Somewhere around the two-hour mark in JD Vance’s nearly three-hour podcast interview last week with Joe Rogan, the pair got into a serious conversation about supernatural and extraterrestrial phenomena. By serious, I mean it in the sense that Rogan seemed to take the subject seriously while Vance cynically, or cretinously, or cravenly, or credulously or conspiratorially — or perhaps it’s all of the above — played along with him.
It contained the following insights from the vice president of the United States:
“If we’re talking about an extraterrestrial being that is humanlike, but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want, but I think there’s a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon.”
And:
“If you’re looking for me to concede the point that there is something different or could be something different between an angel, a demon, a space alien, a supernatural but non-any-of-those-other-things beings, yes, I concede that.”
And:
“I got two-and-a-half more years as V.P., and I swear to you, if there are little green men, like body remains, I’m not going to text you. I’m going to try to smuggle a camera in and get a photo of these things.”
Call the veep, Agent Mulder!
By this point, the two men had already propounded one conspiracy theory — that the Los Angeles mayoral election had been rigged (a claim previously debunked by a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor); followed by Vance’s accusation that Joe Biden’s staff got him to eat ice cream “in the most ridiculous, suggestive way imaginable” (a remarkable way of turning naked mendacity into adolescent prurience into another conspiracy theory); followed by an exchange about eating corn dogs in public (because, you know); followed by an argument about whether the Ten Commandments should be mandated in Texas public schools, in which neither man appeared to be aware that the commandments are not originally Christian.
Then — sandwiched between the Bible in the classroom and the alien remains that may or may not be in Area 51 — is a discussion that begins with Vance defending his diplomatic work to resolve the war with Iran and devolves into a long foray on Jeffrey Epstein, the sex offender whose death in 2019 Vance — in the most bizarre twist of the podcast — manages to connect with the decline of wokeness in academia. Really.
None of these connections are incidental. Vance describes himself as one of the “O.G. Epstein conspiracy theorists.” Rogan seems keen to push the idea that Israel blackmailed Trump into going to war. Epstein is the prime demonic force in U.S. politics today, a figure of beyond-the-grave powers, who may be as responsible for the current war in the Middle East as he is for the vogue in land-acknowledgment statements by universities. And while Vance dutifully defends his boss against the charge of blackmail, he’s quick to play into Rogan’s suggestion that Epstein “was Mossad.”
Now how did he make that connection — and are the “space Jews” far behind?
“Yeah, Mossad or C.I.A. or some other deep state,” the vice president replies. “Or both. You know, look, was he — he clearly had connections to the upper — the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.” In fact, there is no credible evidence whatsoever that Epstein had any ties to either spy agency, a point Vance conveniently covers up by telling Rogan that if evidence did exist, “it wouldn’t exist in 2026.”
So, as Agent Mulder said on “The X Files,” “The truth is out there.” Or maybe the truth is staring us in the face.
The truth — that the most influential media figure in America today, with tens of millions of followers on social media, is a jocular bro with an Everyman affect who seems never to have encountered an idiotic or despicable conspiracy theory he isn’t willing to promote (moon-landing denial) or platform (Hitler revisionism). We are a nation that has moved at speed from the realm of fact colored by opinions to a kingdom of delusion infested with fear.
The truth — that the current vice president is by far the worst person ever to hold the office (move over, Aaron Burr, John C. Calhoun and Spiro T. Agnew); that he thinks, probably correctly, that there’s no political downside in today’s Republican Party to talking like a guy who thinks Dan Brown novels are works of nonfiction; and that it’s equally OK for a person who, by his own admission, has access to all U.S. intelligence to tease the possibility of deep-state conspiracies of the sort his political base is likely to believe. The prospect of this callow and sinister opportunist taking the place of the erratic buffoon now governing us may be the single scariest thought in world politics today.
The truth — that Vance’s interview with Rogan (as close as politics gives us to a national cancer diagnosis) was a blip in the news cycle, because crazy today is every day, and our capacity to feel shocked diminishes with every asinine utterance coming from the vice president’s mouth, to say nothing of that of his boss.
The truth is that the demons are here. We elected them.
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