution with a lot of members. And most of the people are not thinking about whether the Pope is a Republican or a Democrat, or a conservative or a liberal. And the truth is, Hugh, as you know well, that there are a lot of views the Catholic leadership holds that are, you know, you might consider on the right side of the spectrum. There are a lot of views they’re going to hold that might be more traditionally on the left side of the spectrum. And then there are a lot of views that don’t map easily onto politics at all. And my attitude is, you know, the Church is about saving souls, and about spreading the Gospel. And yeah, it’s going to touch public policy from time to time as all human institutions do, but that’s not really what it’s about. And I think it’s much healthier for the American media, and certainly for Catholics, to not take such a, you know, politics in the age of social media attitude towards the papacy. I just think it’s bigger than that, and it’s not even, it’s sort of tangential to that in so many ways. And I think it’s a lot healthier way to go through life is to do that as opposed to focus obsessively on the politics. And by the way, Hugh, that’s true for liberals and conservatives.

HH: Yes.

JDV: I think it would be better for all of us if we allowed the Church to be about the saving of souls and didn’t try to fit it into a pre-ordained political box.

HH: Now I know you’ve been busy this morning. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read it. The Wall Street Journal excerpted the new Pope’s first sermon at the Mass in the Sistine Chapel this morning. He said there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent, settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure. They are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed. There are many settings in which Jesus although appreciated as a man, is reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman. This is the world that has been entrusted to us. How do you respond to that?

JDV: It’s quite beautiful, I think, isn’t it?

HH: Yes.

JDV: And if you think the way that I do and believe what I believe, I think it’s also true. There is a tendency to try to make Jesus Christ this sort of very wise, I guess young man, to make Him a sort of teacher, maybe a prophet. But of course, Christians believe that He was much more than that. He was, in fact, the living, breathing Son of God. And so I think it’s, again, powerful words from an American Pope that we don’t know a lot about, but I think, you know, what I heard you just repeat to me was quite beautiful. It was quite moving, and I hope it’s indicative of the kind of Church that we’ll have under the leadership of Leo XIV.

HH: I agree. Two more quick Pope questions, Mr. Vice President. The former Pope, whom you met, the most criticized aspect of his papacy, I think, was the deal that he okayed with the Chinese Communist Party that allowed the Chinese Communists to co-pick bishops there, and that he never spoke up for Jimmy Lai. I talked with President Trump about Jimmy Lai on Wednesday. I talked to Secretary Rubio a couple weeks ago about Jimmy Lai. Has Jimmy Lai come up in any of your conversations, yet, about the need to get him out of prison before he dies?

JDV: Yeah, I mean, look, we certainly have talked about it in the administration. We’ve been here about 100 days, Hugh. And we would love to get him out of China. You know, but it’s come up in general terms. I don’t know that we’re closer now than we were a few months ago to getting him out of China, but certainly we think about him and we care a lot about him.

HH: All right. Let me move now to foreign leaders. When Richard Nixon was a new vice president in 1953, Ike sent him on a 19 country tour that lasted two months – October, November, into December of 1953, and so he could meet all these world leaders. I see the President, including you, not only sending you to Germany and the Vatican, but every meeting, whether it’s Prime Minister Modi or Prime Minister Netanyahu or President Zelenskyy, you’re in every meeting.

JDV: Yeah.

HH: How do you find that? Is that fascinating? Are you learning so much more than you ever knew?

JDV: That’s exactly right, Hugh. It is incredibly fascinating, and I’m learning a whole lot, just one about the President’s instincts. You know, he’s a successful president for many reasons, but the thing that I’m always amazed by is he has just an incredible instinctual ability to sort of know when to interject, when to sort of let somebody else talk, when to move the conversation in a different direction. He’s just a very instinctual person. I think it’s the core of his success as a president, certainly in foreign policy. But it’s been amazing, and as you know, Hugh, we’ve got three little kids. We’ve been able to take our kids on a lot of these trips with us and make it really a family affair. And it’s just, yeah, it’s an amazing learning experience. I think that we’re doing good work for the American people, which of course, is the most important part. But if you can pick up some new skills and some knowledge along the way, then that’s a win-win scenario.

HH: I just think it’s an amazing opportunity and good preparation should anything terrible ever happen. Now Mr. Vice President, I want to turn to something I talked with the President about – Trump Derangement Syndrome. You’ve now been campaigning with him and talking with him very much often for almost a year, and you’ve known him for far longer than that. And you know how American journalism is. I asked him about the Atlantic cover that came out. “It’s Later Than You Think” – Anne Applebaum, David Brooks, Aziz Hugg, and George Packer. Fighting autocracy. This very morning, the New Yorker, Susan Glasser, who’s been a guest on my program before. I used to read her, I don’t now – “A Day In The Livestream Life Of Donald Trump”. Have you noticed that he just unbalances otherwise sane people?

JDV: I have noticed that, Hugh, and it’s one of the most bizarre things, because if you know the President at all, you know that he’s very kind, he’s very gracious. I mean, I was in a meeting with the President yesterday, and my 5-year-old called me on FaceTime. You know, sometimes when he’s on his way home from pre-school, he’ll use the, Secret Service will let him FaceTime. And he calls me, and the President’s like, “pick it up.” And I answer it, and he talks with my 5-year-old in the middle of a meeting in the Oval Office. That happened yesterday. Like that’s the kind of guy that he actually is. But you know, if I could say a word in slight defense of some of these Atlantic writers, yes, they’re crazy, but I think that their craziness reveals something that’s very exhausted about their worldview. I mean, if you think about this, Hugh, that these guys have been making the same arguments for 40 years. They’ve been making the same arguments about what we should do from a foreign policy perspective, weakness on the world stage, the same argument about what we should do on economic policy. And I think they sense that even among left-leaning individuals, their worldview is totally exhausted. And so they don’t have anything anymore. They don’t have a positive, constructive vision for America in 2025. What they do have is this unhinged obsession with one person. And I don’t know what’s going to happen. You know, I almost worry for their sanity when Donald Trump decides that he’s no longer interested in American politics, because he is the thing that gives them meaning. Hating Donald Trump is what gives so many of these writers meaning. It’s sad, it’s not good for the country, but I do think it comes from a much deeper place, an exhausted worldview that doesn’t work in the 21st Century.

HH: Oh, that’s very interesting. I don’t know why it comes, but I do know what the tell is. When they attribute to people thoughts, when they assume the power of telepathy and tell me what other people are thinking, that’s just such a tell that they’ve gone off of the edge of reporting and into the edge of psychiatry for which they are not licenses. You are a Yale lawyer, Mr. Vice President. Has President Trump asked you to help him in the selection of judicial nominees?

JDV: So we haven’t had that many judicial nominations, Hugh. And so we just nominated a great candidate, a young woman to the 6th Circuit vacancy in Tennessee. I think she’s very impressive, and of course, me and the President spoke about that. I think if we have, of course, a Supreme Court nominee, you know, we’ll talk about that. We’ve talked about some other judicial nominations. So he asked my counsel and my input, but we also haven’t had as many, you know, high impact or at least high visibility appointments to make. I’m sure that when we do, I’ll get a little bit more involved in that process.

HH: I know Vice President Pence when he was serving in your office, he had the last interview with every Supreme Court nominee potential. And if you are in that position down the road, what do you want to know about a Supreme Court nominee?

JDV: Oh, that’s a good question. I’ve never been asked that question, Hugh. You always ask the best questions, man. But you know, I guess what I would try to understand is how persuadable they are by the mob, because what we’ve learned from our Supreme Court over the last 10, 15 years, but especially over the last few years, is that the mob really comes after these guys for high profile decisions. And obviously, you don’t want to prejudge an outcome, but I just want a person with real courage. I think this is what makes Alito and Thomas so special, is that they’re just willing to stand in defiance of a lot of incredible media and social pressure. I mean, if you’re in the Supreme Court, you’re literally inside the Beltway. You consume Beltway media. That’s who you see day to day. You have to have a particular special character. And so I guess I’d ask some questions that try to tease that out a little bit. I’d ask them, you know, when have they ever stood up to the crowd? When have they ever had people attack them for their views? And if they’ve never, ever had to stand up to public pressure, they’re probably not the right person for the Supreme Court.

HH: Now Mr. Vice President, I’ve never asked you before. At Yale, I don’t know if you had Akhil Amar or who you had for Con Law, but I hope they taught you the Bob Jones case, because that divided the DOJ back when I was a DOJ lawyer.

JDV: Sure.

HH: And I think it’s four points square on Harvard and Columbia right now. I think if you violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, you ought to lose your tax-exempt status. Has that been talked about in the White House? I brought it up with the President. I don’t think these institutions deserve tax-exempt status if they don’t protect the Jewish students on their campus.

JDV: Yes, Hugh, we have certainly talked about this. And you know, obviously we want to protect Jewish students on campus. We want to protect everybody on campus to be able to speak their mind, to be able to participate in public spaces, to be able to go to the library without crazy people in veils trying to destroy the library, to destroy the public space. And importantly, Hugh, we want to protect people against racial discrimination, whether you’re discriminating against somebody because they’re Jewish or because they’re Black, or because they’re white, which does happen in academia. You should not receive federal funding. And the way that I put it is actually quite simple. If you’re violating the Civil Rights Act, then you’re not going to receive federal funding, and you’re not going to receive a federal subsidy via tax exemption. It’s just basic, basic stuff. And unfortunately, the Democrats have gotten so addicted to this idea that you’re going to put, you know, one person in this group, and another person in that group, and had out rewards and also punishments based on membership in these racial categories, that they don’t even know how to make an argument in the world that we wake up. And it’s not we’re attacking you because of your worldview, or we’re attacking you because you said something that we didn’t like. It’s we’re actually exposing you to the force of law. When you violate the law, it’s very, very simple stuff.

HH: Mr. Vice President, I’m cognizant of your time. Three last questions. First, Xi Jinping, I think he’s the most ruthless man in the world, and I think he’s a Communist. Do you understand him as a hard-core Leninist as I do? Or do you think there’s a different angle to take on him?

JDV: Yeah, I think you and I maybe have talked about this, Hugh. I think he’s a fascinating guy. He is ruthless. He’s tough. He obviously is looking out for the best interests of China, just as we have a very tough leader looking out for the best interests of the United States of America. But you know, I really don’t have a good insight in his underlying philosophy. I think it’s probably the case that he’s a hard-core Leninist. I’ve tried to understand him. But I think there’s something about the Chinese system, Hugh, that is just very, very hard to for the Western mind to grasp. And I try to be a little bit humble about what I know and don’t know about China, because I think it’s such a different system, that it raises questions that don’t even quite compute. It’s, you know, they’re literally speaking a different language, and I think that’s hard for us to fully apprehend. And it’s one of the major blind spots, Hugh, that we have in American public policy. There are a few places that we get really well. Like I think we get Europe very well. I think we get the Middle East quite well. I think we understand most countries in Africa pretty well. I think we actually have a real strategic blind spot vis-à-vis the Chinese. And we have to close that gap. And you know, not to say too many nice things about my boss here, but one of the things that I think is unique about President Trump is he really tries to understand where Xi is coming from. He tries to understand his motivations. And because of that, yes, he’s going to rebalance global trade, but I think he’s going to do it in a way that hopefully preserves America’s, well, I think he’s definitely going to do it in a way that preserves America’s upper hand in the global balance of trade and the global balance of power. But I think interestingly, you know, President Trump has no ill will towards Xi and no ill will towards China. He wants to look out for America. And his main criticism, it’s fascinating, is not actually against the Chinese, it’s of America for allowing the Chinese to take advantage of us, of American leadership in particular. And I think the President’s dead right about that.

HH: Subtle answer. I’ve been dead wrong about China since Deng Xiaoping. I mean, I was really wrong about which way they would go, so that’s a subtle observation. PenuOr ltimate question, on Wednesday, the President told me Iran has two choices. They can have their centrifuges destroyed nicely or viciously. And everyone tries to put you in opposition in some so-“restrainers” camp. How do you comment on those who are trying to drive a wedge between you and the President on Iran?

JDV: Well, it’s just totally bogus, Hugh, and it’s funny, man, because I’m in these conversations, obviously, with Marco, and the Secretary of State, with Pete, the Secretary of Defense, with a lot of the other President’s senior advisors. And we’re all very much on the same team. The President’s been clear. He wants a deal. He would like to eliminate the Iranian nuclear weapons program peacefully, but he’s going to eliminate it. He’s just drawing a very clear red line. Iran can’t get a nuclear weapon. That is the policy of the President of the United States. And we all, of course, have our own views about how best to implement this policy, but it’s so funny to hear these media reports that say that, you know, J.D. and Marco are in one camp, and the President’s in another camp. Or J.D. and the President are in one camp, and you know, the chief of staff is in another camp. It’s all completely made-up B.S. We are all aligned to try to implement the President’s agenda. And on this one, it’s just so clear. Iran doesn’t get to have a nuclear weapon. That’s the policy of the United States government. The President’s going to see it through. Hopefully, peacefully, but we’re going to see it through however we have to.

HH: Thank you for that. Last question’s quick. Just because there’s so much discussion about Pope Leo having been a Cubs fan when it turns out he’s a White Sox fan, are you on the side of good, that you’re a Guardians fan? Or are you on the side of evil, and you’re a Reds fan?

JDV: I am unfortunately, Hugh, a Reds fan. I grew up in Cincinnati. I’ve always been a Cincinnati sports fan. Bengals and Reds all the way. So I had a friend of mine that, you know, had a pretty funny take on this. He said, you know, if Pope Leo really is a Chicago White Sox fan, then he’s already actually faced the stress of martyrdom multiple times, so maybe we have a real winner in the new Holy Father.

HH: Vice President Vance, good to talk to you again. Come back early and often, and thank you for the time today.

JDV: All right, see you, Hugh. Take care, man.

HH: Bye bye.

End of interview.