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Oh, lord! JD Vance gives another super awkward interview [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-05-23
Vice President JD Vance sat down for an interview with The New York Times’ conservative columnist Ross Douthat, where the noted childless cat lady-hater tried to defend some of the morally repugnant policies his administration has implemented.
The interview took place in Rome earlier this week, shortly after Vance met with the newly elected Pope Leo XIV. Both Vance and Douthat are practicing Catholics, and Douthat spent a considerable amount of time trying to get the vice president to explain how he justified both the morality and legality of the Trump administration’s immigration and deportation policy.
The administration has disregarded federal court decisions, sending hundreds of Venezuelan migrants, among others, to foreign prisons without any regard for their constitutional rights to due process.
Related | Trump administration deports hundreds of immigrants in spite of court
Douthat, who has a history of intellectual and moral ambiguity around the Bush adminstration’s- harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA, does a good job of following the clear logic of criticism of Vance’s support of the clearly inhumane and anti-constitutional deportations of immigrants. It “just seems like you are creating a context where injustice is inevitable, even if your intentions are, you know, are just to bring peace and order to communities along the border or anything else,” Douthat explained. “I understand your point, and making these judgments, if you take the teachings of our faith seriously, they are hard, right? I'm not going to pretend that I haven't struggled with some of this,” Vance said. “I haven't thought about whether, you know, we're doing the precisely right thing. So, so, it's, it's a fair point, and I know that you think you've got me trapped here.” Douthat assured him that this was not his intention. “I'm interested in what politics does to your soul,” he added.
“I think it's a totally fair question,” Vance responded. “So, number one, the concern that you raise is fair, okay?”
Vance then proceeded to blame former President Joe Biden and various activists who made him feel sad- and angry-faced emoji by calling him a xenophobe for his openly xenophobic stances on immigration. He also criticized his detractors for failing to stop the flow of migrants into the country, seemingly forgetting that his “boss,” as he likes to call President Donald Trump, torpedoed a bipartisan border bill addressing many of these xenophobic concerns, just so that he could campaign on the issue.
Vance then pivoted to peddling evidence-free claims that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father illegally deported to El Salvador, was a MS-13 gang member. Vance attempted to justify the deportation by parsing a federal court order, unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court, that requires his administration to facilitate Garcia’s return.
“Both as a matter of law, most importantly, as the vice president, but also again as a matter of Christian principle. I think this guy was not just a gang member, but a reasonably high-level gang member in MS-13. I think he had engaged in some pretty ugly conduct.”
Roughly nine minutes later, after pivoting to defend Trump’s fantasy of sending American citizens to foreign prisons like the one in El Salvador, Vance had thoroughly muddied all that Catholic talk about his “soul,” and Douthat moved on to talking tariffs.
Just add it to the skyscraper-high pile of reasons everyone hates him.
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