Preview:

Vice President JD Vance: Certainly everybody in the media presumes that I’m just going to run for President, right? I’m the Vice President, the President’s term limited, so that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going for President. When we do make that decision, the first and most important thing is going to be, can a campaign be consistent with the duties that I owe to my kids and to my family?

End of Preview

John Fuller: That’s Vice President JD Vance thinking aloud about what’s best for his children and family. And you’ll hear more of what he had to say today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Today we have a great conversation, Jim, that you had with the Vice President just a few days ago in Washington, D.C. What was that experience like?

Jim Daly: It’s always interesting when you’re interviewing a high government official, just the security you have to go through is amazing, and thankfully we were there at the Naval Observatory in his home, in his living room there, and it was a great setting to be able to have this discussion.

And, you know, I don’t really care if it’s an R or a D. I want to get to know person, what makes them tick, spiritually where they’re coming from. And then talking about the policies that help families because that’s what I believe we’re all about here at Focus on the Family.

It was an energizing uh, discussion I felt and I always enjoy that, especially with someone like JD Vance. He’s a very bright person who came from a very difficult background.

John: Mm-hmm.

Jim: And uh, we basically talked about some of the book that’s just come out called Communion. And it really does give an account for his life growing up, very difficult. And then uh, falling into atheism as a Marine and then coming out of that and realizing that faith is a central part of what he needed, and he turned to the Catholic faith. And uh, I just uh, really appreciate his openness, his honesty, and what you’re about to hear.

John: Yeah, and I’m looking forward to this, and by the way, we’d like to remind you to stay informed on all the issues that we’re facing in our world today, in our country um, and facing the family.

You can sign up for a free subscription to our Daily Citizen newsletter. It’s an email that will keep you informed on things you need to know from a Christian perspective. Sign up for free on our website.

Let’s go ahead and hear now Jim’s conversation with Vice President JD Vance on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

Jim: Mr. Vice President, it’s great to have you on Focus on the Family.

Vice President Vance: Thank you, it was good to be with you.

Jim: Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you for the many mentions that you’ve given to Focus-

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: … in both the Senate time and then as Vice President.

Vice President Vance: Yeah, yeah, James Dobson was, he was very influential to me

Jim: Now you had to be a young man when that, when you were listening to him.

Vice President Vance: I was. I actually remember talking to one of my best friends’ moms about it because she was kind of surprised. I was 14 or 15, and she was surprised that I would listen to him. He would go on like Larry King Live too-

Jim: Uh-huh.

Vice President Vance: … and do things like that. And I just thought, you know, he was a very wise guy. He clearly had a lot of interesting thoughts about the world, and I just always naturally gravitated towards him for whatever reason, even as teenager.

Jim: I think, you know, I have a similar feeling toward him, and you know, I think that father hole may have been part of that for both of us.

Vice President Vance: Sure. Yeah.

Jim: You know, you and I share similar backgrounds.

Vice President Vance: That’s right.

Jim: Not exactly the same, but I lost my mom at nine and my dad at 11-

Vice President Vance: Oh wow.

Jim: … and lived with my brother through high school.

Vice President Vance: Mm.

Jim: That was a roller coaster ride.

Vice President Vance: I bet it was.

Jim: But for you, um, what was that early childhood experience? Where were you at? What, what was taking place?

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: Your dad, your mom, et cetera.

Vice President Vance: Yeah, so it was pretty chaotic. So, you know, I was born in southwestern Ohio. And, and like a lot of people in southwestern Ohio, my family had come from eastern Kentucky. So sort of coal mines, the deep poverty of Appalachia. And my family moved to southwestern Ohio because that’s where the steel mill jobs were.

And so I was raised by my grandparents mostly because my, my mom struggled with addiction. And so it was sort of in and out of my life, very sweet person. She’s been clean and sober for 11 years, but particularly those first 10 or so years of my life was just a lot of chaos. Bit of a revolving door of father figures you know, stepdads, boyfriends, people who would come in and out. And my own dad was, was again, he was a very good man, but he had actually given me up for adoption when I was five years old.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: And so, he was just not in the picture really at all from the time I was five until I was 12. And then, you know, amazingly, I think by the grace of God, a lot of things happened when I was 12 or 13. My grandfather unfortunately passed away. My father then re-entered my life. My, my grandmother, sort of, where I’d been bouncing around a little bit, I decided to just go and live with her full time which gave me some stability. So even though things were a little chaotic and unconventional, I did have that rock, and that rock was my grandmother.

Jim: Yeah, and in that context, when you look at your life-

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: … look at what has happened, you become Vice President.

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: And that’s crazy.

Vice President Vance: It’s amazing, man. It’s crazy.

Jim: I mean, when you look at it-

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: … how?

Vice President Vance: You know, I don’t know, maybe God just always had a plan. Uh, maybe I was lucky. It’s probably a little bit of a combination of both things. But I, I do think, you know, I was talking to somebody who’s a friend of mine and he was fascinated just by my story.

Jim: Uh-huh.

Vice President Vance: And this was before I ever got into politics. But he said that he actually talked to a child psychologist. And that person said, the thing that is always common among kids who come from rough backgrounds but are able to make something of themselves, the thing that’s always common is that they have one person in their life, whether it’s a teacher, an aunt or an uncle, a grandparent, who is their anchor. And for me, that really was my Mamaw. She was, you know in some ways, a very devout Christian, in other ways a very unconventional woman.

Jim: (laughs).

Vice President Vance: She, she cursed like a sailor. Um, you know, I’ve to this day never quite gotten rid of my foul mouth-

Jim: (laughs).

Vice President Vance: … because I was raised by a woman who would drop the F-bomb all the time.

Jim: (laughs).

Vice President Vance: But she also, you know, she, she would read the Bible, pray multiple times per day. She was also very tough. You know, I remember when I was 12 or 13 years old, and I was hanging out in the neighborhood with a kid who was sort of known to be getting into drugs. And she said, “JD, if you ever hang out with that person again, then I’m going to run him over with my car. And nobody will ever find out about it.”

Jim: And you believed it.

Vice President Vance: And I believed it, and because it was Mamaw, you know people just believed her, and they recognized that she had this toughness to her and they were afraid of her. I mean, people were legitimately terrified of my grandmother. She had 19 handguns when she died. All of them were loaded and stacked around the house. So she was a tough old bird.

Jim: Oh yeah.

Vice President Vance: And because of that, she was able, I think, to direct my pathway in the right way.

Jim: And through the high school years, I mean you, were you going in and out of a commitment to the Lord? I mean describe what it was like and then Marine Corps-

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: … just build that in because you really walked away from anything faith-wise-

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: … right?

Vice President Vance: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, so, you know, because Mamaw, and I realized this in hindsight, that Mamaw was my attachment to my faith. So, she loved the Lord. We would read the Bible all the time. We would pray a lot, but we didn’t go to church very much, and we didn’t have a great faith community. And so, to the extent that I went to church, I mentioned my dad had come back into my life, and so he was very often the person who would take me to church if I went at all.

But when Mamaw died, this was, I was 20 years old. I was in the Marine Corps. I was about to leave for Iraq just a few months before I left for Iraq, and I just felt this emptiness. And, again, with the benefit of hindsight, I recognized that she was in my attachment to my Christian faith. If I had questions, if I had doubts, she is the person I would call. I didn’t have a pastor. I didn’t have a friend that I was really close with in the Lord, and that just kind of disappeared, and as it disappeared, I think I slowly lost my faith.

And so, you know, I’m a 21-year-old kid. I’m in the Marine Corps. I’m interested in what every 21- year-old man is, which is, you know, going to the bars, trying to meet somebody. And that kind of followed me through. I went to Ohio State after I got out of the Marines. I was, I’d just turned 23 and went to Ohio State. And I just didn’t have any need of it.

Jim: Huh.

Vice President Vance: And I sort of saw myself as this person, you know, I had come from nothing. I had made something of myself. I had this real arrogance about myself. But I also didn’t realize at the time, I was becoming remarkably obsessed with things that didn’t matter. I cared about credentials, I cared about what school I went to, I care about what job I had, what amount of money I made. And there was, and this is what ultimately led me back to my faith, I write about this in the book, this recognition that the things that really mattered, like the things Mamaw cared about, those were the things that Christianity had formed in my mind.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: And the things that really didn’t matters were the thing that the world was forming in my mind. And I slowly developed this sense that while I was arrogant and I didn’t need Jesus and I didn’t need the Bible, I slowly realized the sense that without them, I was becoming a bad person. I was becoming somebody that Mamaw would not be proud of.

Jim: So you could, you could see that and feel that.

Vice President Vance: I- Slowly, it’s not something that hits you like a ton of bricks-

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: … but it’s one of these things that just slowly started to gnaw at my mind that I was gonna be very successful. I knew that I would gonna be, I was ambitious, I was doing well in school. But I didn’t feel like I was gonna be successful in the way that really mattered.

Jim: You know, one of the things, it’s one of the toughest questions I’ll get asked after I speak about a very similar childhood.

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: And I want to ask this of you, because it’s a difficult one for me to answer, which is like not holding resentment for your bad dad.

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: Um, the tough things that happen to you, how have you so easily, they’ll say often, given that up? And they don’t know there’s those days of-

Vice President Vance: It wasn’t easy.

Jim: … it wasn’t easy.

Vice President Vance: (laughs). Yeah.

Jim: … and there wasn’t a prescription that you can follow.

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: It’s just something you have to do.

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: You got to let go of people that have hurt you.

Vice President Vance: That’s right.

Jim: And let go of those emotions-

Vice President Vance: That’s right.

Jim: … or it will kill you.

Vice President Vance: Yeah. And look, I’m a big believer that grace is the process by which that happens. I don’t think that I could have done it by myself. I was an incredibly resentful 24-year-old kid. And in fact, I remember thinking to myself, “I’m gonna go further, and I’m going to achieve more just to spite the people who weren’t there for me, right?” There was this real sense of resentment.

Jim: Oh yeah.

Vice President Vance: And I guess a couple of things helped me, but again, for me, it was very much a process. I think number one is you have to be humble and you have to recognize that because we are all fallen creatures, maybe we’re fallen in different ways. In the same way that somebody else wronged you, you will wrong somebody else.

Jim: Right.

Vice President Vance: Like I’m a super present and active father, but I’m sure that in 20 years, my kids will look back on something and say, “Well, dad screwed that up, or maybe dad was too tough, or maybe dad lost his temper that one time.” And I think that recognition breeds a certain humility. A recognition that, you know, as Jesus says in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And I think you have to do those things simultaneously.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: You have to be willing to forgive other people, because I think that spirit of forgiveness and grace is something that will be extended to you.

Jim: Now how in the world do you do that in politics?

Vice President Vance: (laughs).

Jim: I mean, I’ve watched from a distance.

Vice President Vance: Oh man.

Jim: I admire you guys-

Vice President Vance: (laughs).

Jim: … that can actually have those debates because it’s become so visceral, you know, it really has.

Vice President Vance: It has.

Jim: I know the stories, you know, before us, like the old-time politicians talk about going to dinner together-

Vice President Vance: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … both Republican and Democrat.

Vice President Vance: Sure, sure.

Jim: And they had some friendship-

Vice President Vance: Yes.

Jim: … behind the scenes.

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: It doesn’t feel like that anymore.

Vice President Vance: You know, there’s something C.S. Lewis once said that was, that’s definitely influenced how I think about this, which is that, you know, sometimes you don’t feel the thing in your heart, but you still have to will yourself to do it, right? You have to try, even though the feelings aren’t always there. So yeah, sometimes a Democrat or somebody in the media will say something to me, and I’m not going to lie to you and say that I have this like, Christian charity that just wells up inside me.

Jim: Right (laughs).

Vice President Vance: Sometimes I hate that person. But, but what I do try to remember is that that part of the will, that even though I may not feel particularly charitable towards that person, I have to constantly remind myself, I have to pray for that person. And again, I think this is the process by which Christ ultimately acts on human beings and transforms us, is that you may not always feel the right way, but if you try, even if you try only 20% of the time, slowly those seeds of grace blossom into something bigger.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: And man, I am as imperfect on this as anybody. I do not always feel charitable towards my political enemies. I sometimes see them saying things to, about me that are just obviously lies and obviously dishonest. But you know, I think I’m probably better at it than I was three years ago.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: And maybe that is ultimately the lesson of the Christian Gospel is you walk on the road; you don’t always sprint on the road. Maybe sometimes you take two steps backwards and three steps forwards, but you just got to try, man.

Jim: Well, you’re giving me hope.

Vice President Vance: (laughs).

Jim: Give me hope because, and so many people today, it’s what’s driving us-

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: … and driving the separation and we’ve got to find some common ground to work together on some things.

Um, let’s finish that part of the story though.

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: You get out of the Marines, you did well, you went to Yale Law School.

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: That’s a big achievement.

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: And where does the Lord connect with you again? And how does that happen?

Vice President Vance: Yeah, so some of it is honestly intellectual. I was very interested in political philosophy and sort of how was it that human beings arranged their societies. And so I became increasingly intrigued by the ancient Christian philosophers.

Jim: Uh-huh.

Vice President Vance: And I started thinking, well, if they have something smart to say, then maybe that comes from a deeper well of truth, right? I became obsessed with um, this ancient Christian thinker, Augustine, and who wrote this book called The City of God, which I read in a college class. And I was like, “This is way smarter than anything else that I’ve read about politics or life.” But more personally, you know, I’m having this like, reflection on, “I’m in law school. I’m gonna make more money than anybody in my family has ever made, right? I already know that-”

Jim: Wow.

Vice President Vance: “… I’m going to have, you know, a privilege that nobody else in my family has ever had, but like, am I actually good at the things that Mamaw cared about. Am I gonna be a good husband? Am I gonna be a good father?” And that sort of came into particularly sharp focus because, you know, I fell in love and I met a girl and I was like three weeks into it. I was like, “This is the girl I’m going to marry. This is the girl that I want to be with.” And at the same time, like I had a temper. I was not a particularly good boyfriend. I had not sort of developed these relationship virtues, and I started to think to myself, well, there is, there is an emptiness here.

Jim: Mm.

Vice President Vance: There is something that’s missing here. And I didn’t quite know how to articulate it. But you know, there were people who would pop into my life who would sort of, “Hey, come to church with me.” And, “Hey, maybe if Augustine’s right about, you know, how to organize human society, maybe he’s also right about Jesus.” And, and those sort of-

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: … conversations started happening at the same time that I had this void. And you know, eventually it got to the point where it’s like, you know what, maybe I wanna go to church regularly again. And then, and then maybe, like you keep on walking down that path of maybe, and now you know I’m married, I’ve got four kids, and we go to church every Sunday. (laughs).

Jim: (laughs).

Vice President Vance: So again, to me, the lesson in my life is fundamentally that grace is an imperfect process. Like, I would constantly take two steps forward and then five steps backwards. It’s, it’s uneven-

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: but that’s often the way that God makes it.

Jim: No, it’s so good. And how, how long have you been married now?

Vice President Vance: So we were married in 2014. So I guess uh, just over 12 years now.

Jim: Yeah, that’s great.

Vice President Vance: And we’ve got four kids, including a three-month-old, which is always fun.

Jim: You know what’s, what’s so much fun, so many people say to me, “It’s awesome to see a Vice President with young kids.”

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: And ’cause we just don’t see it that often anymore.

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: People in politics, it’s rare that they have young kids-

Vice President Vance: No kids.

Jim: … because they are typically older.

Vice President Vance: Yeah. (laughs).

Jim: So at least you’re helping younger families say, “Okay, maybe we should have children.”

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: Let me ask you-

Vice President Vance: And we do try, I mean, like, obviously the balance of our lives is we want to try to protect the kids’ privacy as much as possible.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: But we also just try to live in the world with them and try to show people that like, yeah, sometimes they’re going to be misbehaved and sometimes they are going to get off an Air Force Two in their pajamas.

Jim: Right.

Vice President Vance: But we just try as much as possible to like be parents in the world and show that it’s possible.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: And that is something that we try to do in our own personal witness.

Jim: It’s so funny, young parents, or actually young couples that don’t have kids yet, Jean and I did this, we’d go into Walmart grocery shopping, and we’d see the mom with the out-of-control five-year-old going-

Vice President Vance: Yes.

Jim: … “When we have children, we will never be in that spot.”

Vice President Vance: (laughs).

Jim: And it’s like God keeps a score book, right?

Vice President Vance: Yeah, that’s absolutely right.

Jim: Then you have kids, and they’re the out-of-control kid at the grocery store.

Vice President Vance: Exactly. Yes, it happens to us all.

Jim: Something you said that caught me just the other day actually, you mentioned, and I’m sure the media has run with this, about contemplating your next step-

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: … your future potential run as President-

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: … but hesitating, it sounded like, because you have to think about your wife and kids and the-

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: … demands of the job. It is probably the most demanding job in the world, and you said you have these young children. Fill that in for me a little bit, because-

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: … I think it’s so important for the listeners, other young men professionals and women too-

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: … saying, “Okay, do we need to pay that much attention to our children when we’re looking at career opportunity?”

Vice President Vance: Yeah, and I think the answer is, of course you do, right?

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: And I think that the context for that answer is that everybody who I know, certainly everybody in the media, presumes that I’m just going to run for president, right? I’m the Vice President, the President’s term limited, so that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going run for President. And I think the, the honest answer is that, yeah, I’ve given it some thought, but I just haven’t thought that much about it. And it’s not the sort of decision I’m going to make until I have to make it. And I was just trying to be honest about the fact that when we do make that decision, the first and most important thing is going to be, can a campaign be consistent with the duties that I owe to my kids and to my family?

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: And that is the most important question. I think that if you’re not thinking about those things, if you are the sort of person who would be willing to sacrifice your family in order for ambition, then you should never be President to begin with. So of course, that’s going to be the first question I ask.

Jim: That is excellent. And I think you’re right. Um, so many professionals, we don’t think of our kids, and we let them suffer for our advancement. And we’re suffering the cost of that.

Vice President Vance: But I think that’s absolutely right. And look, nobody is ever sitting on their deathbed thinking, “I wish that I had spent less time with my kids for that promotion.”

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: Or, “I wish I had spent less with my kid so that I would have you know, a few more dollars in the bank.” I really do, there’s this, he’s very much a critic of mine, but he once, his name’s David Brooks. But he once said something about resume virtues versus elegy virtues.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: Like, what is it that you want people to say at your funeral? And what does it say on your resume? And I just really strongly believe that most people ultimately are not gonna care what was on their resume. They’re gonna care what other people say about them at their funeral.

Jim: Right, if they have wisdom, that is so true.

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: Let me ask you, with young kids, my boys are in their 20s.

Vice President Vance: Okay.

Jim: So I’m kind of through that part of it, but you know what?

Vice President Vance: You’re the different part? (laughs).

Jim: Right, yeah.

Vice President Vance: (laughs).

Jim: Small kids, small problems, big kids, big problems.

Vice President Vance: (laughs). Yeah, somebody once told me that the, the first ten years kids are physically exhausting, the next ten years kids are emotionally exhausting, and the ten years after that they’re financially exhausting.

Jim: Yeah (laughs).

Vice President Vance: So you’re in the financially exhausting part. (laughs).

Jim: Couldn’t be truer than you said it. But in that context, you know, Focus on the Family, we are a resource center for parents, for marriage, et cetera.

Vice President Vance: Of course. Yeah.

Jim: I’m really proud of the work we do to keep families together.

Vice President Vance: You should be. I am too.

Jim: But in the context, uh you know the rise right now in social media issues, concerns about loneliness, depression-

Vice President Vance: Yes.

Jim: … anxiety. I mean, CDC, 50% of 14 to 24-year-olds now expressing some-

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: … um level of anxiety or depression. Both I guess as a father and as a politician, what do you see as um, some remedy to help parents cope with this?

Vice President Vance: Well, I’m a big believer, and we practice this in our own life, that, you know, social media, now our kids are still pretty young, our oldest is nine, but that we don’t fully appreciate the effects of social media on kids. And I suspect that while there are benefits to any technology, the downsides of social media on kids is very, very powerful. And I do think that it’s very easy to sort of self-segregate and be atomized and lonely, when you can just go on the internet and find somebody in some corner of the world, even if it’s a bot who confirms what you think or what you believe.

Jim: Right.

Vice President Vance: You know, I also believe, I mean, I’m fundamentally a really strong believer that human beings, God created us to be social creatures. And that interaction with one another, the disagreement sometimes, the conflict, the recognizing that I might think something, but that it runs against the reality of another person’s thoughts or feelings is like fundamentally the way that we grow as human beings. And certainly that’s been true in my marriage, but it’s been true in any friendships that I’ve ever had.

And one of the things I’m concerned about in technology is you know when you go on a chat bot, or you, I have a friend of mine who knows somebody who actually used Chat GPT as a marriage counselor.

Jim: (laughs).

Vice President Vance: Well, the problem with that is that’s not a real human being.

Jim: Right.

Vice President Vance: And so the feedback loop is, “Oh, you’re right about this, and your feelings are right about that, and your feelings are right about that.” And that’s the way to turn yourself into just, I think, a fundamentally distorted uh, person. So, but I do think that we probably need to do more, and we need to go further as a society, because there’s something about this digital technology that I think does create atomized human beings. And I don’t think we fully appreciate the effects yet.

Jim: Yeah. Definitely the increase of loneliness, the most connected generation, the loneliest generation.

Vice President Vance: Exactly, it’s also the loneliest generation.

Jim: We’re near the end here, and I wanted to ask about your friendship with Charlie Kirk as well.

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: Um, I really appreciated the way he grew in the role that he had.

Vice President Vance: Yeah. Me too.

Jim: I think some of the most compassionate answers he gave on campuses to people that were questioning their gender, I mean, loving and kind responses-

Vice President Vance: Sure. Yes.

Jim: … saying, “Get help for your mind. Find a way to love your body that God gave you.”

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: I thought that was brilliant.

Vice President Vance: It was brilliant.

Jim: But he was your friend.

Vice President Vance: He was. He was.

Jim: And he was assassinated. And you think about that, again, the violence in this country, the direction it’s going, that if you speak your mind peacefully-

Vice President Vance: Mm-hmm.

Jim: … on a college campus, you could end up being shot.

Vice President Vance: Sure.

Jim: That’s crazy.

Vice President Vance: It is crazy. And you know, the basic and fundamental and most important thing that we can do as leaders is to call it out when we see it. And my view, whatever your politics, whether you voted for me or not, is that the way to win a debate in the United States of America is to put your ideas forward and try to win the argument. It is not to try to destroy the life of somebody because you disagree with them.

That principle, the idea that we win arguments through open free debate and not through violence is in some ways, the foundational principle of our entire society. We don’t force people to adopt our religion. We try to persuade them that Jesus is the Son of God. We don’t shoot somebody because they disagree with us. We try to persuade them they should adopt our point of view, and at the very least, we vote against their candidates when they put them forward.

That principle, by the way, I think is the most important, I shouldn’t say the most important, but it is an important Christian principle. Because if you understand your fellow man as made in the image of God, you don’t murder them. You don’t commit violence against them. You respect them enough to try to persuade them.

Jim: You know, there’s a number that’s been floated that about 30 million Christians don’t show up at the polls.

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: That’s a big number.

Vice President Vance: It’s a big number.

Jim: If we want to change the country, if we want to preserve those things that have made America a great place to live, the greatest place to live.

Vice President Vance: That’s right.

Jim: What would be your best pitch to say, don’t hold back? I mean, now’s the time to fight for our country, and the best way to do that is through the polls.

Vice President Vance: You know, my pitch and my suspicion is that many of those 30 million Christians are people like my grandmother, who were people of devout faith, but maybe felt like they just didn’t have a political home. Maybe they agreed with the Democratic Party on this issue, but they agreed with the Republican Party on that issue, or maybe they just did not think it mattered.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: And what I would say to those Christians is the way to make it matter, but also the way to make our politics more like you, is to participate in the process. And I would love it- I think that our politics would be so much more humane. It would be so much more charitable, but it would also be much wiser if those 30 million Christians got involved. By the way, it would change things. It would meaningfully transform the way that both Democrats and Republicans interacted with the process, and that’s a good thing.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: But you can’t do that if you sit at home. And those 30 million Christians, that block, you take half of those people and make them a block of voters, American politics would never be the same. We would transform our country for the better. So get out there and vote. The country needs it.

Jim: Yeah.

Vice President Vance: But I think most importantly, if you want America to be more like the faith that you know is true, the only way to do that is to get out there and vote.

Jim: And that 30 million is on top of the 60 million that do vote.

Vice President Vance: Yes.

Jim: So that’s a big block.

Vice President Vance: It’s a big block.

Jim: Mr. Vice President, thank you for being with us. This has been really great.

Vice President Vance: Yeah.

Jim: And we’ll pray for you and certainly President Trump and the administration and everyone in Congress, both Democrat and Republican.

Vice President Vance: We appreciate that, and you’ll be in my prayers as well. God bless you guys.

Jim: Amen. Thank you.

John: Well today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, it was great to hear a little bit about the Vice President, JD Vance, his life, his thoughts about things that families care about.

Jim: Yeah, John, it was a great discussion, like you said. And JD said it. We’re not going to agree on every policy, issue, or platform. But as Americans, I hope we can do better at having civil dialogue with our friends and family on the issues that matter to us most, while understanding that we’re all created in the image of God. Start with a position of humility.

You know, we have an incredible privilege to vote and try to shape policy that lifts up traditional marriage and supports families while protecting pre-born babies and defending religious freedom. So be sure and vote. Then remember to pray over the issues and for our leaders regardless of the letter behind their name or what office they’re holding. It’s just good to pray for everyone.

John: Mm.

Jim: So let’s stay on our knees in prayer.

John: Yes, absolutely. And of course, stay informed as well through the year by subscribing to our free eNewsletter called Daily Citizen. You’ll get an update every day, Monday through Friday, on issues from a Christian perspective. The link is at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim: Also, if you can support the ministry with a gift, whether that’s a one-time gift or a monthly gift, it really helps us to continue offering hope and encouragement to families, to marriages, saving pre-born babies, and sharing the Gospel. Millions of families are counting on us every day, and your gifts make it possible. So thank you for your support.

John: Our number is 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY, or stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

And thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.