Trump And Nixon Victimized By The Deep State, JD Vance Tells CA Crowd

YORBA LINDA, CA — Visiting the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, Vice President JD Vance Thursday reflected on his journey of faith from a Christian to an atheist to a Roman Catholic as part of a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the legacy of the 37th president and the prospects for peace in Iran.

In a conversation with Richard Nixon Foundation President and CEO Jim Byron, Vance mostly talked about his second book, "Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith."

When Byron noted the book had reached No. 1 on the bestseller list, Vance said with a chuckle, "A few weeks ago some reporter asked me, `What's the difference between me and (Gov.) Gavin Newsom. ... People actually bought my book."

Vance recounted how his grandmother defied stereotypes as a pistol- packing woman in Ohio who had weapons stashed throughout her home to always have one within arm's reach as she lost her mobility. But she was also someone with a "very deep religious faith."

When she died, he said, and he went on to the war in Iraq, "I sort of lost my faith."

He said the book was an exercise in meditating on the idea of why people raised in faith drift away.

"If your only connection (to faith) is a loved one ... then you're faith is always going to be at risk when that person passes away," Vance said.

Vance said he went through a know-it-all phase as a young man.

"I was motivated by reason ... by smarts," he said, adding he considered his grandmother then as "superstitious" and called her a "simpleton."

The "arrogance from rejecting my faith" led him to be "much more open to ... crazy ideas," he said.

In college he was lured to the more intellectual arguments about Christianity, which led to his baptism as a Catholic in 2019 when he took St. Augustine's name, he said.

He said to this day, "I cringe when I think of the things I said back then" during his "arrogant atheist phase."

When Byron asked him about the chapter in the book titled, "More Money, More Problems," Vance made a joke about Sean Combs, the rapper who coined the phrase with one of his biggest hits.

"I'm a millennial so I believe that's the wisdom of the great Christian theologian, P. Diddy," Vance joked before pausing and apparently considering the rapper's scandalous trial and conviction for prostitution.

"Who we've found out the last couple of years is not a Christian or a theologian," Vance said with a laugh. "See? I'm going to get in trouble for all kinds of things and that's one of them. That will be an attack ad in the future."

Vance said he was "fascinated by Nixon as a character in history," and added that Nixon was "enjoying a bit of a renaissance" of late.

"If Watergate happened tomorrow it would have been a 12-hour news story," Vance said.

The vice president compared the campaign finance cheating scandal and cover-up Nixon orchestrated that forced his resignation before he was impeached to the investigation of President Donald Trump's campaign's ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

"How the deep state took down Richard Nixon is not all that different from the same people and the same institutions that tried to do the same to Donald Trump in the first administration," Vance said. "There's a parallel."

Vance added, "I've always liked Richard Nixon," who he said was a "political genius."

Vance said the "coalition" that Nixon built that won a landslide victory in 1972 was more like the one Trump did to win in 2024 than what President Ronald Reagan did in 1984.

"Reagan could not have won his landslide in 2024," but Nixon could replicate what he did in 1972 in 2024, Vance said.

Vance said Nixon also got out of the war in Vietnam "out of a position of strength," and accused Trump's critics of "trying to change the mission" Trump had when he started a war in Iran to "destroy" the country's military and prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.

"People say that's great but you should have a different objective," Vance said. "He refuses to give in to that impulse."

He said the Trump administration has achieved what it set out to do.

"It's not over yet, but so far so good," Vance said.

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