Bulwark Takes - Tim Miller to JD Vance: You're a Hypocrite!

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Tim Miller dives into JD Vance’s jaw-dropping interview with Ross Douthat, calling out the Vice President’s holy-sounding hypocrisy and political gaslighting. From tax cuts for the rich to pre-modern brutality and the Pope’s judgment, Tim dissects Vance’s claims line by line—and exposes the bullshit behind the performance.

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to improve your dog's health, just add a scoop of rough greens. Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bullwork here. And boy, I had to suffer through the vice president, JD Vance, doing an interview with Ross Douthat, the Catholic conservative columnist at the New York Times, just after he met with Pope Leo last weekend. The interview's been out a couple of days, but if you're like me, it's a slog. Some of you probably didn't even want to watch it at all. I did it. It's my job, but I, some of you probably didn't even want to watch it at all. I did it.

It's my job, but I couldn't do it on one sitting. It's an hour. So, I finally made it through and I want to go through some of the highlights with you. And I just really want to talk about my core takeaway, which is that JD Vance is an unbelievable bullshitter. He is just so full of shit and he has so honed his ability to speak on a podcast with this faux authority and with this condescending rejection of any contrary view, even though he's changed all his views in the last five years. And he does so kind of using some highfalutin references and language, and he is caveating everything at the beginning and, you know, preempting questions and responses. It's just, the guy is full of it. And I don't know how you

can just leave a meeting with the Pope. And that not really seem to have even an iota of reflection. Maybe you guys will read it definitely the main. We're going to show you some clips from it. We're going to go through it clip by clip clip, buckle up. The Vice President of the United States speaking about his Catholicism, he's a convert, with Ross Douthat. Here's the first clip. How does being either a Catholic or just a Christian shape your politics? In the sense of just to be specific, what are things that you feel like you believe or care about in politics that are specific to Christianity rather than conservatism, the Republican Party, and so on?

How would your worldview be different if you weren't a Catholic Christian? Well, I think one of the criticisms that I get from the right is that I am insufficiently committed to the capital M market. I think one of the things that I take from my Christian principles and Catholic social teaching specifically, whether you agree with the specific policies of our administration, is look, the market is a tool, but it is not the end state, it is not the purpose of American politics. The purpose of American politics should be to encourage our citizens to live a good life. And part of that is good, dignified work.

Part of that is having a high enough wage that you can support a family. That very much flows through my Catholicism. Okay. So, the open-ended question was, how does being a Christian shape your politics? Fair question from Ross. Ross was actually pretty good throughout all of this. I have some nitpicks I'll get to. You go a lot of ways with that, if you're JD Vance. It's interesting that the first thing that comes to his mind is this kind of self-impression. It's this positioning.

Everything is positioning with him. It's this intra-Republican positioning that, you know, I'm not one of these free market fundamentalists like the other Republicans. It's my faith that's what makes me think the tariffs are good. It's the Christianity in me that makes me more concerned about people having the dignity of work and having a good wage. I mean, to give that answer on the eve of his administration jamming through of his administration jamming through the most regressive tax policy in American history? That takes a lot of gall to be like, boy, my most Christian trait is the fact that I care more about the poor than other Republicans. Well, then why are you jamming through a bill that is going to exacerbate income inequality

at a degree that we've never seen? Why are you jamming through a bill that takes away health care and SNAP benefits from poor people and gives tax breaks to the richest? Like, if you're a big Catholic thing, if the one thing that you come up with when asked an open-ended question about why you're a Catholic is that you aren't one of those market fundamentalist Republicans, well then why haven't you said anything about the fact that the Republicans on a party-line vote are jamming through a bill that is going to make life harder for the working poor. Again, if you are for tax cuts for the rich as a matter

of ideology, I respect that. That's an ethos. If you want to be one of these Mitch McConnell Republicans, that's an ethos. But JD is trying to sell himself here as this kind of almsgiving, concern for the poor, social justice, economics-style Catholic, where's the evidence of it? Like, tariffing China is not that. I guess he would say that he thinks that these policies are going to bring more jobs to the country. And we'll see. I'm open to that. But even if that's true, even if you take the rosiest prediction of the Trump-Vance economic program, they're still taking away Medicaid from poor people. They're still slashing

SNAP. 80% of people that use SNAP are below the poverty line. So if your Catholic-ish-ness is making sure that poor people have a chance for the dignity of work and a good job and a safety net, then why are you cutting it? Again, he's a bullshitter. All right. This one's just a quick clip, but it's gone under my craw. Let's take a look at this one. I really do think that social solidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration

too quickly. And so that's not because I hate the migrants or I'm motivated by grievance. That's because I'm trying to preserve something in my own country where we are a unified nation. And I don't think that can happen if you have too much immigration too quickly. We're going to do a lot on immigration here. But part of the reason that can happen if you have too much immigration too quickly. We're gonna do a lot on immigration here. But part of the reason that he wants, you know, to have more stringent immigration policies is that he wants a unified nation. He wants the common good. He wants the country to come together and he thinks that too much immigration causes,

you know, cultural divisions. Too much immigration causes tensions and frayed edges in a society. Once again, just like on the taxes, let's even make the most generous interpretation of this. Let's say he's right. Let's say that too much immigration to the country has caused some, you know, unnecessary societal tensions and frictions and, you know, making sure that we take care of our own and bring more cohesion to the country is an important value. Well, then how do you explain all of your behavior trying to divide the country, JD

Vance? JD Vance is like the least cohesion oriented politician in history. I mean, he is outflanking Trump half the time. Remember the childless cat ladies? And he's out there insulting every liberal group imaginable. Like his whole thing is, like during this interview several times, he like kind of takes a swipe at New York Times readers. He wasn't, they're going after Harvard. They're going after the media constantly. They're going after the Haitians who are here on TPS. They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. And again, is that the way to get cohesion? Maybe to say, hey, guys, you know, we should have changed up the mix of our immigration, and we took in too many Haitians too fast. Okay. But to accuse people that are part of a society of being pet, pet

cannibals. Do you think that created cohesion in that community? And he's just so full of shit. Once again, right here, we're going to show a question from Ross. It's kind of a premise of a lot of the rest of this discussion. Let me propose a theory of sort of papal interventions in politics, which is that it might be useful to think of issues where presidents end up in some kind of tension with the papacy as zones of temptation for people like yourself. Meaning that whatever the Pope says about immigration, yes, it doesn't imply that you need to change your general policy overnight, but it means that you need to be aware that this is a zone where you're exposed to

a certain kind of partisan temptation. What do you think about that? Okay. So I wanted to air all of that. I cut a big portion of it. When I said I had some nitpicks about Ross, Ross does some questions that are like three minute long questions. It's like, we've got your point.

You have a limited amount of time with the vice president. I wish you would have been pressing the vice president a little bit harder rather than bloviating. Again, I feel like I can make that criticism as an interviewer. I have my own weaknesses as an interviewer. That's stuff I'm working on. If you're off, you're watching this, I'd reflect on the fact that in this case, you asked a three-minute long question that could have been like 40 seconds. It was a good question, actually, whether the immigration issue is a zone of temptation for him. And to think about areas where he is crossways with the Pope, maybe that doesn't mean that the Pope is right, but maybe it means that

he's tempted to kind of make a political argument, you know, for partisan interests. And he should think twice about whether the Pope has a point. Essentially Ross's question, not a bad question. We're going to get back to the zone of temptation in a second. So just stick with that. But JD goes off on a long tangent where he like takes a totally unnecessary swipe at Joe Biden, who wasn't part of the question, basically calling him Dementia Joe, another very thoughtful thing to do after you just saw the Pope. And then he takes a lot of shots at open borders, at me, I guess, at the liberals and open borders people. He doesn't trust their witness, which is kind of an evangelical word. I know he's a Catholic

convert. Sometimes he dips back into his old ways. It's not really a popular word in Catholicism. We don't really, cradle Catholics don't really use witness to describe our faith. But anyway, he says, he doesn't trust my witness. Not me personally, but the witness of people like me, because we didn't think the border was a problem until he doesn't, our criticisms aren't valid, which is, you know, again, a logical fallacy. Plenty of people who, you know, can, can, people can criticize you on a topic with merit, even if they were wrong about a related topic. But anywho, before we get to JD's response on the actual question of the zones of temptation, which takes a while to get to, a while, I'm doing you all a favor. I do want to point out another, you know, one of the straw men that he puts up and just

respond to that really quick. You know, the one thing I'd love for the American media to do a little bit more is really go to a migrant community where you have, say, 60% legal immigrants and 40% illegal immigrants. The level of chaos, the level of violence, the level of, I think, truly pre-modern brutality that some of these communities have gotten used to, whatever law was written, I think it vests us with the power to take very serious action against this. It's bad. It's bad. It's worse than people appreciate. Okay. So in this lengthy response, part of the reason why he's talking about why they need to take these extreme measures, such as the Alien Enemies Act, is because of the pre-modern brutality. Pre-modern brutality.

We have, apparently in America, there are communities where there's stone age level brutality happening with immigrants and legal immigrants and illegal immigrants. I don't know what would be a pre-modern level of brutality. Maybe they're killing each other with swords. They're sword fighting. I guess we mentioned the pet cannibalism earlier. Does he think there's cannibalism happening in one of these places? Are people having their heads chopped off? Is there genital mutilation? Like what is he talking about? Like where there's pre-modern brutality happening in this country somewhere in these immigrant communities? Where? Like what? Can we get some video? Is this kind of like how Trump showed the video of stuff happening

in the Congo to the president of South Africa? Sure, there are brutal things happening. There are crimes being committed by immigrants and Native Americans and white Americans and Asian Americans and black Americans. Yeah, there's really bad stuff happening in a huge country of ours at any moment, but there's a community somewhere out there with pre-modern brutality. Ross, just credit follows up on this. Let's watch that. Right.

Shouldn't this sort of barbaric medieval landscape that you're describing show up in violent crime statistics? Oh, sometimes no, because the people who are most victimized by this, Ross, they're not running to the FBI, they're not running to the local police. Okay. But certainly, I mean, if you look at, I mean, hell, look at the number of people dying of fentanyl overdoses. Again, just go substantively, you know, qualitatively, you go to these communities and you see what

they're dealing with. I really think that we underappreciate just how violent, you know, these cartels are and how much, you know, they've made life, I think, pretty unbearable for frankly, a lot of native-born American citizens, but also a lot of legal American migrants, especially those along the southern border. Good follow-up, Ross. Shouldn't this be showing up in crime statistics? J.D.'s reply, in some cases, no. People who are victims of pre-modern brutality at the hands of immigrants aren't even going to the cops. Nobody even knows about it. It's just, it's just getting, I guess they're

getting thrown into the desert. And I don't know, maybe the coyotes are eating the dead immigrants. Eventually, if there was pre-modern brutality happening, yeah, it would show up in the crime statistics, actually. JD Vance, if we had a war zone where we had an invasion happening in a town here in America, that would make the news, okay? People would cover that. And then, again, clever, he's just such a bullshitter. Clever JD, just on the spot lies, right? Just this kind of spotlight. No, this doesn't show up in crime statistics because people don't report it. That is something you will need to confess next time you go to church, just kind of spot lies, right? Just this like kind of spot lie. No, this doesn't show up in Christ's physics because people don't report it. That is something you will need to confess next time you go to church. Just kind of spot lies like that. Somebody that was a Catholic and lied sometimes as a kid to my mother and would have to confess it to the priest.

It then goes on with this like, now it's like a hard pivot to fentanyl. That's like, okay, well, that's a different thing though. The fentanyl question. All right. Like fentanyl issue is real. I fentanyl deaths are going down. We've made a lot of progress on this. But like that you said that we had to do this because there were communities where pre-modern levels of brutality were happening. And then when asked for some details on that, you pivot over here to fentanyl, which is a totally different thing. It's a clever and it's a clever Yale debate club move, but it's not, it's not really a reflection of things that are true, which is kind of important when once again, you just met with the pope,

you're trying to say things that are true, I would think. Okay. Up next, this clip is going to be kind of long. So you can fast forward two and a half minutes if you can't take it and catch me on the other side. As I mentioned, Ross asks very, very long questions. So he could tighten that up a little bit in the future. Pretty good on that follow up there on the crime statistics. Other questions a little long. Let's check this out.

It's a little bit more on that zone of temptation concept that Ross is quite fond of. So to get, I guess, to get quickly to my idea of a zone of temptation here, right, for you. Well, so what you're describing is, again, you and I both live through the Bush presidency, right? Yes. And there are elements of what you might call a kind of war on terror mentality. Yeah.

Vis-a-vis that you're taking vis-a-vis the cartels or people associated with the cartels or people allegedly associated with gangs and cartels. That seems to me similar to the approach taken to anyone associated with Islamic terrorism and so on in the aftermath of September 11th. And again, you remember and I remember that in more than a few cases, right? This ended up with situations where the US was taking people into custody and remanding them to black sites and so on, who turned out unsurprisingly, not to be number one al-Qaeda terrorists, right? Yes.

And to the extent that it is possible and it is somewhat difficult for the media to do this, but to the extent that it's possible for the media to examine the kind of figures and individuals that you guys have been trying to essentially remand to prison in El Salvador, right, without extensive legal process. It just seems like this system is ripe for war on terror style abuses where you are going to be sending people to prison in El Salvador that advertises itself as a terrible place. And some of those, one, some of those people are probably going to be innocent. Two, some of them are going to be people who have committed a crime,

who have some kind of gang affiliation, but who under normal American law, non-war time law, would end up going to jail for six months or a year or something. And again, they're gonna disappear potentially into a system for a decade or more or something like that. And that just seems like you are creating a context where injustice is inevitable, even if your intentions are just to bring peace and order to communities along the border or anything else. Well, look, first of all, I understand your point.

And making these judgments, if you take the teachings of our faith seriously, they are hard. I'm not going to pretend that I haven't struggled with some of this, that I haven't thought about whether we're doing the precisely right thing. Okay, the answer goes on from here, but I just want to stop right there in a second, because that's the only sign that he indicates that he has had some reflection. Making these choices are hard, I've struggled. Like, for a second I was kind of like, oh, okay, maybe JD has struggled with this. And maybe, maybe, you know, he, like, there are these competing interests, there's the Catholic

humanitarian interest in him and the wanting to care about every human because every life is precious. But there's also this desire for social cohesion and borders and sovereignty, and there are areas where they conflict and he's struggled. But then let's kind of go on to the rest of the question and kind of see whether we think he's actually reflecting. So, it's a fair point and I know that you think you've got me trapped here. I don't think I have. No, I'm not.

All right. Okay, another quick quote there, but he's like, this is again, classic, he's a bailout move. He says he's struggled, he's telling you that he's struggled, there's no evidence that he has, there's no evidence he's actually reflected in any way, at least so far. And he's like, oh, you got me trapped. You think you got me trapped. And this is, again, it's just this stall of like, this is a man who is sitting there. He knows that the policy that he's putting forth with regards to immigrants and migrants in this country is the barbaric thing, actually. The pre-modern brutality that is being exhibited in our country right now is what our government

is doing to the Venezuelans that they've sent to Cicote and El Salvador. And he knows this. Since he was like, oh, you think you got me trapped? And then he's trying to, oh, I'm going to Josh, you're just giving me shit. This is all like, we are stalling, we are bobbing and weaving, we are bullshitting. All right, a little bit more. Again, this is a lot of JD, apologies. You can fast forward a minute and a half if you wanna just get back to me. Let me be perfectly honest. I'm not interested in having you trapped. We're having a conversation in Rome as a journalist and a vice president, but also as two Catholics, right? I'm giving you shit, Ross. Trust me. To be clear, I think it's a totally fair question. I'm interested in what politics does to people, to your soul, right? Yes, of course.

So number one, the concern that you raise is fair. Okay, the concern that you raise is fair. There has to be some way in which you're asking yourself as you go about enforcing the law, even to your point against some very dangerous people, that you're enforcing the law consistent with, the Catholic Church's moral dictates and so forth. And also to be clear, I'm the vice-

And also, well, and also, I mean, after that, pitched to your soul- And American law, and American law- And American law and basic principles of- Frankly, most importantly, American law. But we're talking about, you know, we're in Rome, and so that's why I brought up the Catholic faith part of it. Yeah, but the American flag is positioned behind you. That's sure, that's sure.

So here's the thing. So with the caveat that I'm the Vice President of the United States and I am hardly an expert in every single edge case or every single case that has become a viral sensation or that people have criticized us over, but I am pretty well read on some of the cases. So, that's the best you're gonna get. He's not familiar with every edge case

that the media obsesses over. Okay, remember how he struggled? Two seconds ago, he was saying he struggled. And now it's like, well, I can't trust anything that these fucking media libs say. So it doesn't feel like you're struggling that much. He's claiming simultaneously that he's not familiar with every edge case and every viral case

that's out there, but he has looked into some of them. But he goes on to like the only one he ever brings up is Kilmar Brego Garcia, which has his complications. There are 250 some odd other people that he sent to prison with no due process rights, with no access to their family, no access to lawyers. And so you would wonder, this is my question, just go ahead and let's clip this, let's turn the TikTok camera on. Mr. Vice President, what are the other edge cases that you've asked about? Could you please bring us the evidence that you've learned about some of these other so-called viral cases of Venezuelan migrants that you have kidnapped and sent to a foreign gulag. You say you've struggled with

this. You say you've asked immigration officials and tried to look into it. Well, what have you learned? Please share it. You are a public servant. Please share it with us. Is Neri the guy with the autism awareness tattoo who is in this country working at a bakery doing public service, volunteering at an autism center? Was he also a secret gangbanger on the side? Have you learned that? Because Neri has gotten a lot of interest. You said you've looked into all these cases or you said you've looked into some of these

cases. Of course, Andre Hernandez Romero. Have you looked into this case of the makeup artist whose Instagram I have looked through every single picture on to try to look for anything, any Rosetta Stone about what could have happened? Have you looked into that case? Could we learn more? Was he a makeup artist to the gang bangers? What have you learned, Vice President? I'd like to know because you said to Ross Delfat that you have struggled with this and that you have gone to immigration officials to learn more. Tell us what you've learned about these other cases. Let's see. Show the receipts. Because I'll tell you this, I don't believe you.

You're bullshitting through this whole interview, and I don't believe you. When I believe you when you say that you're not familiar with every edge case and what the media obsesses over, because you've decided that the media is bad, and so if you're getting attacked, you don't need to actually reflect on this because you don't care about their witness. That is the truth. I watched this hour-long interview you did some parts several times and I've seen the parts where you are being honest. And what you're honest about is saying that you do not trust the witness of people criticizing you and you do not care if you have entered a zone of temptation where you are crossways with the pope that you just met. So one more clip to, I think, demonstrate the evidence that I'm correct on this.

I still have an obligation to think about these cases. And I'll tell you, you know, a lot of times I'll read about these cases and I'll reach out to the people who are enforcing immigration law and I'll try to find out what exactly is going on. I haven't asked every question about every case, but the ones where I have asked questions and I try to get to the bottom of what's going on, I feel quite comfortable what's happened. I feel quite comfortable with what's happening. Good. Good. I hope your priestess, I hope the Pope does. I hope your soul does.

You feel quite comfortable with what's happening. Well, I don't. And I think that this is, I think that if JD is truthful about anything in this interview, if he has any actual faith, if he has a soul in there, if he has a Catholic teaching that he's trying to live up to, I think that when he learns about what he's done, when he sees the evidence about what he's done someday, he will not feel quite as comfortable and his soul will not be stirred. And I don't know, maybe that day will come after when he's judged by someone else. Because one thing, Ross, that didn't ask JD Vance, I think was strange that he asked Chris Murphy for some reason, is whether he fears God's judgment. And if I was JD Vance, I would fear God's judgment because he's full

of shit. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that as much as I didn't. We will see you back here later. Subscribe to the feed, tell your friends. We'll see you soon.