The Vice President Sees Demons in the Sky
When you're fighting a Holy War, Satan isn't just around every corner. He's also flying around in the sky.
Recently, JD Vance appeared on “The Benny Show,” a conservative podcast hosted by Benny Johnson, and the conversation turned to UFOs. Trump had promised to release classified files on unidentified anomalous phenomena. Johnson asked if Vance had peeked.
“I actually haven’t,” Vance replied. “I have not been able to spend enough time on this, but I am going to. Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.”
Then came the twist. When asked about extraterrestrial life, Vance offered a different theory: “I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons...”
The Context Makes It Stranger
The timing was bizarre. The Iran war was entering another week. A partial government shutdown had airports in chaos. Gas prices had Americans wincing at every fill-up. And here was the vice president, animated about Area 51.
As The Guardian noted, Vance mustered “significantly more enthusiasm” for UFOs than for any question about US-Iran military strikes. He mentioned planned trips to Area 51 that never materialized. He vowed to get to the bottom of the mystery.
Dave Schilling, writing for The Guardian‘s opinion section, couldn’t quite blame him: “Who wouldn’t want to hop on the Starship Get-Me-The-Hell-Out-Of-Here right now?” But the dark comedy writes itself—the vice president partially responsible for the policy mess wanted to talk about demons instead.
The Obama Factor
Here’s the thing. Barack Obama had recently discussed aliens on a podcast. It went viral. And then suddenly, Vance wanted to talk about UFOs too.
Salon’s Amanda Marcotte called it what it looked like: a “blatant attempt to snag the attention” Obama received. “Hopping on the ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ trend won’t save the vice president’s career,” she wrote. “Even for JD Vance, it was a weird moment.”
But there’s something almost desperate about it. Obama goes on a podcast, talks about aliens, gets headlines. Vance—three weeks into a vice presidency overshadowed by war and economic anxiety—sees an opening. He’ll do Obama one better. Obama just talked about the possibility of aliens. Vance will talk about demons. He’s not just engaging with the topic; he’s one-upping it.
It’s those kids in high school we all hated. They weren’t very smart or clever, so they surrounded themselves with people just stupid enough that they always seemed smart by comparison. Vance has found his audience. And he’s found his topic—one where he can never be proven wrong, because the proof is invisible and the failure to see it is yours.
The Machiavellian Pattern
The last vaguely honest thing JD Vance said was in 2016, when he called Trump “America’s Hitler” and worried aloud about the man’s authoritarian instincts. Then he remade himself completely.
The Middletown kid who wrote Hillbilly Elegy became the venture capitalist who courted Peter Thiel. The critic of Trump became a lap dog and, ultimately, a candidate Trump endorsed. The man who warned about authoritarian populism became its most enthusiastic vessel.
This is not ideological evolution. This is pattern recognition. Vance figured out what it took to advance, and he advanced. He felt the dopamine rush of success and like any organism with a survival instinct reproduced the behaviors which caused it. He surrounded himself with people just stupid enough that he seemed smart by comparison, and he found positions that could never be disproven because they relied on invisible magic and the failures of others’ faith.
The demon comments are of a piece with everything else. They cannot be argued with. They cannot be proven wrong. They require nothing of him except the assertion, and they place the burden of disproof on anyone who would challenge them. This is not how you engage with unexplained phenomena. This is how you avoid engagement entirely.
Not Crazy, Just Catholic (The Wrong Kind)
Vance’s demon theory isn’t fringe in certain circles. He explicitly tied his interpretation to Christian theology, arguing that what some call aliens, Christianity has long recognized as spiritual phenomena.
But this isn’t the Catholicism most Americans recognize. Vance converted recently in 2019 at age 35, baptized in a Dominican parish that traces its order to 1216. He chose St. Augustine as his patron, citing City of God as “the best criticism of our modern age” he’d read. His conversion came through the “post-liberal Catholic” movement—thinkers like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule who argue that America’s problems trace to the Enlightenment itself, and that “regime change” is needed to replace liberal democracy with something more theologically grounded. He’s may not be the stereotypical Latin Mass trad-boy Catholics have become notorious for in recent years. But he found in Catholicism what he called “stability”—an ancient institution “standing against the flux of the modern world.”
The demon theory isn’t casual. It’s the worldview of a convert who found Catholicism as a deliberate rejection of secular modernity. Church-pew Catholics haven’t believed this stuff in decades. But for a post-liberal intellectual who converted as an act of cultural rebellion? It fits.
He’s not alone, either. CounterPunch reported that “an evangelical cadre of top US Air Force brass” share similar views. Phil Rockstroh called it “shared psychosis”—psychological projection rather than spiritual insight. The Skeptic offered a gentler read: Vance’s interpretation reveals that “the instincts of his political base are to fear the different and unknown.” We see the world not as it is, but as we are. These powerful men see demons because they’re projecting their own “predication for inflicting grievous harm on the world.”
The Ultimate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card
“The devil’s greatest trick,” the saying goes, “is to convince people he never existed.” Vance knows this line by heart. He’s used it. And it’s the perfect sleigh-of-hand argument—absolutely perfect—because it’s completely un-falsifiable.
Don’t believe in demons? That’s exactly what the devil wants. Your unbelief is proof that the devil is succeeding. Can’t see the invisible creatures flying around in the sky? That just mean you’re not trying hard enough. Don’t accept my supernatural explanation for unexplained aerial phenomena? That’s your failure of faith, not my lack of evidence.
This is the epistemological sleight-of-hand at the heart of evangelical political theory. It’s impossible to argue with someone who believes in invisible magic. You can’t prove my thing wrong because my thing is invisible. And my invisible thing proves you’re wrong because I say that it does. If you just had more faith, you’d be able to see I was right. Not only are you wrong, but being wrong is the result of your own moral failing.
It’s the ultimate straw man. The deck is stacked before the conversation begins. Vance isn’t making a claim that can be tested, examined, or debated. He’s making a claim that precludes debate entirely. You either have the faith to see it or you don’t—and if you don’t, that’s evidence of your deficiency, not his. This is not serious engagement with unexplained phenomena, it’s an intellectual trap door for a rhetorical magician.
What This Reveals
Vance was right about one thing. “That’s a longer discussion.” But the discussion isn’t about aliens. It’s about a moment in American politics where religious framing and spectacle collide. Where a vice president a heartbeat away from the nuclear launch codes tells a podcaster he’s “obsessed” with demonic aircraft. Where policy questions elicit scripted answers, but UFO questions spark genuine enthusiasm.
It’s about the strange bedfellows of our era: conservative podcasters and Area 51 enthusiasts, religious doctrine and military intrigue, the devil’s tricks as a talking point for a man who helps run the government.
But mostly it’s about the epistemological trap. Vance, like the rest of the Christian Nationalists he surrounds himself with, has found a position that cannot be falsified. A framework where disbelief itself is somehow evidence of the believer’s correctness. He’s found a way to seem serious while saying nothing that can be tested.
The truth may be out there. But for JD Vance, the demons are right here. And he’s just getting started.