JD Vance, the US vice-president, says he is ‘focused on trying to do God’s work’ Credit: Getty Images / Saul Loeb
Show biography
Published 03 September 2026 12:34pm BST
JD Vance has claimed that the antichrist may be “walking among us”, and said the world may be living through the “end times”.
The US vice-president made the comments during a podcast interview with Bryce Crawford, 22, an evangelical Christian with more than a million YouTube followers.
While promoting his new book Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, Mr Vance said he was “trying to focus on doing as much of God’s work as possible”.
He said: “Do I think that we’re in the end times? I don’t know. I think that it’s probably bad for me spiritually to focus too much on it. There are things about the world that make me feel not shocked if the antichrist was walking among us.
“I tend to think that 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 that if that leads to the end times, OK.”
The vice-president was speaking to evangelical Christian and YouTube star Bryce Crawford, 22 Credit: YouTube
Literal readings of the “end times” hold that an antichrist will rise to power, turn against God and persecute believers before Jesus returns.
Asked another question on the “end times”, Mr Vance described a friend whose wife had turned to an AI chatbot for counselling, only to realise it agreed with everything she wrote.
Literal readings of the “end times” hold that an antichrist will rise to power, turn against God and persecute believers before Jesus returns.
Asked another question on the “end times”, Mr Vance described a friend whose wife had turned to an AI chatbot for counselling, only to realise it agreed with everything she wrote.
He said: “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.
“I think that’s kind of satanic. When you completely divorce the human from the social element that God made us for, I think that’s very bad.”
Mr Vance was briefly an evangelical Protestant as a teenager, went through a period as an atheist, and was later baptised and confirmed as a Catholic in 2019.
JD Vance met Pope Francis at the Vatican the day before the pontiff died Credit: Getty Images / Vatican Media / Vatican Pool
Since converting, he has spoken openly about how his faith shapes his politics, citing the Catholic concept of “ordo amoris”. He said the doctrine, which he said influenced his views on immigration, showed people owed greater moral duty to their family and community than the wider world.
However, his interpretation was criticised by the late Pope Francis, who wrote in a letter that “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups”.
Mr Vance and the pontiff had a brief meeting in the Vatican one day before Francis’s death on April 21, 2025, at the age of 88.
The vice-president’s latest podcast appearance is not the first time he has invoked anti-Christian or satanic forces in public comments. In March, he told another conservative podcast that UFOs were “demons”, rather than extraterrestrial life.
Mr Vance has repeatedly said Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire, pushed him to rethink his faith and consider a life in politics. Mr Thiel went on to become one of the biggest financial backers of both Mr Vance’s and Donald Trump’s campaigns.
Last year, Mr Thiel delivered four lectures in San Francisco in which he warned that Armageddon was drawing near and mused on who the antichrist might be.
Some on the Right who broke with Mr Trump after he shared an AI-generated image depicting him as a Jesus-like figure, have suggested the US president himself is the antichrist.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican representative, described the image, which Mr Trump later deleted, as: “More than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit.”
Clint Russell, host of the Right-wing Liberty Lockdown podcast, said at the time: “In 18 months, I went from hesitantly voting for Trump to thinking there’s a decent chance he’s the antichrist.”
Mr Vance defended Mr Trump during the podcast, saying: “Obviously he loves Christians, and politically has done a lot of good for religious liberty, and certainly didn’t mean anything by it ... He did not mean to mock or mimic God. That’s just not who he is.”
Since converting, he has spoken openly about how his faith shapes his politics, citing the Catholic concept of “ordo amoris”. He said the doctrine, which he said influenced his views on immigration, showed people owed greater moral duty to their family and community than the wider world.
However, his interpretation was criticised by the late Pope Francis, who wrote in a letter that “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extends to other persons and groups”.
Mr Vance and the pontiff had a brief meeting in the Vatican one day before Francis’s death on April 21, 2025, at the age of 88.
The vice-president’s latest podcast appearance is not the first time he has invoked anti-Christian or satanic forces in public comments. In March, he told another conservative podcast that UFOs were “demons”, rather than extraterrestrial life.
Mr Vance has repeatedly said Peter Thiel, a tech billionaire, pushed him to rethink his faith and consider a life in politics. Mr Thiel went on to become one of the biggest financial backers of both Mr Vance’s and Donald Trump’s campaigns.
Last year, Mr Thiel delivered four lectures in San Francisco in which he warned that Armageddon was drawing near and mused on who the antichrist might be.
Some on the Right who broke with Mr Trump after he shared an AI-generated image depicting him as a Jesus-like figure, have suggested the US president himself is the antichrist.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Republican representative, described the image, which Mr Trump later deleted, as: “More than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit.”
Clint Russell, host of the Right-wing Liberty Lockdown podcast, said at the time: “In 18 months, I went from hesitantly voting for Trump to thinking there’s a decent chance he’s the antichrist.”
Mr Vance defended Mr Trump during the podcast, saying: “Obviously he loves Christians, and politically has done a lot of good for religious liberty, and certainly didn’t mean anything by it ... He did not mean to mock or mimic God. That’s just not who he is.”
Mr Crawford’s other podcasts include sensationalist headlines such as “Preaching the gospel in Chicago’s deadliest neighbourhood” and “Debating a ‘gay’ pastor”.
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment