In Private Speech, J.D. Vance Said the “Devil Is Real” and Praised Alex Jones as a Truth-Teller
www.propublica.org
Vance gave the speech to the secretive Teneo Network. The GOP vice presidential nominee has been a member of the Leonard Leo-backed group, which seeks to cultivate conservative influence in business and culture.

Archived version

Here is the archived transcript of the J.D. Vance speech (the video link is in the article)

Sen. J.D. Vance, whom Donald Trump named as his vice presidential running mate Monday, told a group of influential young conservatives in a closed-door speech in 2021 which was published only recently that they should stand up for “nonconventional people” who speak truth, such as Infowars founder Alex Jones.

"If you listen to Rachel Maddow every night, the basic worldview that you have is that MAGA grandmas who have family dinners on Sunday and bake apple pies for their family are about to start a violent insurrection against this country,” Vance said. “But if you listen to Alex Jones every day, you would believe that a transnational financial elite controls things in our country, that they hate our society, and oh, by the way, a lot of them are probably sex perverts too.”

[…]

[JD Vance] said, “I believe the devil is real and that he works terrible things in our society. That’s a crazy conspiracy theory to a lot of very well-educated people in this country right now.”

[…]

Vance made these remarks at a September 2021 gathering of the Teneo Network, an invitation-only group of young conservatives that counts elected officials, pro athletes, financial executives and media figures among its members. Vance joined Teneo six years ago.

[…]

According to tax records, the Teneo Network’s chairman is Leonard Leo, the legal activist who built a pipeline of lawyers who interpret the Constitution based on the “original intent” of the framers or the meaning of the words in the text when they were written […] Leo helped confirm all six conservative justices currently serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. Leo-aligned judges have pushed to restrict abortion rights and rein in the government’s power to regulate corporations.

[…]

By the time Vance spoke at Teneo’s 2021 conference, he had joined the race to fill outgoing Sen. Rob Portman’s seat. Despite his past criticisms of Trump, which included calling the former president an “idiot” and comparing him to Adolf Hitler, Vance won Trump’s endorsement in 2022 and cruised to a comfortable victory.

[…]

[Vance] said that Americans were “terrified to tell the truth” and “point out the obvious,” including that “there are real biological, cultural, religious, spiritual distinctions between men and women.” He added, “I think that’s what the whole transgender thing is about, is like fundamentally denying basic reality.”

  • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    22·
    2 months ago

    If you believe the devil is real and is a near peer adversary of God, aren’t you de facto a polytheist?

    • prole@beehaw.orgEnglish
      10·
      2 months ago

      Not to mention, if you actually read the Bible (particularly the Old Testament), if you need to choose a “good guy” and a “bad guy,” it is very clear which would be which…

      Yahweh was a jealous, petty, genocidal maniac.

      Lucifer only told Eve she could actually eat fruit from a tree that god said she couldn’t (it being the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil isn’t relevant here im sure. No reason why this specific god would want to prevent his creation from discerning good from evil right??).

      Without him, if you are to believe the Bible (which you absolutely 100% should not), we would literally not have the knowledge of the difference between good and evil.

      And somehow that’s a bad thing? Ignorance is bliss?

    • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      Christianity, especially Catholicism, is just borrowed Paganism. They were competing with Polytheism and had to have some ideas that might attract them to their religion.

      Even from the beginning, it was all about trying to say they are one thing, all the while throwing in contradictions into their stories and world views.

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        3·
        2 months ago

        Oh yeah contradictions abound. The one God who is Three is already stretching it quite a bit in terms of monotheism.

    • Smoke@beehaw.orgEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      Oh, it occurs from time to time. Jones will shotgun tons of contradictory predictions, then quietly drop the ones that don’t work out and never shut up about the one that actually happens.

  • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
    7·
    2 months ago

    a transnational financial elite controls things in our country

    Conservatives get so mad when you call them Nazis, but it’s only because a lot of them are so dumb that they don’t even realize how blatantly and unabashedly their leaders are about being Nazis.

    • pbjamm@beehaw.orgEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      I guess that (((globalists)))was getting too obvious for these nazis. It wont be long before they feel comfortable just saying Jews (or worse) in public again.

  • averyminya@beehaw.org
    5·
    2 months ago

    The devil is as real as spongebob squarepants.

    That is to say, they’re a creation of an imagination that is a real concept created by humans that is not physically real until proven otherwise.

    In fact, Dark Matter is more “real” than the devil because we know “something” is there even if we don’t know what it is.