JD Vance Felt "Darkness" From These World Leaders (EP 221)

I've been in meetings with world leaders and somebody will say something or somebody will make an observation and I will like feel a certain darkness about it. It sort of sets off every spiritual alarm bell on my body like some of the AI companies you see happening where you feel like there is some really really weird spiritual dark energy. One of the companies when they get rid of one model and announce a new model they actually hold a marial ceremony for the old model and like the employees apparently will cry. I got to I got to talk to you about this so obviously during the Red Cross Day President Trump tweeted that AI photo. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about. I'm a Christian. I saw the photo. It made me upset. I'm not gonna lie. It made me upset. I don't know how I thought he was doctor in the photo. I did post it and I thought it was me as the doctor. Only the makers could come up with that. White robe with a red sash on it. You know and that that makes me upset as a Christian. When I see something like that it rubs me the wrong way. I mean what do you think about that? I mean I'm biased because I see this from me inside so it's like did Donald Trump meant to post a meme of himself as God? No. So I got I got to ask this how confident are you that you'd go to heaven. Hey before we dive in if these videos have meant anything to you if they've helped your faith or brought you closer to God in any way make sure you're actually subscribed to a lot of people watch every single week and still haven't hit that button. It only takes two seconds and it helps us reach more people with the gospel. Also I have an announcement I've been waiting to make and I'm really excited about this one. Open heaven our biggest live podcast event to date is happening November 8th at the pavilion at Toyota Music Factory in Irving, Texas right outside of Dallas. It's going to be a powerful live podcast experience centered around faith, purpose, real conversations and connection alongside live worship throughout the night and I'm pumped to share who's going to be leading worship with us. It's Aaron Tadeski and Upper Room worship. This night is going to be a night that I'm not going to forget and you're not going to forget either. Tickets are on sale right now at bricecroffer.org/tour or click the link in the description below to grab your seats and please the only way to buy us through this official site. I recommend not trusting any random resellers. I genuinely believe that this is going to be a night. People care with them for a long time and I'd love to see you there. All right, let's get into this episode. What's going on guys? Welcome back to another episode of the bricecroffer podcast. I'm Bryson. Today I'm with Vice President Vance. Thanks so much. Of course, man. Good to see you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I love being in an environment like this. It's nice to be out of the studio and thanks for inviting us over. Of course. You have access to more information and things in the average bear. You have top secret. Sure. Access has anything that you've learned from this job convinced you that the spiritual world is real since getting that access. I haven't seen anything that says, okay, there's a clear spiritual dimension to this particular problem. I don't have the file that says, oh, this wasn't a UFO. It's actually a demon. It's always something that I have this strong view. I actually kind of got to an argument with Joe Rogan about this. I like a lot, by the way, but Joe thinks they're extraterrestrials. I'm sure a lot of people think it's all fake. My attitude is if they are real, isn't it as likely that their angels or demons as they are extraterrestrials? I don't have a top secret file that proves that one way or the other. What I will say is that the way that I've always felt God speaks to me is through little coincidences, little things that are just very hard to explain away. I see those little coincidences all the time in my daily job. Little things that will happen. We went to the Pope's inaugural mass and it was right after it was in the summer, maybe the late spring last year. There was something like, we brought the Dominican friar who actually baptized me. He was talking to me about a Bible verse that was just so on point, something that was really meaningful to me. I think it was Psalm 53, actually, something that has kind of constantly come up to me in a number of ways. There are just all these little coincidences that happen in the day-to-day job, but there's not like a top secret piece of information that I have that says, definitively proof this thing is definitely real or not real or it means this thing or it doesn't mean this thing. I just, I've seen a lot of things that convince me there is a spiritual dimension of things. I'm a big believer that human beings, I think we tend to try to, especially in the 21st century, we try to rationalize everything, right? We see something that doesn't totally make sense and our response is, well, there must be some boring physical scientific explanation and I think sometimes you should allow yourself to think or you should allow yourself to feel what I think is pretty natural, which is that there are things out there that don't make a ton of sense, and they don't make a ton of sense at least if you're trying to explain them scientifically, but I think they do make sense if you're trying to understand them spiritually as part of what I think is inherently a battle of good versus evil. Have you ever been in a room, though, like in Washington, that feels spiritually dark? Because I've been in a room that's like, okay, you feel like Satan is presently here, or there's blatant evil. Have you ever felt that just being in a room around power and fluent stuff like that? Yeah, so definitely, though less like a room itself and more sometimes like people that are around you sometimes give you a very, very bad feeling. I've definitely, I've been in meetings with world leaders where various issues are being discussed, and somebody will say something or somebody will make an observation, and I will like feel a certain darkness about it, and I kind of like, it sort of sets off every spiritual alarm bell in my body like, whatever that person just said, I need to be very careful because that's not a great thing. So I would say I feel it more around people necessarily than places, though I will say, you know, what place have you ever been to Gettysburg? I have not actually. So you're actually not that far. It's like an hour and a half drive, I think, from DC. So something worth doing next time you're in town, but I've been to Gettysburg, I believe once in my life, and actually stood at the battlefield, and it's very clear, you know, this is where Pickett's charge was, and the guys were going up the hill, and you sort of, that's the one place where I feel like a very dark spiritual energy is Gettysburg. And I think it's just because so many people died there, but it kind of like, I remember being there, and it made the hairs on the back on my neck stand up. And so I, you know, I guess I do think that certain places have spiritual energy because I felt that at Gettysburg, but most of the time, I would say when I feel something either positive or negative, it's usually centered around people rather than places. Well, I feel like if you're in a position like yourself, I mean, you're the vice president of the United States, you have to have some sort of spiritual discernment, or I mean, you wouldn't be good at your job, you know what I mean. So I think it's, I think it's, it just fascinates me because I hear all these stories in LA, "Oh, Hollywood, Illuminati, whatever." And I think, okay, sure, people can have their conspiracies about that, the spiritual stuff, or whatever. But let's talk about like the real, like, decision makers, like people in power that actually legitimately can make a decision and it impacts the world. And I've always just been fascinated by that. And, you know, you know, it even makes me think to how evil works. If you, so back in Butler, Pennsylvania, right, President Trump was almost assassinated. He barely moved half an inch. Correct. I mean, you literally would not be sitting here talking to me. Correct. So how, when you, when you think of that scenario, do you see, how does, do you see God in that scenario bringing you here? Yeah. So, and this is why, you know, I say, like, if you really want to try, you can find just a hyperscientific irrational explanation for this, okay? So, President Trump is standing on stage, standing on stage, I guess. And he points to a chart, and he points to a chart just so happens to be at the exact moment that the guy took a shot. Now, again, there is a physical explanation for that. He, he noticed the chart. He pointed at the chart. He turned his head, the guy fired the bullet. Crazy coincidence, right? These things happen. Yeah. But I, I think that that's a very spiritually impoverished way to look at things. Like, whatever the reason is, whatever God was trying to accomplish, like, it is just so obvious to me that coincidence is like that don't happen without the hand of provenance. Yeah. And so, when I think some people are desperate to see two physical and explanation there, two scientific and explanation there, I think it actually is good for your soul to sort of say, well, you know, whatever it means, clearly there was some higher purpose at work because this guy was milliseconds and millimeters simultaneously from, from dying. Now, I have like a very personal connection to this, too. Obviously, because I like the president, I serve under the president, I think he's a great president, a great man. But there's a much more like personal dimension to this, too, which I've talked about a little bit. But, you know, I was, there was some talk about announcing the vice-presidential candidate at that rally. Okay. That was right before the convention. So, the morning that was a Saturday morning, I'll never forget it. I flew down there. And I met with the president, and I had always been asked, have you ever talked to the president about being vice-president? And the answer was honestly, always no. Well, the first time I ever had a conversation with him about being his vice-president was that Saturday morning. - Oh my gosh. - That rally where he almost lost his life. So I'm, you know, talking with the president, he doesn't offer me the job on the spot, but he kind of hints that it's gonna be me. Basically, he says, "Look, you're gonna be very happy." And then he turns to his chief of staff, who's now the White House chief of staff, very good friend. And he says, "Why don't we just bring JD up and announce this thing in Pennsylvania?" And then he goes, "No, no, no, no, no, I actually know. We don't wanna do it in Pennsylvania. Let's do it somewhere else." And I kind of like, of course, in that moment, I think to myself, what if he had called me on stage at that moment, right? What if both of us had lost our lives? Because again, you know, there's sort of a butterfly effect that if I'm on stage with him, maybe both of us do something where we both lose our lives. Or maybe both of us survive. There's just a, there's so many different elements to this and so many different variables that you kind of just have to hope and pray that you're doing the right thing. You have to use the spiritual discernment that you can to try to make the right decisions. And you have to accept that ultimately, it's in the hands of God. And if God wanted Donald Trump to lose his life that day, he wouldn't, but God didn't want that. And that, to me, is a very profound truth of what happened in Butler. And you know, there's, again, a very personal dimension to it as well. What do you think America would look like if the shooter was successfully? I do think that we would have had real civil strife in a way that I don't know the country ever could have come back from because you drew, okay, so let's just, you play this out and Donald Trump loses his life, okay? Then some other person becomes the Republican nominee for president. Now that person, which remember, there is a very deep and emotional connection between president Trump and a lot of the voters who make up what you could call the Republican base or the MAGA base, right? And I don't think that those voters, frankly, rightfully, I sort of put myself very much in this category, like I would have always wondered is Donald Trump's assassination part of some broader conspiracy, some broader plan to deny people, the American people, their will to choose their next president. You know, Donald Trump got right to the doorstep of getting a second term in office and they literally killed him. I would have had that thought in the back of my mind and it would have to me, I'm just speaking for me, but I think that what I'm saying would have been true for millions of Americans. It would have delegitimized the entire political process. Even if a Republican had won, I would have assumed that that Republican was kind of illegitimate. I would have assumed that very dark forces had taken out Donald Trump right as he was about to come back in to the White House. So I think if I would have thought that as close as I am to the political process, I think millions, probably tens of millions of Americans would have felt the exact same way. And there would have just been an illegitimacy to our entire political system. And man, like the American project runs on legitimacy, the consent of the government. And if you think that it's all BS and you think that even when a good guy is about to become president, the powers that be you're gonna take him out, that is a terrible way to have a functioning democracy. And again, I think the country in some ways would have been okay. In other ways, I think it would have never come back and it would have been permanently, permanently destroyed. Do you guys ever talk about that day still? Not really, so the president and I are very much, there are so many ways in which we're very different, we're very alike in some ways. And this is one way in which he and I are just kind of very alike, which is when something bad happens, you can dwell on it, you can focus on it, or you can try to just process and move on. And he's definitely a process and move on by. So he'll make like joking references. Like sometimes, if somebody brushes up against him, he'll be like, oh, I've got that throbbing sensation of my ear and just as kind of a joke. But he never really talks about it in that moment. And like the one way I've heard him ever discuss it is, so that chart, it was actually a chart about the number of illegal immigrants who had come into the United States under the first Trump administration and then how it skyrocketed under the Biden administration. That chart was made by Ron Johnson, who's a senator from Wisconsin, a really good dude by the way, like a very good friend of mine, he's a great guy. And Ron once told me, Ron Johnson once told me that like he told the president, that was my chart. Like my chart, he was trying to claim credit. He said that my chart actually saved your life. And the president was basically like, oh, thanks. And then moved on. So there's not a desire for the president to dwell on bad things. And I think it would be impossible for him to do his job. If so, like if you were always, like I had a speech yesterday. And if I'm thinking about who in the crowd could have a weapon, you just can't do your job. So you just have to like kind of process things and move on. And again, for me at least, I don't know if this is true for the president, I wouldn't speak for him. But for me at least like being a Christian gives me a certain sense of contentment about these things. It's fundamentally, like as my grandmother said, you know, if God wants me to be here, I'll be here. If God wants me to not be here, I won't be here. And that gives me a certain just comfort with whatever risks come along. It's all in God's hands. I'm gonna go do my job as long as he gives me the ability to do it. So the throbbing pain in the ear, you know what I was, I thought I was funny, speaking of your like coincidences, do you think that maybe every now and then he gets a throbbing pain? Like that could be God's funny way of reminding him, like hey, I've spared your life. - Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I mean, you know, having never been shot before, I don't know. But my sense is that while it was by the grace of God, not a serious injury, it is the sort of thing that's always gonna leave like little traces. And yeah, I do think there are ways in which that throbbing sensation probably speaks to me. It's interesting, the president is a person of faith. He doesn't wear it on his sleeve. He doesn't talk about it a lot. But he definitely like has an interspiritual dialogue and you can tell. And so I don't know, I've never asked him, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if that pain is a constant reminder of how close he came to meeting his maker. - I wanna ask you something real quick. If you're already paying a phone bill every single month, wouldn't you rather that money go towards something you actually believe in? Because most people just pay the phone bill, stay with the same major carrier and they never really ask what their dollars are supporting. That's why I wanna talk to you about Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile is the only Christian conservative wireless provider in America. They take a portion of your monthly phone bill and use it to support causes centered around faith, family, freedom and spreading the gospel. Every year, they contribute millions of dollars to organizations that are actually standing for those values. And this isn't some new company. Patriot Mobile has been doing this for over 12 years. They've consistently backed what they believe in and helped fund organizations making a real impact. And you're not sacrificing coverage. Patriot Mobile gives you premium coverage across all three major US networks, which means you can get the same or better service than what you probably already have right now. They have unlimited plans, mobile hotspots, international roaming and you can even run multiple numbers on different networks from one phone. And switching is simple. You can keep your number, keep your phone, upgrade if you want and make the switch from home in just a few minutes. Plus, their customer support is 100% US based. So if you're already paying for wireless every month, make that money count. Go to PatriotMobile.com/brice or call 972 Patriot. Use code Bryce and you'll get your first month free plus 15% off for life. All right, back to the episode. So you wrote this book, Communion, which is about your journey of faith, kind of losing faith and coming back. What made you tell the story now? - You know, it's a little bit. So my grandmother had this phrase and I'll try not to cuss. She, she, she was a very devout question, but she had a foul mouth. But, you know, Esther get off the pot. Pooper get off the pot. And I had been working on this book really since my first book came out, which is in 2016. So I've been writing this thing since the summer of 2016. And I, you know, got elected Senate and that kind of delayed things. And I got elected vice president and that kind of delayed things. And I got to this point where I was like, all right, if I'm ever going to actually publish this book, I'm ever going to finish this book. It's going to, it's got to be now, right? You know, there were a couple of things that motivated me and wanted to get the story out. I mean, number one is I am obsessed with this question of why are people who are raised Christian? Why do they fall away from the faith? Like what is it about the faith that just doesn't stack up when people go to college or people graduate from high school? And I've just known so many friends who are raised by very good Christian people. And some of them came back to the faith and some of them didn't. But I'm sure you've seen this. I'm sure a lot of your listeners have seen this. It is a common story that people lose their faith when they kind of hit that late teenage early 20s part of their life. So I'm sort of fascinated by that. I kind of wanted to write that story down for my own sake, but also in the hopes that it was instructive to others. Because you'll probably like, I would be surprised you guys can probably dub it out. But there are right now three kids upstairs. I just heard one yell because they're upstairs playing. The fourth is at school because this is his first day of school. But like, you know, we take our kids to church every week. Sometimes more than once a week. We pray every day. We talk a lot about God every day. And I am, again, really fascinated by, but really troubled by this question of why is it that people who are raised Christian, why it doesn't take? And I think for me, at least. And this is just one guy's story. But for me, at least part of it is that when I got into my teenage years, my early 20s, the faith just didn't seem that relevant to me anymore. Like when I was 14 years old, the gospel of Jesus Christ really spoke to me. Now I'm 42 years old and it really does. And I talk a lot about like why didn't it speak to me when I was 21 years old. And again, and I think part of this is as much as a lot of Christian groups and a lot of Christian pastors and a lot of people are working on this problem. I just think that there's something unique about going from, you know, a kid who lives with your parents, now all of a sudden you're out on your own. You're trying to find your way in the world. And there's something about the world that is better at speaking to young people than the gospel is right now. And that's not the fault of the gospel. I think it's the fault of us. Well, yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. We do a lot of stuff on college campuses, like open dialogue and stuff like that. And we got some stuff coming up in the fall. And it's so interesting how those four years formulate the next 60 of a lot of people's lives, which kind of blows my mind. So I did Liberty University online. And at first you're kind of like, am I going to go to Christian college? Like what does that look like? But I'm so grateful I did that because that in comparison of, you know, not knocking a big university. I love SEC schools, whatever. But it's just, you know, I got to love college football. Are you Georgia fan? Of course. I don't bark, though. I'm not a barker. You know, I mean, yeah, I'm not like that crazy, but you know, I like college football. You know, it's like different because the the teachers actually cared about my soul. Yes. Like they didn't, they didn't just care about me like passing a class or, you know, whatever ideology that they wanted me to listen to. So they genuinely cared about my soul. And so when I graduated in the spring, and when I'm walking across like these professors, I've never even met face to face hugging me, shaking my hand. Like that was just, that has set me up and encouraged me to another level of going, wow, you care about my faith. You care about what I'm, you know what I mean? So yeah, I think it is fascinating. I agree with you. I think we need to do a better job of kind of teach an origin. My generation to be bold for their faith and stuff like that. I think that's, that's a very, it's a very important challenge. I think for the next generation of young people, of young Americans, and this is obviously Charlie Kirk was a very passionate about. If you look at a lot of the TPA USA rallies that Charlie Kirk did, you know, a lot of them were politics focused people asking about politics, but a lot of them were about God. People were asking about Jesus. Why do you believe? You know, here's this question. Why does God tolerate pain? Why does God tolerate suffering? And yet Charlie was in his own unique way, a bit of an evangelist. But you know, in some ways, it's very simple, right? Like when I was a 19 year old guy, like I wanted two things out of life. I wanted to get, you know, good job, good credentials. And I was, I talk about this in the book, but I was too worried about where I went to school, what, how much money I made. I was too worried about prestige. Yeah. And that was my own flaw. But I also wanted to meet girls. Like those, those are the two things that I wanted to do when I was 19 years old. And I think that, you know, what eventually, for me at least, brought me back to Christ, brought me back to faith. Is this recognition that I had set myself up for a lot of pursuits that were leading me nowhere? And, you know, I was very successful. I'd gotten into a good law school. I was about to make a lot of money. But I started asking myself, am I actually a good person? And the answer, unfortunately, was no. I was becoming a bad person. I was becoming a person. It was too focused on things that didn't actually matter. Now that realization sort of forced me to reckon with the relevance of the Christian gospel as an antidote to what was going on in my own life. But I do think that we've, we've, as a Christian community, have got to figure out why is it that so many of our 19, 20, 21 year old kids, they go off to college or, you know, some of them go into the workforce, they go to the military, like I did, and they lose their faith. And that is to your point, it's such a critical moment. Like if you make it to 22, 23 and you are a person who's spiritually formed, who's got a good faith community, there's a good chance that's the rest of your life. And if you make it to 23 and you've discarded your faith, there's a very good chance that's the rest of your life too. So I'm not saying I got all the answers, certainly not in the book, not in my own life, but that to me is a very important part for us to focus on is how to keep people from a 16 year old Christian to a 23 year old non-Christian. How can we do better at keeping more people? Well, I mean, I grew up, I grew up in church. I went to a private Christian school and I didn't even become a Christian till 17. And I had actually had this, if I'm being honest, hatred, bitterness towards God because of hypocrisy. I had seen literally, literally people in our community telling us to do one thing and then they would do the total opposite or there was a pastor in our community that cheated on his wife and stole money from the church, he was serving at ran. And I understand that's not every apple is bad, but you see that stuff and then you blame God for suffering. And then you hear, you have a dedicated Bible class every year. And it's just kind of like, well, Jesus is just some hippie guy on my quizzes every now and then. So to go from that to, I didn't encounter with Jesus in Waffle House. That's how I get my life to Jesus. I know, yeah, the promise land. That's awesome. You like Waffle House? I was in Waffle House and Saturday morning. I mean, it's a best. Isn't it crazy? It also are special. Of course. Gotta go with the all-star. But it's crazy. I think that's a hash browns double hash browns. That's literally my order. And then scrambled eggs with cheese. I actually do fried eggs. Okay. I'll go medium guy. Yeah. I mean, it's just I feel like that's the one food chain that we can allow them not to pass the health code because it makes the food better, you know? Well, okay. So by the way, Waffle House is going to be an infomercial for Waffle House. I like people under state how healthy Waffle House is compared to what else is out there. Now people like, oh, it's greasy diner food. Okay. Think about this. So I that when I first got like fell in love with Waffle House, I was like the second or the third grade. Yeah. And you know, my family, we drive a lot from Ohio to Kentucky because we had a lot of family in Kentucky. And Waffle House was always like the place that we stopped. It was cheap. It was quick. It was reasonably healthy, you know, so long as you made the right choices, you can bake in an egg. That stuff. That's good for you. But when I really like sort of realized how good Waffle House was is so I started dating my wife. We were in law school together. She's a vegetarian, which like, I didn't even know what that meant. I was like, what a wait a second. So you only eat bacon on Sundays. She's like, no, no, I don't need bacon. Wow. How do you survive? But she and I would we love to take road trips together. Like we took a road trip to Colorado and back and we took a road trip to California and back. And I realized like for a vegetarian when you're on the road, there are basically two good restaurants on the highway rest stop. Taco Bell and Waffle House. And she actually had a preference for Waffle House because you actually sit down, it was made to order. And it's like the irony of ironies that Waffle House, which we think of as like Southern greasy restaurant is actually like my Indian American vegetarian girlfriend taught me to fall in love with Waffle House because it was actually a solid nutritious meal on the road. That's how you knew she was your wife. And I promise that moment. Yeah. That exact moment. I fell in love with Waffle House and I fell in love with her. And I promise I'm not getting paid by Waffle House. And I don't think you are. I mean, this is just genuine love. Pure love. Yeah. And that's what makes it better. It's, you know, the glass of the door is missing. There's plywood on the door. There's a motorcycle on fire. It's 11 o'clock at night. It's something crazy is going down. You're just, but you feel at home. Absolutely. There's so much chaos going on. You feel at home. Yeah. And I shout out a while. And you know, that's one of the ways that people measure how bad and natural disasters. Have you ever heard this? No. Okay. So if there's flooding, if they close, like if a Waffle House closes, that's how we know this is. Doomsday is having you better get in the bunker. It's going down. The zombies are coming in a nuclear war or something. Literally, we had, I remember we had the worst snow storm in like fourth grade or fifth grade. And the Waffle House didn't close. They say to open no employees, you could go in their cook food, leave money on the counter and leave. They wouldn't close the restaurant. Like that is awesome. That is awesome. It brings families together, which is absolutely incredible. Absolutely. But you said you were from Ohio. I know I had a Christian background where you raised with the Christian background at all her. Yeah. So yeah. So, so I was raised in Christian family. But not a like, we didn't go to church a lot. And so the way that I encountered God growing up was one primarily through my grandmother. I called her mamal. She raised me because my mom struggled with addiction for a big part of my early life. And mamal was a very devout Christian would read the Bible multiple times per day, talk about Jesus, pray multiple times per day. But we didn't go to church very often. And so if we did go to church, you know, it was once a month. It was once every other month. But we would watch a lot of TBN, Paul and Jan Crouch, 700 Club. We'd watch Billy Graham, you know, revival meetings. And that was how I mostly encountered God growing up. And I do realize that like one of the downsides of that is that because my faith was so attached to her, when she died, I kind of lost my faith. And again, you know, I talk about I'm a 19, 20, 21. My grandmother dies when I'm 20 years old. And I went from being a devout Christian to an atheist in like a year. And that in hindsight, not having my own relationship, not having my own spiritual formation having it. so attached to one person. I think that's one of the reasons why things didn't work out. And certainly like hypocrisy, I feel like I was lucky where a lot of the Christian leaders I encountered were very good people. They actually, you know, nobody's perfect, but everybody kept kept the teaching pretty well. But you definitely saw some hypocrisy. And that obviously that is something that can alienate you from God. One of the things that sort of brought me back to my faith that I found like very profound about the Christian faith is, okay, so, you know, Jesus comes into your heart and I think, you know, I believe that you're, you can be formed by grace and sometimes for some people that's very quick, but for most people that's a process. It takes a long time. Grace is constantly working on people. One of my, my foundational Christian beliefs. And one thing that I think is very compelling about the Bible is if you think about it, so many of the great church fathers are people who are quite literally awful hypocrites. King David was a murderer and an alterer. He like, you know, lusted after. I believe it was like his buddy's wife, so he had his buddy killed. Yeah, crazy. And this is like one of, and you know, okay, so Paul was quite literally persecuting, killing Christians and counters God on the road to Damascus. And one of the things the Christian faith says is we're going to take these incredibly broken, screwed up sinful people. And this is how God, this is the medium by which God chooses to reveal Himself to the rest of humanity. And I think some people look at that and say, well, why doesn't God choose to reveal Himself through perfect people? But I think what I find very profound about this is because there are no perfect people and we are profoundly broken. And Christianity makes a very unique claim for itself. It makes a claim that God is going to work through broken people. Yeah. And it's going to, he's going to perfect those broken people over a process of grace, which of course takes time. And I think that, that acceptance, that recognition, yeah, a lot of people are hypocrites. And that is how God is going to work through people with sometimes some very hypocritical and sinful people. I actually think that's a very profound understanding of human nature. And it would be very easy for the Bible. And it frankly, you know, in some ways, in some ways, it would be more compelling if the Bible was all about perfect people who were instantly transformed by God and did everything that God told them to do. But that's not how people really are. Yeah. And I think it's interesting that the Bible makes an argument about human nature that is actually true, which is if you're going to reveal yourself to humanity through other humans, you're going to have to work with one obvious exception through some very imperfect people. Have you ever read a confessions by St. Augustine? I have. I mean, that book is awesome because he's just like, it feels like, it feels like you're reading every 20-year-olds personal journal. Absolutely. Yeah. But it is true. When I was baptized, I chose as my baptismal name, St. Augustine, because that book was so profoundly. Well, it's just encouraging and refreshing. Like one of the things that I've noticed immediately just from, you know, the quick interaction saying you need to sit down is your humility, but your sincerity. You know, it's easy to talk to someone that's just being honest. You know what I mean? It's like this. You know, I think that is true. Why we connect so much to to a King David, which he is such an interesting case because you would think you wouldn't forget the guy that slept with his buddies, why haven't they killed him, but he's known as a man after God's own heart, which is insane to think about. And that gives me hope too for my story knowing, I mean, I was just telling one of the guys earlier, you know, I know mistakes I've made that no one knows that I've made. Yeah. And that makes me feel like the most broken human being on the planet. So when Jesus came into my life, I'm like, he sure is heck can do for anyone else because I know the crap I've done. That's right. That's what he else knows. Well, buddy of mine made this observation. I'm still working on him. He's not he's not a Christian yet, but it will get there eventually. But you know, he said, well, look, when you read the Bible, you have all these people who have these amazing encounters with Christ and he's like, so Peter literally sees the guy walk on water. He goes out to meet him. He starts drowning in Jesus' rescues him. He sees the guy get nailed to the cross and a few days later, he's walking around, walking, talking, hanging out with his buddies. And he's like, I feel like I might have that sort of experience with Jesus, that person to person face to face experience with Christ, then I would be a Christian. It'd be easy. And I'm like, but dude, that's not human nature. And in fact, the story of Peter, if you think about it, is he sees Jesus walk on water and then he denies in three times. Yeah. Right. Like it's it's a very fascinating, the Bible is implicitly a super fascinating, but I also think it's very true argument about human nature. Peter literally saw God himself manifest in the flesh, walk on water and he's still the night in three times. Like there's there's something about human nature the Bible was getting at that I think is very, very true. And that's that's what I tell to anybody who's like, well, I just have an encountered God in the right way. I say number one, you know, I'm a strong believer that God always encounters people in the way that they need to be encountered. So you just got to keep your eyes open. You had, as I understand it, a prayer in Waffle House, you were, you were going to commit suicide. Yep. Right. Yep. And you know, that's how you encountered God. For me, it was, there was like a yearning. There was a recognition that I was flawed and that I had some real problems. And there was a yearning to do better and a recognition that God was lighting the pathway to be a better human being. And then that led me to all of the other Christian truths that, of course, we believe in. I just, I'm a big believer that everybody finds God in their own way and encounters God in their own way. But you've got to keep an open mind. Like, don't be the guy who, when God is speaking to you, you've got your hands over yours. Yeah. It's interesting that like, there's, there's like time and time again. I think Jesus feeds the 5,000 and then like a couple chapters later, they come back like, yo, give us another meal. Are you guys insane? Like, all you guys want, you guys just want food. You don't want me. And, but then it's like, I do that all the time on our, you know, subconsciously, you do it all the time. 100% that battle. Yeah, you feel like so grateful. You have a moment where a prayer is answered or, you know, you feel the presence of God. And then you feel so grateful. And literally two days later, you're like, pissed off about something else. Like, oh, God, help me out about this thing. That's human nature. Yeah. Yeah. There's like a, there's, there's like a story. So when, when, when Moses sets like the Israelites free, God, like, let's them basically pillage Egypt and they get all this gold. Yep. And then they, they get out and Moses is like, all right, I'm going to go on top of this mountain and meet God. I'll be right back. They go up and the gold that God literally gave them, they're like, he's, he's taken too long. Aaron, build us a golden calf. Everything's worshiped 500 golden calves and then slavery multiple times. You would think after the third golden calf, they'd be, you know, sick and tired. Right. Well, and that's another good example of just the craziness of human nature is, oh, you guys were brought out of slavery. You literally saw Moses part the red sea. And what, like three weeks later, you guys are worshiping the gold calf. It's been wild. If you think about it, it's pretty wild, but it's true to how human beings actually are. We're never quite satisfied. We're always a little needy. And, you know, there, there is no, like what I always try to remind myself, both for my own sake, but also for my kids, there's no like light switch where the light switch goes on and that's it. Okay. For everybody else, you have to keep on flipping the light switch back on because, you know, gravity, nature, the troubles of the world are constantly trying to flip it off. Hey, quick pause. Most people never go deeper in their Bible because they don't know where to start. It feels like you need seminary just to get past the surface so you don't even try that's actually what our sponsor logos fixes. And if you've never heard of it, it's not just another Bible app. It's a full study library, commentaries, original languages, the voices of the church, all in one place, and actually easy to use. So when you hit a verse, you don't understand, you're not stuck guessing or trusting whatever pops up first online. This isn't the internet answering you. It's the church answering you. You pick a passage, ask your question, and it gives you a real pathway instead of a wall. You start seeing connections you probably never catch on your own and it's not a shortcut past the work. It's a companion for the work. And here's the part that I'm pumped about. We built the Bryce Crawford Study Bundle and it's basically my personal study library, 61 books, I handpicked the ones I'm actually reaching for when I'm studying evangelizing or answering questions that are extremely hard. On their own, those books run about nine hundred and eleven dollars, you're going to get all 61 books for 89.99 right around 90% off. Start your exclusive 60 day free trial and grab the bundle at logos.com/brice. That's logos.com/brice links in the description. So I want to know about this because you've talked before in the past about like struggling with your temper and stuff like that, which is so wild to think about because you're such a gentle human and really kind. So like what was that like navigating? I'm the same way. I get frustrated, you know, especially driving an LA. Like it's genuinely like we'll test your character seriously. We'll test your character. What was that journey like navigating that struggle? Like did you go to therapy or was it just community church? Like what helped you? Yeah, I mean, so I did go to therapy once or twice. I just found talking to a stranger about my feelings. One, the feeling of wallowing it. I didn't like that. And too, it just was an uncomfortable experience for me. So it was definitely something that I just had to work on, you know, with myself, my friends, you know, spiritual leaders, my wife. I mean, you know, I'd say like, it's not, it's a constant battle, right? I mean, I would say the way in which like, you know, I have four kids and every parent will tell you, sometimes kids just do things. It's like, what is going on? I mean, it's literally last night. We had a dinner here with some foreign heads of state. We're talking about very important international problems. And my six-year-old, who's just started his first day at school, he comes down stairs. I made, I've run a request. I was like, buddy, I have all these people here for dinner, just be good tonight, no screaming. So he comes down, stands right there, and then your audience can't see it. But on the other side is the dining room where I'm with like four foreign dignitaries and just starts screaming at his mom up the stairs and says, I'm not going to go to bed. And I'm not, and I'm just, you know, in my heart, I'm like, oh my god, this is so frustrating, right? So it's, it's a constant struggle. But last night, you know, I, I set a little prize at Lord, helped me handle this with patience. I put my napkin down. I said, guys, give me 30 seconds, duty calls. I woke, I walked over and had a rational conversation with him. But I mean, I'm, people are imperfect, right? Sometimes I'll walk over and tell him, like, get your butt up stairs and, you know, like, that's the nature of being a parent is sometimes you're perfect or not perfect. Sometimes you do the right thing. Sometimes you don't do the right thing. And for, for me, I would say where I felt like my temper was the worst is when I started dating Usha, and I grew up, like, in a, in a pretty rough household, a little bit of abuse, which is a lot of chaos. And so, like she grew up very middle class immigrant family, you know, rational discussions over disagreements. That's not how we did it in my family. We would fight and yell and holler. And that's how we did things. And so just the natural inclination whenever we had a disagreement, either to just kind of give her the stiff arm and walk out and be like, I'm not dealing with this right now, or to like want to fight and yell. Those that, that sort of instinct is something that I had to deal with. And again, it's not for me. It wasn't the light went on. It was a constant process of understanding for me. Why is it that my instinct is fight or flight? Like, how did the way that I grow up actually influence me in a bad way? And then most importantly, just saying little prayers and saying, like, all right, God, what do you want me to do in this moment? And that process, again, I think through grace and through some, some will and will power, you just, for me at least, you just, you know, slowly gets better and better. But it's again, like I said yesterday, it was a struggle. I did good yesterday. I'm sure I'll do bad tomorrow. Yeah. I mean, I don't have kids yet. I got dogs and cat and, you know, all this stuff. So I feel like, you know, I'm yelling at my government, not to eat my other dogs food and, you know, all other stuff. So maybe, maybe one day, I'll, I want the kids. Dogs are good training for kids, man. I feel like we're getting prepared. You know, I want to build a dynasty that you ever just get that. I mean, you have four kids. Absolutely. I mean, you're just like, man, I want to build a dynasty. And you know, go, I think that's, there's like that, that man and me. It's like, yeah, absolutely. You know, you, you, you want to know that the future, but like you've got to stake in the future. And that long after I'm gone, they're going to be little vances running around making their mark on the world. That fills me with like a deep sense of satisfaction. So absolutely. So you, I want to know what the specific moment was for you that kind of gave you that return to faith. Because I mean, you, I mean, your mom struggled with addiction, which is 11 years sober, right? Which is amazing. I've had friends that have lost her life. So, you know, overdosed and stuff like that. So I think that's incredible. Sure. What was the moment just experiencing your life, the ups and downs that was like, I'm coming back to faith. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's hard to say. It's hard to pinpoint a particular moment because for me again, it really was a process. It was, you know, I want to be a better man. I think Christianity is a pathway to being a better man. But how do I want to engage in my faith? I've gotten out of, of practice with prayer. Like I found that even when I started to think about, or at least be curious about the Christian faith, I would sort of sit down and pray. And I'd kind of forgotten how to, like I just lost that vocabulary for talking about about God in that way or talking to God in that way. But one thing, I mean, again, I think we all have our unique virtues and vices. And I think one of the vices that I have is that I can, I can tend to be a little negative about certain things, tend to be pessimistic, right? I can be a glass half empty to kind of guy. So we were actually on a vacation with my nine year old, whether you just heard scream upstairs, he's playing with a sister. He was maybe one years old. And we were one of these old ancient churches we were in in France. And my wife had gone to the bathroom. So like Usch is gone. It's just me and the baby. He's asleep. So I just feel completely alone in this massive church. And then two things happened. So one, I looked up at the stained glass window. And it's like there was sort of, it was a little dusty. And you could see the light shining directly from the stained glass window to the altar. In a way that just it felt again, like God was speaking to me. And I just, I felt the presence of God, I felt like he was speaking to me. And that was very, very profound to me. But I still had this kind of like pessimism. I was like, look at this beautiful church and nobody's here. It's empty. You know, this is the sort of place that would be full all the time, at least with people praying. And I have this feeling that like Christianity might be true, but it's on the decline. And nobody really takes this seriously anymore. And I'm the only person who's even in this church. And you know, I kind of have this like glass half empty moment. And then I sort of heard somebody in the corner of the church. And I saw there was there was a woman who was just kneeling quietly and praying. And I kind of had this moment where it hit me in the face like, well, you're not alone. And maybe you should stop being so negative. And the fact that there's even one person here is enough of a foundation for God to build on. And that that feeling of like, you know, it's, it's like when somebody proves you wrong, it can sometimes it takes a little bit more than if you were right from the beginning. And so that pessimism nobody's here combined with, oh, that person's right there. I just didn't see her. That had a very transformational effect on me. And I actually left that church. And I was like, all right, I'm getting baptized. We're going to take this more seriously. And I got home and that's what I did. That's amazing. I every, every guest that we have on, I love to ask this question. On a scale of one to 10, 10 being absolutely certain, one being not certain at all. How confident are you that you'd go to heaven? Oh, man. That is a tough question. It's high, but it's not 10, right? I mean, it's, it's a, it's a seven or it's an eight. Like, I'm always one of these people who is, is always going to have little doubts. And like, if you'd asked me that question a year ago, probably was like a five or a six. Wow. Wait, why, why the, why the change, like five or six, now seven or eight? Because I'd say the difference is any, and again, I, I all respect to, to God. But, you know, I still occasionally have doubts like, is this actually real? Yeah, right? Yeah. And, you know, maybe that's sort of where I come. So it's not like, if it's real, I feel confident that I've done the things necessary or more importantly, that I have followed what God has told me to do, believe in Jesus Christ. I believe He's my savior. I try to do the things that are, you know, sort of necessary to walk the path of faith. And I think that eventually leads to heaven. But I'm not 100% certain. And I'm always going to be one of those people who has, who has little doubts about it. That's interesting that you mark yourself as an eight because of doubt, because all your people typically, you know, they land on the spectrum of seven or six or whatever. And they say, well, well, because I try to do enough, I mean, I've done some wrong stuff. So I'm like a seven, right? But you're just like, well, I'm an eight, but I have doubts. Whereas I'm like, well, I feel like doubts are normal. I talk about Jesus every day. And I'm like, I'd struggle with my Bible sometimes. I doubt I have a hard time praying. I'm learning to be, you know, a good husband still and a good friend and a good sugar. But I like asking that question because there's a pastor friend of mine who asked that I was at a, at the time he was a pastor friend, but now he's a friend of mine. I was at a conference he was preaching. And he asked the crowd. And I was like sitting there and I was like, I think I'm just a really good question. And what's your answer? Now I would say 10, but not out of it, not out of an ego, but because of what he said, it clicked for me because I said a six because I'm like, I haven't, you know, I've done some bad stuff. And he looked at the crowd and said, if you're like a, you know, anything but a 10, do you think Jesus only died for 60% of your junk? And I was like sitting there and I was like, well, it's a good point. I know I believe that in moment, then he gave this like analogy that if like if I gave you two tickets, courtside to the Lakers game and you scan the tickets in and you win in and you get down, the security is going to stop you and be like, well, maybe not you. They might bring you in there with the secret service, but, you know, the security stops you and they say, why am I going to let you in? You're just going to have a ticket. And the guy would be like, well, where'd you get those tickets? And you'd be like, like, well, Bryce gave them to me, they were a gift. And I just really loved that phrasing because even now, and I ask myself that question so much, just kind of like trying to recenter my heart of going, like God, I don't even wanna have the slightest idea, even if it's a like a false humility on my end, where I'm like, God, I like I haven't done enough for you, where he's like, well, you know, I like the good stuff, but yeah, I'm your ticket, and then that stuff kind of follows. - I think that's a right attitude. That's a, you know, it's a fun question. - Yeah, like obviously it's not about what we've done to deserve it. I think that's very important. Like, Jesus Christ was the is God sacrifice. He is the person who forgives sins. That's very important. I just, you know, there's, you're right, there's a certain humility in the face of doubt where you're like, I feel quite confident that no other religions are true. I've thought about a lot of other face, a lot of other religions. But you know, there's always that question where it's like, do you go to, you know, do you take your last breath and nothing is on the other side? And that's my question. And again, I feel more confident today that God exists than I have, probably at any other point in my life. But I just try to have some humility about what I don't know for sure. - I think that's why I say an eight, not a ten. But you're right, it's not about us. It's ultimately about him. - Yeah, I've always just loved that question. It's such a fun one, it's a fascinating question. - And it's fun to ask like the non-believers that we talk to, you know, because they don't understand that aspect of the gospel. Where it's like you and I can see and go, well, yeah, I like he paid the price. They're like, yeah, what, Jesus, like why don't I need Jesus? You know, I'm like a four and God. - You know what I mean? They might say that it's like, well, you know, it's always fun to gauge. So I gotta ask this. You met Pope Francis on the Easter. And then the very next day he passed away. - That's right. What was that experience like? - That was wild, man. So, there's a little bit of background there 'cause he was sick at the time. - Yeah. - But, you know, I was in town. We actually mainly were in town because we were taking an official visit to go to India. And you can't fly directly to India and we were going over Easter weekend. And so I was like, well, you know, like what's a good halfway place to stop? Where we can sort of do some other official business just to break up the flight. And we sort of settle on Rome. We have a good friend there, the Italian Prime Minister and some things to work on. We were sort of very focused on a couple of international issues there that the Italians were helping us with. So we decided to stop there. Then a great year in Rome over Easter Sunday. What a cool place to be. So, I was actually at the Vatican getting a tour of the Vatican, I believe on Saturday. And I sort of assumed that I wouldn't see the Pope. But there was a weird diplomatic ritual going on where it's almost like they didn't want me to feel insulted because the Pope wouldn't see me. And I'm like, well, guys, the Pope is very sick. I don't, like I'm, anybody knows me. I'm just not very formal about this stuff. Like my attitude is, oh, if the Pope has a stomach ache, fine, I'll see you in the next time. Like I'm not, I don't get weird about these different nice of these. But a bishop pulled me aside on Saturday and basically said, hey, like the Pope really wants to say hello. We don't know exactly when it's gonna be. But if you would, just like keep your phone on you and we'll find a time. And so anyway, the next day is Easter Sunday. And I'm getting ready with the kids. I think we're having breakfast and I get a text message from that bishop. Basically says, hey, the Pope would like to see you. And then my staff has to figure out all the stuff about moving me and secret service. So anyway, I go and see him. And one, it was very interesting because one of my staff members is very devout Catholic. And I'm very devout Catholic, but a lifelong Catholic and meets the Pope and starts crying. And I didn't have that same, you know, I just, the emotional connection to the Pope was different. I think partially because I'm relatively new to the faith. But you know, he was a very sweet man. He was very kind. You know, there were some conservative Christians and some conservative Catholics. And I'm obviously conservative Christian, who didn't like certain things that Pope Francis did or said, I always just thought he was an interesting guy. And even when I disagreed with him, I kind of, the things that I disagreed with him on, I thought were fascinating. And anyway, we met, we talked for a little bit. He told me that he prayed for me and the children. He gave the kids these like really, really sweet Easter Presidents. We still have, we still have them upstairs in this house. And then I said, I said goodbye. I told him I prayed for him every day, which I did. And yeah, we landed in India and did sort of arrival ceremony and then my staff told me that he'd passed away. - Wow. - Yeah. - Wow, do you, do you feel like that was one of those, I don't know, another God coincidences that you got to meet him right before? - I do, I don't know what it means. - Yeah, me, I would know what it means to you. I don't have a good name. I thought a lot about this, I'm one of the last people to meet the Pope and then the new Pope comes, obviously an American, an American Pope. I thought a lot about how to interpret it or what the meaning is. But sometimes you don't have to have all the right answers. God is just encouraging you to ask the right questions. And I thought a lot about that. And what's interesting is my kids were very affected by it. Now they met the Pope, they obviously knew that he gave him Easter presents, some chocolate eggs, they were very excited about, but they were very affected by it. And it's interesting, I think it's the first time in particular one of my kids, the first time I had ever seen him actually genuinely sad about hearing somebody that had died was Pope Francis. - Wow, why do you think that was? - I think it's a combination of one, he felt personally affected by it because he was there while it was happening. - And two, it's just an age thing. When you tell, I mean, I think every kid develops differently, but when you tell a three or four-year-old that somebody has passed away, their kind of reaction is, they don't even fully understand it. It's in my experience, it's when they're six or seven, when it really hits. And for this kid, it was just the right developmental stage. - I want to know what you think about the end times. And, you know, just because you get a perspective, I mean, you're the vice president of the United States. You know a lot that's going on more than people do. What do you think about the end times? Do you think that we're here? Do you think it's common? - I have, for my entire life, been fascinated by end times prophecy and theology. So the first Bible that I ever got was actually the John Haguey Prophecy Study Bible. I got this when I was probably 10 or 10 years old. And this is like the late 90s, early 2000s, there was a lot of focus in sort of the church on end times. I would say there's less now. I feel like that was. - Do you really feel that way? - Oh man, when I felt like when I was, when I was like 14, 15, it was almost the only thing. Like the left behind stuff. - Left behind stuff was huge. - Well now it's happening again. There was a young guy last year that was like September this day, Christ is going to return. We're all going to get raptured. So he literally vlogged like him selling his car and all of his belongings. And then that day came and then the next day came. And then he apologized and repented. And I was like wow, great, two weeks later just started again. I was like, you've got to be kidding me right now. - How do you, you've never, I follow this guy, but I had a buddy of mine who, so I went to the military out of high school. It's graduated high school in 2003. And I had a really good buddy who was convinced that the rapture was happening in the fall of 2007. And I don't know why that was his time. He's like the rapture going to have him fall in 2007. So we go, both graduate high school in 2003. He goes to Ohio State. I go to the Marine Corps. And this dude has so much credit card debt. I get out of the Marine Corps in 2007 and I'm about to star to Ohio State. And he's just about to graduate. And he's got so much credit card debt. He's like, dude, the rapture's coming. (laughing) - I hope he's been on that Dave Ramsey Beans and Rice. - He's, he, he might. - Since then, since then he's been on the Dave Ramsey Beans and Rice Diet. So anyway, it felt like a much maybe just I'm older, but it felt like a bigger thing. I mean, my view on it is, so one, do I think that we're in the end times? I don't know. And I think that it's probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it. Because there are like things you gotta do. I gotta be good to my wife. I gotta be good to my kids. I have to be, you know, as good of a leader as I can for the United States of America. And so I think that focusing while I'm fascinated by it, I think focusing on it is too much can be very bad. I think that there are like things about the world that make me feel like not shocked if the Antichrist was, was walking among us. But again, I try not to focus too much on it. I think that, you know, I made life as living as an investor in Silicon Valley sort of right before the AI boom really started, I sort of got into politics. And you know, there are things that some of the AI companies you see happening where you feel like there is some really, really weird spiritual dark energy. So like, have you heard this like one of the companies, you know, that develops these models when they go. they get rid of one model and announce a new model. They actually hold a burial ceremony for the old model. And like the employees apparently will cry. - What the heck? - Yeah. - Yeah, that's odd. - That makes me feel very weird. - That makes me feel very uncomfortable. And there's some dark spiritual things going on there. - I mean, people have like AI romantic partners now. - And it's like watching my strange addiction again. We're like, someone's in a relationship with their car. - Yeah. - It's like, it's modified into, you know, an AI robot. - A buddy told me that his wife was using like chat GPT, or maybe it was one of the other ones, but was using that as like a marital counselor. And then sort of had this moment of realization that like this is the worst marital counselor ever because it just tells me that I'm right all the time. There's no real human feedback. It sort of short circuits that social part of our brain where we respond to other people's wants and needs and just completely, like I think that's kind of satanic. - Yeah. - I mean, when you like completely divorce the human from the social element that God made us for. - For sure. - I think that's very bad. So anyway, I'm fascinated by it, but I try not to spend too much time on it. And I am, you know, that there are, there are also obviously there, this is one of the areas where different, you know, like Southern Baptists might look at it a different, little differently than Pentecost souls who might look at it differently from Methodist, who might look at it differently from Catholics. And one of the things that I think that Catholics are very focused on that I think is very good for me is this idea that we are, we don't know when God is coming, but we are commanded to try to as much as possible try to make the world the kind of world that God wants it to be, right? So, and what I mean is where people are encouraged and able to live more virtuous lives where husbands are able to take care of wives, and vice versa, and families are thriving. And, you know, people are sort of building a life not talking to a chatbot, but they're building a life talking to their friends and their family. So I tend to think like the, while I wouldn't be shocked if we are living in the end times, what I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now. And if that leads to the end times, okay? And if that leads to, you know, us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I'm gone, that's great too. I just think you've got to kind of try to have an attitude of the end times may be coming. In fact, they are coming. It's just a question of whether they're coming thousands of years down the road or a few months down the road. And we've got a lot of work to do right now. I got to try to do the work I can right now. - I got to talk to you about this because when I saw this online, I sat on it 'cause I saw a ton of videos about it. So obviously during the Red Cross Day, President Trump tweeted that AI photo of him. - Yeah, of course. - And I'm a Christian. - Yep. - I saw the photo. It made me upset. I'm not gonna lie. It made me upset my personal opinion. I don't know how you think you're adopting me. I mean, he was white robe with red sash on it. And that makes me upset as a Christian. Like as someone, and let me say this, like I have so much respect for all of our leaders. I do, hands down, I understand it's difficult. I appreciate our military, everything in between. But like when I see something like that, it rubs me the wrong way as a Christian. I mean, what do you think about that? - So I hear you and I know that the President didn't mean any offense. Obviously, he loves Christians and politically as built. I think it's done a lot of good for religious liberty and certainly didn't mean anything by it. I mean, I'm biased because I see this from the inside. So it's like did Donald Trump meant to post a meme of himself as God? No, just because I saw it happen in real time. Here's what happens. Like I'll just give you the sort of the background is, the President has a good sense humor. He posts a lot of stuff. And the way that he gets this, like he doesn't sit on social media himself, he's way too busy. What happens is people will bring him stuff and say, hey, hey, look isn't this funny? And then sometimes he'll chuckle at it. And sometimes if he really thinks it's funny, he'll have somebody post it. And that's exactly what happened here. Is somebody brought him something and he saw it. He said, oh, that's funny. He put it on his truth. I, he did not meant to like mock or mimic God. That's just not who he is. And then like he saw people respond negatively to it. He took it down. I just, like I understand what you're saying, but I really don't think the President meant anything by it. And I think that him taking it down was him sort of saying, you know what? This didn't come across the right way. So let's go into the direction. Well, I did appreciate that. I did appreciate that. And I think it, I think it definitely takes, I was just talking to some friends about this in general the other day. Like it takes a lot because we were talking about how, this is actually last time, we were talking about how just in general, right? If we're sitting down with a non-believer in general. Yeah. And we're having like a podcast conversation. But to me, it's like one-on-one because I'm like, oh, I care about their soul. They have this front up where they, if they're not a believer and they feel like that they're in the wrong, they may have this wall up where they just like can't be wrong if that makes sense. That's right. Yeah, I know exactly. So when he took it down, I like, I appreciated it. But yeah, I was just curious. I wanted to know what your thoughts were on that. Yeah, yeah. Now I'm like, I don't even have Instagram on my phone. So I'm kind of like in that. But I try to take a break from social media a little bit. I actually started during Lent last year. I took a break from social media. But I just found that it was like, actually made me much happier. And so I haven't really gone back to it fully. I need to, frankly, because just so much of our work and our life is done on social media. But no. It wasn't like genuinely, it's interesting. He is so fascinated by technology and so fascinated by AI. And so like when people bring him these memes of, oh, look at what this building could look like. Oh, you know, here's you hanging out with like Abraham Lincoln and, you know, Mao Zeytong. He'll be like, oh, that's like us to look at. It actually looks like a photo of me. So it's, it's, I do think that people sort of, there's an interesting dynamic where the media tends to exacerbate the division by treating things that the president does as humorous and saying this is him being serious. So this is him pretending to be Jesus or whatever the case might maybe. And I think in reality, the president is just, he's one of these guys who he's a back slapper. He's a bit of a ballbuster for those of us who work with him. And he just likes to have a good time. And I think that if people appreciated his humor, they would recognize he's not trying to offend people. He's trying to keep things light. - Yeah, I, do you think, do you think because he's so disconnected from AI, he'd be the type of guy where if you brought him an AI photo, he'd think it was real. Like wonder where it was taking. - No, you know, so he actually goes and it's interesting 'cause I thought he goes in the exact opposite direction or he just assumes everything is fake. - Okay, like it has to be like double or triple verify. - I mean, it is actually, I saw a video of a panther coming through a living room window and I thought it was real and it was an AI video. It was really a panther like crashing through that window right there, boom and like coming and attacking this guy in the room. - AI, there was a video that was circulating on X a couple of years ago where it's like this woman jumps off a diving board and it's a very large person. - Yeah. - A person who clearly has some weight problems to put it diplomatically and goes into the pool and then like the whole like building collapses. And like my initial reaction was like, oh my God, that was a very poorly constructed building. And then I realized, oh, I'm an idiot. This is clearly fake. (laughing) - You fell for the AI. - Even I fall and even just for a few seconds. So I'm kind of where the president is now which is like if somebody brings me something, my automatic assumption is that it's BS. Like what was it recently where somebody brought it to me? Oh, it was a photo. So Carolyn Levitt, who's the White House Press Secretary, she's leaving the White House soon. And then Usha and then Steven Miller, who's our Homeland Security Deputy Chief of Staff, very good guy, his wife. They all had babies in like the past couple of months. - Yeah, okay. So somebody posts a photo of Carolyn Usha and Katie with the three babies. And I'm like, oh, that's a really cute photo. And then I'm like, wait a second. Has Usha even seen Carolyn and Katie since like she's had baby ally? And the answer is no, it was totally fake AI photo. So you just mean like what's gonna happen and it's gonna take us a little while to get there? Is it people just have to assume that everything is fake until they verify it? I mean, my, this is hysterical. So like six months ago, a year ago, I love my mom, my mom, I love you. But she sends me some like TikTok video with same AI stuff. And it's about how like JD Anusha are having marital problems. Okay. And so she sends me this video and she's like, "Hey, honey, I just saw this on TikTok." Like, you know, what's going on? I thought everything was great. Like, you Anusha seemed really happy the last time I saw you. And I was like, mom, this is fake. This is like somebody put something on the internet. And you can't just assume that everything on the internet is true. I mean, my mom like, again, God lover, but she has made many Nigerian princes Many thousands of dollars. - I'm like she's one of these people who is the- - There is an entire Nigerian Camelot dynasty that's being funded by my mom. - And it's a security account, eight accounts, same profile picture, different names. - Yeah, yeah, I, so we just got to, to anybody out there, you just got to be careful about the AIS. - My grandma will sometimes send me videos, be like, "Let's look, this person made a video about you and it's like a hate video." - And I'm like, "Did you even watch the video?" - Yeah, like in the thumbnail, I've got like devil horns in the thumbnail. - Exactly. - But you know, she's like trying to be like, "I also eat the, I totally understand." That's hilarious. - We appreciate you. - Appreciate it. - Thanks for your time. I'd love to pray for you. - Please, thank you, home. - Yeah, absolutely. Jesus, thank you so much for today. God, thank you for Vice President Vance and just our conversation. God, thank you for his humility and his sincerity. Lord Jesus, we just ask for continued wisdom and guidance and leadership. We just thank you for the ways that he's serving our country, Lord. God, that we just ask that you continue to guide his steps. Would your word become a lamp to his feet? Consistently, more and more as the days go on. Lord, we love you. We're so grateful for you and Jesus' name. Amen.