Vance: Antichrist May Walk Among Us Today

Vice President JD Vance told a Christian podcaster he would not be shocked if the Antichrist were already walking among us, said he has felt spiritual "darkness" in meetings with world leaders, and defended President Donald Trump's AI-generated image of himself as Jesus.

The remarks came in an hour-plus episode of the "Bryce Crawford Podcast" that aired Monday, Aug. 31. The Associated Press described the episode as released Tuesday.

Vance, a convert to Catholicism who recently published a book about his own faith journey, also said the July 2024 assassination attempt on Trump could have broken the country if the bullet had landed differently.

What Vance Said

On the end times: "I think that there are, like, things about the world that make me feel like I'd be not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us," Vance said, adding, "do I think that we're in the End Times? I don't know." He said he tries not to focus on it, and told Crawford the subject had been more of an obsession in his youth in the late 1990s, around millennium fever.

On world leaders: asked whether he had ever been in a room that felt spiritually dark, Vance said, "Definitely, I've been in meetings with world leaders where various issues are being discussed, and somebody will say something or somebody will make an observation, and I will feel a certain darkness about it. It sort of sets off every spiritual alarm bell in my body." He named no one, and said the feeling usually comes from people rather than places.

The one place he singled out was the Gettysburg battlefield, where he said he felt "a very dark spiritual energy" — probably, he said, because so many men died there.

On artificial intelligence: Vance cited "IT companies" and the use of AI as a substitute for human contact, including an acquaintance who used AI as a marriage counselor. Crawford called that "kind of satanic." Vance answered: "when you completely divorce the human from the social element that God made us for, OK that's very, that's very bad."

The Butler Shooting

Vance said that if the July 2024 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania — where a bullet nicked Trump's ear and a supporter was killed — had been fatal, "we would have had real civil strife in a way that I don't know that the country could have ever come back from."

He said many Trump supporters would have assumed a conspiracy stole their candidate, and that he would have had the same thought "in the back of my mind."

"I would have assumed very dark forces had taken out Donald Trump, right as he was about to come back into the White House," Vance said. "There would have just been an illegitimacy to our entire political system." AP reported he said he might not have accepted even another Republican as the next president.

The AI Jesus Meme

Crawford pressed Vance on the AI-generated image Trump posted in April showing himself as a robed, Christ-like figure. Trump initially said he thought the picture showed him as a doctor connected to the Red Cross, then deleted it after backlash from Christians, including some of his own supporters.

Crawford said the image offended him personally and that he did not believe the doctor explanation.

"He did not mean to mock or mimic God. That's just not who he is," Vance said. "Did Donald Trump mean to post a meme of himself as God? No. Because I saw it happen in real time." He said people routinely show Trump memes and that Trump sometimes asks for the ones he finds funny to be posted, and called the president "a bit of a ballbuster" who likes to keep things light.